so about the time i looked up, in the sky i saw a six of them coming in a v formation. i stood there and saw the bombs dropped. . .

>> this week on "q&a," author markham glad well. malcolm has written for "the new yorker"magazine since 1986. >> malcolm gladwell, what does that mean now that the now to be gladwellian? >> that was invented by one of the publicists at my company.

this is an example of corporate self-promotion, publisher. >> if you and look get "the new york times" best seller list, you have four of your books. you are number 8 on the hardback list. your number 8 on the paperback with "tipping point, "which came out in 2000. >> that was a book about using the idea of the epidemic to explain how idea is expressed through a population. it took all language and metaphor of epidemiology and delighted to behavior and things with the enclosed where, a primer on how to change

happened. >> cuyahoga domain copies you sold? >> i don't know. >> the pay attention to the numbers? >> not really, i'm a people but once i have written something i never go back and re-read it. it is important to look forward. if you look back and dwell on what you have done, you fall into bad habits and repeat yourself and get trapped a little bit. >> you don't go back and ever re-read something? >> no, i have not read "the tipping point" in many years. >> people will say something that i had written and i asked," have i written that?" >> these numbers are early

december. number 7 on the paperback list, for 109 weeks, is "blank." >> that is about rapid recognition. it is about decisions we make in an instant and about when they are good and when they're bad. an enormous amount of what we do is governed by things that we decide in a snap. i thought that was interested in what to devote a book to doing a -- to that phenomenon. >> that was -- 52-weeks on the hard backlist was another book. >>t' that was an investigationf success. it is an attempt to understand what are the reasons why certain individuals light outside normal

experience. what sets them apart? it looks that culture andúzropk -- and luck and other things that feed into success. >> the current thing is "what the dog saw." >> that is a collection of essays from "the yorker"-- " the new yorker." i wanted to write an episode about the dog-whisper. i wanted to write about what he sees when he sees a dog pretty has an extraordinary ability to calm dogs. he would walk into a room and see a dog misbehaving and the dog literally looks at him.

i realize that the interesting question is not what he sees one looks at a dog, it is what the dog sees when he looks at him. that was the title of the essay. anytime you put to "dog" in the title the book, you are doing well. >> did you choose the essays for that? >> yes, with some suggestions from my editors. sometimes your favorite pieces are not actually the best pieces. very often, riders have idiosyncratic reasons that are not shared by the rest of the world. you have to change your preferences against more objective sources. >> i read that you got as much as $4 million for this book. >> oh, no, that is -- that was weigh less. >> does that drive you crazy

when you see that? no, i think people know well enough that if that number does not come from me or my publisher, the chances are it might not be true. i think most readers are fairly skeptical about the things they read. >> 1996, you went to work at "the new yorker," before that, "the washington post." expense and time in england where your mother was born and grew up in canada and elmira? >> in a tiny town that has since become famous because down the road is where the blackberry comes from. we are now on the map, we think. >> you have a total of 1297 in

book form. this last book is up to number 5. of all the books you have done, the four, when you speak, when do people ask you -- which book to people most ask you about? >> that is interesting. "to pinpoint" -- "tipping point"has probably been read by the most people. that is an occasion for much discussion. "outlyers" is a topic that everyone is interested in one way or another. there is always a piece that people want to know more about. it is impossible to say which

one has provoked the most responses. >> let's say it is 80 to acknowledge to give a speech, what is the experience like would you contracts a month to stand up for 90 minutes. do you worry about it? >> not really, i don't get nervous. for public speaking. by and a nervous person but years ago i was a competitive runner. i would get in some way never before big races, so that i would not be able to sleep for weeks before head. since then, everything else i have ever had to do which seem

scary, i think if it is as scary as run erased? it is not. i never get nervous. i like giving talks because i think the discipline of being forced to tell a story in front of a group of people and explain yourself through spoken word as opposed to britain, is very poor for a writer. there are skills that beauty trends late to the task of writing on paper. i think i have become, since i started speaking, i think i have become a much better storyteller. the other thing that is crucial is that it forces you to get outside your world. i am by nature somewhat reserved and reclusive.

but i need to meet people, hear about new ideas coming here stores, get different perspectives but was speaking has allowed me to do is i meet people i'd never would admit any million years. that constantly replenished as my store of information about the world. >> how often do people come up to you and give you ideas? >> they do that more often -- they don't phrase that the way -- you start to chat with someone who does something totally different from you and they tell you something that is incredibly interesting and they don't realize it because it is something familiar to them. it does not have to be as formal as that.

