I had one of those wonderful life moments last week. I was at CNN on a Lou Dobbs panel about Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic rant at the UN; heading out to the elevator I ran into E. Benjamin Skinner in the hallway. Ben is the author of A Crime So Monstrous, a book on global slavery today that has just won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the best recent non-fiction book on a humanitarian subject. It’s an extraordinary book; Ben traveled the world, meeting with slaves, slave owners and slave traders in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Highly recommended.

Anyway, what made the moment wonderful for me was that Ben started his career as first an intern and then a research associate in my office at the Council on Foreign Relations. In fact he was sitting in his office one evening when he had the idea that launched the book. I’ve watched his career develop over the years and seen this incredibly courageous and resourceful person establish himself as a freelance writer and, now, prize winning author and TV commentator. This was the first time I’ve encountered one of my ex-staffers while we were both doing the media rounds; it won’t, I suspect, be the last.

The most useful piece of advice (in my opinion –you’ll have to ask Ben what he thinks about this) I ever gave Ben was that people today should take ten years off their age when thinking about where they stand in life. If you are 25, think of yourself as 15. If you are 32 and haven’t conquered the world yet, don’t think of yourself as on the verge of middle age. Think of yourself as an incredibly promising 22 year old with an exciting decade of adventure and exploration still in the future.

Why? Two reasons. First, the world is a MUCH more complicated place today than it used to be. There is so much more information to process, so much cultural change to absorb, that it takes young people about a decade longer to find their feet in the world and to figure out what they can and should do with their lives.

Second, fortunately, we live longer than we used to. The decade you ‘lose’ at the beginning of your life you will likely regain – with interest – at the end. People don’t just live longer, they live better and healthier. Many of today’s 25 year olds will still be productive and energetic at 75. (This is especially likely to be true for those who don’t smoke!)

Ben took this advice. He didn’t let himself be pressured into prematurely going to professional school. He figured he had some years to explore, to try some things out, to see what he could do.

And last week I saw him, an experienced TV hand, walking down the corridor towards the green room, ready for his close up. (In typical TV fashion, the segment wasn’t broadcast right away; when it’s up I will post the link.)

This advice, by the way, isn’t just good for the young. The older you get, the more important it is. At 40, you aren’t well into middle age. You are on the cusp of your real career. At 50, you aren’t grimly hanging on; you are in the midseason of your greatest potential. And at 60 you shouldn’t be obsessively monitoring your retirement portfolio and pricing real estate outside Phoenix; you are just entering a time of real maturity and productivity when you will have a combination of experience and energy that allows you to dare more and do more than you’ve ever managed before.

Presidential terms, unfortunately, don’t work this way. Presidents don’t get a few extra years at the end to compensate for the rookie mistakes they make starting up. Over at The New York Review of Books I see that Elizabeth Drew now wonders whether Obama’s inexperience may have led him to some bad strategic choices on health care.

There are also some signs that the international situation is slipping out of the administration’s grasp. This isn’t just about the inherently tough issues of war and peace. Even the easy stuff isn’t working. Take France. President Nicholas Sarkozy is about as angry at President Obama as he ever was with Bush; it’s not clear that the White House knows why.

It shouldn’t be a mystery. In the last ten days the administration launched what Paris must inevitably see as three dangerous attacks. First, the President called for the abolition of nuclear weapons at the UN. For France, being a member of the exclusive nuclear club is proof that it is one of the world’s greatest powers. Anything that threatens to delegitimize nuclear weapons is a threat to France’s global standing.

Second, President Obama declared his intention to replace the G-7 group of major industrial nations with the G-20. For France, this means loss of influence. In the G-7, it was a significant voice in an important forum. In the G-20, France will fall into the second tier as countries like China and India push to the fore.

Third, the US called for France to give up its seat on the IMF’s board of directors to make room for emerging economies. Again, this is an attack on both the symbolism and the reality of French power in one of the world’s most important international institutions.

No French president could fail to connect the dots; no French leader could fail to respond. And Sarkozy has already begun, attacking Obama where it hurts, calling him naïve and feckless about the dangers facing the West, spawning stories about Sarkozy’s “contempt” for and “envy” of Obama. More will come.

