Modern America: kill yourself or have a baby

Time magazine made Vladimir Putin its Person of the Year. Chalk it up to nostalgia for the Cold War, when America was great, and a working man in a state like Michigan had two cars, a nice house, a country cottage, a health plan, a pension and a wife who stayed at home, canning fruit and batting her eyes at the postman. These days he has two lousy jobs, she has three and they have negative equity in their home, no health plan and no pension.

A couple of indices of how down many Americans are feeling about the future:

First, the suicide rate among middle-aged Americans has reached its highest point in at least 25 years. The rate rose by about 20 per cent between 1999 and 2004 for those aged 45 through 54 - far more than among younger adults, whose own suicide stats are also on the rise.

The previous high was in 1982, a year when there was a terrible farm crisis in the Midwest.

These days it's the healthcare crisis. People can't even afford to get finished off by a doctor or a hospital, so they have to do it themselves.

The second index of desperation is a sudden spike in teen pregnancies, particularly among young black women. As the sociologist Ruth Blader says, "When we believe in our opportunities, we safeguard our futures. Conversely, we behave self-destructively when we have no hope. For many teenagers in America, the options aren't heartening."

Some argue that having babies early is a very rational choice for a young black teen, since her support network of kin are still alive, and her own body not wasted by the toxins associated with low-income neighbourhoods.

In less than a week from now, America will start trudging through the endless months of Campaign 2008. Worthy Iowans, their quadrennial season in the limelight at its apex, will cram into the caucuses and kick off the horse races.

In all the torrents of rhetorical hot air thus far expended, it's hard to find a single sentence from any politician that