>> you said to a group recently that in times of crisis, he said this in november, 2009, we want our leaders to be smart but we want our leader to be humble. >> yes, i wrote a talk after the financial crisis and part of it was in a" new yorker." it was about the battle of chancellorsville which was about the civil war, robert e. lee,

and robert e. lee beat hooker. hooker had him 2-1 and robert e. lee pulled it out there are all kinds of reasons why hooker blow it but the core of it was was that he was arrogant. he thought he had robert e. lee and outgunned, that he no longer had to taken seriously as an opponent. i thought there was a truly expert near a lesson in that. overconfidence turns out to be the most common flaw of experts. incompetents is the disease of the novice. over, this is the disease of the expert. -- overconfidence is the disease of the expert. one thing i think happened on wall street two years ago was that these titans of the

financial industry began to behave as hooker did on the eve of the battle of chancellorsville. they believe to be in such command of their world and their environment and their decisions that they were no longer capable of failure. i think this notion that our experts and their leaders need to be humble more than they need to be good is really important. not to say that they don't need to be good, is that we get better and better at what we do, we run a risk of overconfidence and arrogance and we need to keep the task of the leader or the expert, we need to keep that psychological problems in check. they need our help to do that. >> when you think of leaders, can you think of a leader that showed some humility. ? >> i thought you're going to ask the opposite question.

it's funny, there's a wonderful booki] written a couple of years ago called "overconfidence and ward." ." he walks her every conflict of the last hundred years and tries to find the humility of a leader and can rarely find one ve. the preponderance of the leaders suffer from some major overconfidence. in that room, it is hard to fund. ind. that is not to say there is humility at all kinds of levels. i had a conversation a couple of weeks ago when i was giving a talk and i was seated next to a guy who ran a regional bank in akron, ohio.

i ask him his business was. he said his business was fine. i ask what he was part and no one else was. he said he had been through this three times before. i suspect he got humbled 25 years ago or in the early 1970's. s to never forgot that lesson. it is in times like that that we understand why experience and learning from experience is so important. that word is not a meaningless triviality. experience matters because there are certain kinds of things you only learn when you have been humbled. you can explain to a 28-year-old that things will get bad. it will not sink in. to this man i was speaking to vote dealt firsthand with it and

went through all manner of crises before, it is a lesson that he kept with him. colin powell, before the direct or -- for the iraq war, was the in house skeptic because he had been through vietnam. in a first headway he was the winter that -- any firsthand way, he went through that. that is a case of someone who appropriately was humbled and learn from experience. you have to have people like that around. >> i have a stack of stuff that includes praise and criticism. what about your of humility after four enormous successes in 10 years ? that has not happened many times in history?

what does that do to your humility? >> i have thought about this. there is no denying that it changes you, change the way your life is, changes the way people return your phone calls and changes have much money you have in the bank. these are things that have positive and negative consequences. i am lucky because writers have built-in support systems that do keep us humble. i have an editor, henry fender, who is not dazzled by my book sales and is more willing to tell me how my riding is as opposed to 10 years ago. my mother is relatively unswayed by the house what world. -- by the outside world. she contended that she likes a

book, meaning the she didn't like the other two as much. when you have people in your life that keep you in check, it is easier. luckily, i don't have any real power. i am not running a major country or investment back. nk. >> has anything directly happen from one of your articles or one of your books, stories that come back to you that say something change because of it? >> yes, the nature of influence that a writer has is very specific. we don't change the world. what we do is we start conversations and maybe if we are lucky, the conversations well down the road are developed and enhanced and some idea gets by hand of someone who can affect change.

there is a piece in "what the dog saw," called million dollar murder. it describes the work of a nguy named phil nagano. he ran the homeless policy and the bush administration and he changed the way we treated the homeless. he was the paul revere of this new policy and troubled incessantly for four years. he made the argument that it is cheaper to solve homelessness than to treat homelessness. he said the homeless person that stays on the street cost us all more money than if we simply were to go and give that much person -- that person an apartment or someone to watch for them and finally a job.