On the substance of all three of these policy choices, I happen to agree with President Obama. The abolition of nuclear weapons may be a long-range goal, but it is a perfectly sensible one for the United States to embrace. Cynically speaking, it’s a very safe goal. While it helps us make the case for tougher action against would-be proliferators like Iran, it neither endangers our security nor costs any money. Countries like France and Russia, whose power really does depend on their nuclear arsenals, are going to make sure that any progress toward abolition will be excruciatingly slow and drawn out. And if by some miracle we reached the goal, and with proper safeguards and inspection guarantees nuclear weapons were actually abolished, America’s overwhelming supremacy in conventional warfare would become that much more decisive.

As to the G-20 and the IMF, important world institutions need to reflect the power realities of the contemporary world, not the politics of the 1940’s. Asia’s clout has to grow, and therefore Europe’s relative weight has to decline. The United States, as the power most concerned with the health of the world system as a whole, has no choice but to push for continuing adjustments in world institutions as the underlying power relationships change.

So the White House is flying blind even as it tries to do the right thing. Has the administration reached out to the French (and the British, by the way, whose oxen were also being gored last week) to discuss these matters? Has it thought through the timing and the prioritization of the various changes that need to be made? Has it tried to develop a common strategy with old allies for making these changes and presenting them to the world? Has it looked for consolation prizes, and sought other ways to help President Sarkozy look like a mover and shaker on the world stage?

Judging from Sarkozy’s behavior, the answer is no.

President George W. Bush discovered just how much trouble a disgruntled France can make. President Obama needs all the friends he can get; this latest Franco-American spat should be ended as quickly as possible.

Most people today have a little more time than they used to in order to get things right. Presidents don’t.

Greetings, TAI readers and other visitors. My name is Walter Russell Mead; I’m on the editorial board at TAI and Adam Garfinkle and the editorial team have courageously and graciously offered me a platform from which to blog.

This is not, quite, my first date with the internet. For the last few weeks I have participated in The Arena on Politico.com. Before that experience, I was worried that I might find posting several times a week too much of a distraction, or that I might run out of things to say.

That hasn’t happened yet. Opinions are like love, it turns out; the more you give away, the more you have.

I will keep posting on Politico, and readers here can follow my slow ascent up the technological learning curve by noting how long it takes for me to figure out how to include links to those posts here.

But this blog here at The American Interest will be my main cyber-squeeze. If it lives, it will change; as I learn about the form and as you, dear reader, respond, I hope we will create something interesting and new.

I go into this with the idea that even though I am about the three hundred millionth person on Planet Earth to start up a blog, the genre is still adolescent. The world is still learning what it wants from blogs, and bloggers are still testing the possibilities of the new format. Gazettes and coffeeshop newsletters had been around for a while before Addison and Steele developed the informal personal essay they deployed so brilliantly in The Spectator.

Don’t worry; I’m not writing this with stars in my eyes. As President Obama seems to be discovering, starting a new venture by vaingloriously comparing yourself to the Great Masters of Old is a bad idea. The president would be having a much better fall if he hadn’t encouraged people last winter to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt; my little blog will probably work better if I don’t start by inviting comparisons to Goethe and Henry Adams.

Not that I’m trying to pile on Obama. The reports of his demise are as exaggerated as last winter’s naïve and gushing consensus that he was ready to pose for Mt. Rushmore. He’s making some rookie mistakes and some of them have already cost him dear, but it will take more than that to finish him off. Lincoln went to Washington with a lot of illusions; during his ordeal in the White House he was brutally knocked around and the man who went to Richmond in 1865 was a very different man from the railroad lawyer who skulked into town in 1861. The question for Obama, as for so many others in the White House, will be how does he respond to setbacks and adversity? Will he learn and grow, testing his old convictions under fire and carrying the country with him on the path he gradually comes to discern, or will the chaos of events get the better of him? He is the only president we’ve got and while no doubt I will have a few criticisms to make here and there I will be rooting for him every step of the way.

Anyway, this is going to be a writer’s blog, not a literary classic. I’ll blog about what interests me: books, politics domestic and foreign, ideas, people, events, the march of history and the meaning of life. I’ll keep an eye on what my friends and colleagues are saying on TAI and elsewhere; from time to time I’ll respond. I’ll try to keep a civil tongue in my head (or civil fingertips on my keyboard?) but can’t promise that I’ll always succeed. I will tell the truth as I see it as best I can.

I will also check the comments; please let me know what you think — nicely, if possible. And if anybody out there has a good name for a new blog, please tell. I’ve been wracking my brains for a name for this thing, so far without success.