i wrote a piece about his ideas, his crusade, and the larger intellectual context in which he was operating. i did not create that movement by publicized what he was doing and many people in that world tell me that it made their work lot easier to have an argument fleshed out and a national magazine. it helped to overcome some of the skepticism. that is the way in which riding of the sort that iñi do is valuable. it helps people -- when i shed light on something, it helps those people who are interested in creating change, it makes their life easier. >> there is a woman named maureen tassett who writes for" the nation."

she says that success is in the eye of the unsuccessful would be the great unspoken dilemma dogging critics asked to consider the work of the rich and famous author and inspirational speaker, malcolm gladwell. the subtext of his perceived success and the implications for their own aspirations in the competitive despot generation matures their judgment and affects their morale? . >> i read that as said. -- i read that estate. i think she is a smart person for it i have no idea what those two sentences mean. i am at a loss of how to respond to them. i don't know if success lies in the unsuccessful. i have struggled with them a little bit.

in people who comment on what i do, there is a sense sometimes that there is a disconnection not so much with me but with my audience. there is a feeling that they cannot believe so many people would still happily read this. >> see if you could put the microphone back on. "in this piece, she writes she cal that gladwell may be a÷7 slickster-trickster, and he

might even be an idiot, he is no fat. is a fixture in the new york publishing world. he steers riders for concepts that will strike riders says gladwellian. there's that phrase again. the go to publishing parties? >> i am somewhat reclusive. when you are setting someone up, you pretend they are a fixture of publishing parties. >> what about someone calling you in india? >> -- calling you an idiot? >> that was some and i wrote four years ago. it is of that he would now call me an idiot. i think he meant that facetiously. >> stephen pionker, you have

answered him in "the new york times review of books." you say his comments say he is unhappy with your spelling and with the fact i have not joined him on the lonely eyes glow of light of fundamentalism -- lonely vce loe of -- the lonely ice floe of iq fundamentalism. >> some of his criticism of my riding comes from a very particular scientific and ideological perspective at all clear to people who think about intelligence and i do as well, we are somewhere along the continuum. how much of a major guide are

you and how much of a murder guide are you? he thinks that iq matters a great deal. my books are about the power of culture and environment. he is criticizing me not because i am violating the understanding of this but because we are at different points on the continued slump. -- on thegux continuum. >> he is a harvard professor and you guys go back and forth in zero letters. you say you have an enormous respect for him. we should agree that our deficits of less to what the defense scientific literature than they do to what could be found on google.

explain that. >> one thing he quibbled with was an essay i wrote about quarterbacks and teachers. i was talking about what it meant -- teachers are the single most terrible in education. teacher quality explains more of to the outcome than almost any other factor you can deal with. i asked how you get better teachers in the classroom? i mentioned how it was really difficult to predict whether someone will be a good teacher until they actually teach. you can get someone with really good grades and has all manner of degrees and you can get -- but none of those things are useful in fighting at who will be the all-star teacher and who is not. the only way you can tell is to have people start teaching and pick the ones who can do it well and keep them and tell the rest of the people to do something else. this is analogous to what happens with quarterback.

if you look at the history of decisions in nfl team to draft calls for bus, they don't do a good job in doing -- in predicting who will be a good quarterback. does not because they are stupid or of trying hard enough but because the college game is so dramatically different from the professional game. he had a problem with this. i asked him why he was so sure that nfl teams actually do a good job of predicting who will be a good quarterback. i have a scientific source. he e-mail me baed me back and hd

sources from bloggers. it was all meant in good fun. >> going back to your first book, when was the malcolm gladwell tipping point? >> it was getting the job that "the new yorker." the minute you start at that magazine and start getting -- your audience grows dramatically and people start reading you and you start getting taken seriously you have an opportunity to write about things that a leg and leisure that should never had before. i was anonymous and i got the job and everything changed. >> at some point, "tipping

point" sold a couple of million copies and then "blank." people were anxious to get the next book that you wrote. >> people get comfortable with the way you look at the world. i love the book "o freaknomics." it was a distinctive way to look at the world. it was an economist and a journalist who have combined storytelling and academic rigor to shed light on stuff that you would never have thought an economist at the interesting thing to say about. i read that book and i love that but for the new one comes along

and die by it. -- and i buy it. they have won me over to their particular perspective on things. i know i will not get anywhere else. i am delighted to have another go at them. what is happening with me is that people read "tipping point," and even if they don't agree with what i wrote, i think they've found something exhilarating or exciting about the way in which i approach topics. >> have you had an analysis done about where your books sell in the country? >> no, i never have. i don't think of my readers as being defined by geography or

income. i think of them as being defined by an attitude. i'd think of them as being curious, open-minded people. i get that vibe. >> when you speak, where you normally travel? what part of the country? >> all over. if you do conventions and companies, you do the in warm weather places in the winter. people come from all over to san diego. when you think about where they are coming from, it is from all over the country. >> i will go back to stephen pinker's the original review," the common thread in gladwell's writing is populous."

it seeks to undermine the talent of ouranalysis. >> that is a little strong buy wouldn't go quite that far. >> for a political writer -- are you in a political writer? >> i am a canadian. are canadians a political or different? >> for end a political writer, the debt that sense when you speak to those groups? >> i am not explicitly political. i am not interested in playing those in the logical digges. -- those ideological games. i want to provide a different view of things. it never comes up when i'm

talking to an audience, political matters. there is no opportunity for people to divide themselves along ideological lines when they are listening to my reading. we are not touching on those issues. >> the current book is 19 articles from "the new yorker." are you working on another book for the future? >> i am working on more articles for "the new yorker." that is my day job. i do that in the years between book writing. but my next book is many years away, i am sure. >> many years. >> you need an idea, a good one. if i never have another good idea for a book, i will never write another book. i don't think you decide to write a book and look for an idea. i did you get an idea first and then write a book. >> if you did a simple

arithmetic and say you have sold 6 million books and get $3 per copy, that is $80 million. what has money done to you? >> not that much. i am not a big spender. i drive a volkswagen and have an apartment. i don't have an extravagant lifestyle. i grew up in a very -- my family was fundamentally agnostic in his feelings toward money. we did not lack but we were not terribly concerned with it. it was not meaningful. i have the same attitude towards it. it is better than not having a but it is not something that makes a great deal of difference in how live my life. >> in one of your books, you say

that judith rich harris change the way i thought about the world. who is she? do you know her? >> she is a psychologist who wrote about years ago when she wrote a book called "the nurture assumption." she made an argument that when we talk about what we mean by environmental influence -- all of us are shaped by our genes and by the world we grew up in and she wanted to argue and did so convincingly that what we mean by that is peers and not parents. paris provide less of an environmental employees on the lives of -- parents provide less of an empire medal at influence on the lives of their children

-- less of an environmental influence on the lives of their children van peers do. much of my riding is about trying to understand the nature of the environment and its influence. i come back to that again and again. " outliers" tries to understand that. "blink" is trying to understand what goes on around you and how decisions are made. i keep coming back to this issue. what she did early on in my kind of thinking was that she clarified what that means and she said that we have only the dimmest understanding of what the environment means. we have been operating on all kinds of -- using all kinds of myths that are untested and untried.

that was a crucial motivation for me to write some of the books i have written. >> a fellow named paul greenberg writes editorials in a conservative paper. he has as harsh criticism calling your writing pseudo intellectuality design for the carriage trade and delivered with a pretentious air that is ponderous and monthly piffle -- and mostly piffle. it is like the worst talk show you havhave heard of. >> [laughter] >> do you feel pretentious?

>> i try not to bid. ponderous? people will read you about a review. -- how they read you. when i started writing, i had to sit down and think about how i will deal with criticism. criticism, as a record, is inevitable. you'll always have a paul greenberg. what -- how do you want to respond to them? i decided that i was never going to make it a sign of my own success to silence critics i am not out to convert the world. i want to -- i want people to engage in my ideas and they do, fine.

i would be happy if the people i care about, the people closest to me, thought what i was doing was meaningful. if my mother likes it, it's my editor likes it, it my best friend bruce lexi, i am happy. those are important roles. if you could have some version of that, some kind of system for making sense of criticism, is easier to function. >> he goes on to "joseph epstein from "the weekly standard," so much that gladwell rights is not new and some west that he writes that is new is untrue. 8wñwhat he reports feels more le half-truths' because they do not pass the final truth test about human nature.

>> i think remember reading that. "outliers" is what i thought is an example of the opposite phenomenon. i was trying to confront a simplistic idea about success and say that success is far more mysterious and more complex than that. does not simply about talent. -- it is not simply about talent. it matters what you're you're born and the culture you're born into. the book is one long attempt to kind of complexify this thing. we were talking about quarterbacks and teachers and how the impetus for that article was all about the fact that we cannot predict who can

be good. we have been trying to simplify this and make out that if you simply have a teacher degree and day b.a., you will be a good teacher. my point was that no, you cannot predict it. it is messy. you have to let people try and pick the ones that are good and say goodbye to the rest. i feel like i spend a lot of time in my riding doing the opposite to what he says. >> you are in canadian history major? what is the difference between canadian history and american history? >> so much, how can you say that? >> what other canadian history professors0u teaching that we ae not? >> i say, we are a better --

very minor player in the world. when canadian history, you are learning the history of everybody else. everything we do is so hopelessly influenced by our larger neighbors and larger allies. you learn a lot about england and you learn a lot of friends and you learn a lot about america and all kinds of other places. this is useful, i think. as a kid, i remember listening to the radio news every night at 6:00 and the thing about the news at 6:00 on the radio in canada is that it is all about the rest of the world. you cannot give a sophisticated account of what happened that day and confine yourself to a country of 8 million. not that much happened of consequence grid i grew up hearing about africa and south

america in the news every night. it is very different when you're in a country like america where you actually can't give the news every night and they will talk about america. america is so large and complex and if so at the center of what happens in the world, you cannot have a sophisticated conversation about this world that is about america. to as a matter of where you are. -- it is a matter where you are. in canada, we were forced to look outward. that is a wonderful experience of someone who wants to go into the business of being professionally curious. >> you hear about the founding fathers in this country. who do you hear about in canada? >> sir john macdonald is the man who found -- who brought the -- canadian confederacy.

you hear about english kings. my memories of childhood history -- i would hear about the founder of jamaica independence. >> because of my mother. >> my father talk about henry viii to us. cáx>> since we last talked, bark obama became president of united states and he is like you in that he is by racial. any impact? did you instinctively liking because he was like you? >> [laughter] >> and what you think of him now? [laughter] >> i will confess to being a huge fan of his not just because he and i are both bi-racial but

like many americans, i was initially fascinated by him. he is exotics. he really is. he has the kind of prince the air about him. he is -- the man he reminded me of was pierre trudeau who was a great canadian prime minister in the late 1960's and early 1970's who was, -- who was cosmopolitan in that same way and a little bit aloof. there are similarities between the two of them. like many people, i was profoundly hopeful that his election represented some kind of turning point in the way we think about race unless -- i am bpqless convinced of that now. i was hopeful of that at the time. >> are you very political?

>> i'm not. i rarely talk about politics in my pieces. i just don't i am canadian so i have never wrapped my mind around american politics. >> of all the stories that you have done since 1996, which one did you spend the most time on ta? >> there is a piece called "late bloomers" which took three years to get into "the new yorker." it went through so many drafts. i have this interesting idea. i read a book by an economist named dave gilson where he talked about how genius comes

into quoted very different forms. he talked about the conceptual innovator who has a big old idea and he talks about the experiment of a bidder who is the person who succeeds through trial and error. the conceptual innovator is the prodigy. the person who worked through trial and error is the late bloomer. i love that summit because he was dignifying a late bloomer. i had a devil of a time finding the right story to illustrate that point. when i have an academic argument, i like to find narratives' to complete it. this was hard to find the right ones. sometimes you have to be persistent. >> you focused on two people? >> i ended up choosing a novelist from dallasc3v who wroa collection of short stories and

which is magical. he was my late bloomer. he published that book in his late-40's effort sitting as kitchen table in dallas and writing. my prodigy was jonathan saffron fours. he wrote a book about vegetarianism. they are contrast and the beautifully illustrated what the economist was talking about. i don't know why it took me so long. sometimes, finding the right story is really difficult. if you rush into print with something that does not quite work, you throw away a good idea.

that is something you should never do. >> 1 people couone of the peoplo criticized you talked about -- >>e in 2002, he had written a book called "fooled by randomness." xí made the argument, as a wall street trader, that we greatly underestimate the frequency of catastrophic event in life. we also greatly overestimate our ability to control events. we underestimate the role of luck and overestimate our own efficacy. he is a brilliant man. he is one of the most gregarious and charming and hilarious

people i have ever met. when you write a profile, i fell in love with a guy. who wouldn't? he is so fascinating. he subsequently wrote a book called "black swan." that was a huge best seller. he brilliantly predicted and anticipated the events of last year on wall street. he called it. he was a best four or five years ago that the models these traders were using to justify these enormous multi billion c1 fiction. he said this in 2002. i feel an enormous intellectual kinship. if i had to list the people whose thinking how powerfully in the last month, i would put him very high on that list.

i think he is right. as part of this desire that we have as humans to pretend we are in control of things than we actually are. we are not respecting the mystery and the complexity of the world operate in. >> explain how he made his money. >> he had a contrary trading strategy. he would buy out of the money options. he would buy a series of options on the stock market which would pay off only if the stock when of extraordinarily or dropped extraordinarily in other words, he had an investment strategy where 99 days out of 100 or more, actually, 499 days and five other, he lost a little bit of money but when the crash happened, depending on size of

his position, he would make hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions. i think his trading firm made a -- a fortune last year. it is hard to do that. he wakes up every day knowing that there's a 99.9% chance that he will live and lose money that the. he is banking on something that -- he doesn't know when that will happen but he says at some point there will be a big catastrophe. it could be seven years away. that means he will lose money every day for seven years and make it all back and more. nobody does that. he tries to get at the question of why don't more people do that. it is painful and to the pope but it is actually a very rational way of approaching and hedging your risk in the marketplace. >> where is he from originally? >> he is lebanese.

he is america now but his family is lebanese. >> do you still see him? >> i e-mail with him sometimes. one of the great and wonderful things about writing pieces for "the new yorker" is that you get to meet these experts are people who you would not make otherwise. you can read about them and keep in touch with them. i did a piece a couple of months ago about this brilliant software mogul in silicon valley. is all about when he began to coach his daughter's basketball team, as an indian, not as an american. he did not know anything about basketball. it is about something about

someone from outside our culture encounter is one of our little closed-cultural world. what happens is that he took this team of 12-year-old girls to the national championship. that is another guy -- how would i have met him otherwise? >> which stories right was the easiest ta? >> the opening piece and the volume is a profile of raw popeel,ro,n popeel, the king of late-night infomercials. it was one of my favorite pieces and it is far away the most interesting because he is so effortlessly interesting. it happens once every beckett as a journalist, you turn on the tape recorder, the person you're

talking about starts talking about, and you realize you have nothing else to do but transcribe the tape parade it was literally that way with ron. he started talking in a went to his cousin and a guy he worked with and one other guy and i transcribe the tape of literally just put blocks of text down. it was done. sometimes that happens. does america when that happens. you never forget it. >> what do you do with all those tapes? do you keep them? >> they are somewhere. i have not been organized. there somewhere in a box. >> you are not big about the future of the malcolm gladwell collection and a library? >> i am sure i will be forgotten long before anyone collect my belongings. >> you could not go to graduate school because you did not have been grazed? >> i was not a superb students.

>> if there was a person you could think for credibility, who would that be? >> my mother is a writer. she is a lovely rider. >> living in canada? is your dad still alive? >> both my parents have an extraordinarily clear and simple way of expressing them selves. that is in speaking and in print. that has always been my model. if you can express complicated ideas and a clear and simple manner, people will read you. >> you live in new york city in the west village? do you intend to live in the united states for the rest of your life? >> i don't know. i like it here. i love this country and have all my friends here. if i ended up in europe when they are back in canada, i would not be terribly surprised

request year earlier, there are four of them, all on the new york times best-seller list. they are still on after 10 years. malcolm gladfwell, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. c-span3 c-spa[captioning perfory national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> for a dvd copy of this program, call the number on your screen. q&a programs are available as cspan podcast. s.

up next live, your phone calls and comments on "washington journal." the u.s. house of record of of this begins the working day with general speeches. -- house of representatives begins the working day with general speeches. >> this week, the senate continues debate on health care bill. see it all live on our companion network, cspan 2, the only network with a full debate. to read the senate bill and the house version, and to watch a video on demand, go to c- span.org/healthcare. we will talk about the greenback this morning. and then we will discuss president barack obama's strategy and afghanistan. after that,idi we will preview