American Dream

Saving the middle class has become a battle cry in the 2012 presidential campaign — and it's no wonder. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, the percentage of Americans considered middle class has dwindled to 51 percent from 61 percent in 1971. But the Pew report does not explain the political and economic forces behind this decline. That's a task Hedrick Smith sets for himself in his new book, "Who Stole the American Dream?" Long before most reporters and social scientists took note, Smith had established...

America, the golden door, had already welcomed two of his brothers when Anzor Tsarnaev crossed the ocean with his family in 2002. Anzor's brother Ruslan , who had immigrated just a few years earlier, already had a law degree and was on his way to an executive job and a six-figure salary. And at first, Anzor, his wife, Zubeidat, and their two sons, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar , seemed as energetic and brimming with initiative as their relatives had been. Anzor, a mechanic, fixed up cars.

This is what the American Dream looks like, according to Dawn Bennett: $502 fishing boots, $680 skiing hats and $13,500 golf bags. Now Bennett wants to sell you a piece of that dream, over champagne and craft beer at her new appointment-only shop in Chevy Chase. "People want luxury — the best of the best," said Bennett, a money manager and frequent contributor to CNBC. "We've sold them the American Dream of what it's like to be on a yacht, to sail, to go fly fishing. Now we're helping them get a professional athletic edge.

Barbara Garson started her latest project with a good idea: Go beyond the big-picture hand-wringing and explore the impact that the Great Recession has had on middle-class Americans. Probably best known as the author of the 1967 satirical play"MacBird!," a takedown of Lyndon B. Johnson in Shakespearean verse, she has focused more recently on economics. Her books include "All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work" (1975), "The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers are...

1. The American dream is about getting rich. In a national survey of more than 1,300 adults that we completed in March, only 6 percent of Americans ranked "wealth" as their first or second definition of the American dream. Forty-five percent named "a good life for my family," while 34 percent put "financial security" — material comfort that is not necessarily synonymous with Bill Gates-like riches — on top. While money may certainly be part of a good life, the American dream isn't just about dollars and cents.

It's time to retire the American Dream — or at least give it a long vacation. We ought to drop it from our national conversation. This would be a hardship for politicians and pundits, who use "the American Dream" as a rhetorical workhorse embodying goals embraced by almost all Americans. That's the problem. The American Dream has become so expansive in its meaning that it stifles honest debate and harms some of the very people it is intended to help. Who can oppose the American Dream?

The modern American dream has always been a simple promise of opportunity: Hard work can earn a good life, a good job with decent pay and security, a secure retirement, and an affordable education for the kids. The promise always exceeded the performance — especially with regard to racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and women. But a broad middle class and a broadly shared prosperity at least provided the possibility of a way up. Today, every element of the dream is imperiled.

Kudos to The Post's Eli Saslow for his " Life of a salesman " [front page, Oct. 7], an homage to Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" that depicted the professional and personal tribulations of Frank Firetti of Purcellville, who has gotten caught in the uncertainties of the economy's struggles. Mr. Saslow noted, "In a country built on optimism, Frank Firetti was the most optimistic character of all: the American salesman — if not the architect of the American dream, then at least its most time-honored...

We grew up believing our American dream would include easy access to homeownership. We knew owning a home would take saving and discipline, but as a professional, married couple, buying seemed like a foregone conclusion. Then the housing crisis hit. Washington's housing market has been insulated from some of the worst effects, but there is an aspect of the crisis that seems to have gone unnoticed: Otherwise qualified buyers like us who might just leave the market altogether. Shortly before the housing crisis took hold, we thought we...

Regarding the June 11 front-page article " A question of merit " and the June 12 news article " Virginia teen can remain in country ": It was predictable but unfortunate that Heydi Mejia, an undocumented immigrant, had to make the front page of The Post to avoid immediate deportation. The United States is home to thousands of students just like Ms. Mejia. Since we can't seem to fix the immigration problem, can The Post put all of them on Page 1 as well? Richard Wildermann, ...

The March 22 front-page article " On a Montana reservation, sequester hits hard " laid out the futility of a nanny state that tries to do everything for everybody and ends up making things worse. If the residents of the Fort Peck reservation were not so dependent on the federal government, they might have taken the initiative to solve some of their own problems: Big Brother and Big Sister programs to curb the propensity toward suicide among so many youngsters; local volunteers to help the school's music program; civic leadership...

The name Thomas Nast may now be known principally to those who do crossword puzzles — he's the four-letter answer for "Boss Tweed's foe" — but his works live on in American journalism and culture with remarkable staying power. Remarkable, that is, because the fame of journalists usually is notable chiefly for its evanescence. The best and most widely known journalists of my youth — James Reston, Marquis Childs, Red Smith, even Walter Lippmann — are almost entirely forgotten outside...

President Obama paid tribute Friday to outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, hailing him for presiding over victories against terrorists and the expansion of opportunity in the U.S. armed forces. In a speech at Fort Myer, Va., for the "Armed Forces Farewell Tribute" to Panetta, the president called the Pentagon chief "a man who hasn't simply lived up to the American dream but has helped to protect it for all of us. " He told Panetta, who served as CIA director before...

The growing progressive coalition that helped elect President Obama has emerged at the end of a failed and exhausted conservative era. The media now chronicle the flailings of Republican leaders slowly awakening to the weaknesses of a stale, pale and predominantly male party in today's America. But the central challenge to this progressive coalition is not dispatching the old but rather defining what comes next. Will it be able to address the central challenge facing America at this time and reclaim the...

When I was growing up in the 1970s in Atlanta — the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the city where he is interred — we commemorated the civil rights leader quite differently from how we do today. The remembrances took place on April 4, the anniversary of his assassination, not on his January birthday; after all, the King national holiday did not yet exist. And rather than focus on the March on Washington and King's "I have a dream" speech , the city would emphasize his mission...

This is what the American Dream looks like, according to Dawn Bennett: $502 fishing boots, $680 skiing hats and $13,500 golf bags. Now Bennett wants to sell you a piece of that dream, over champagne and craft beer at her new appointment-only shop in Chevy Chase. "People want luxury — the best of the best," said Bennett, a money manager and frequent contributor to CNBC. "We've sold them the American Dream of what it's like to be on a yacht, to sail, to go fly fishing. Now we're helping them get a...

Barbara Garson started her latest project with a good idea: Go beyond the big-picture hand-wringing and explore the impact that the Great Recession has had on middle-class Americans. Probably best known as the author of the 1967 satirical play"MacBird!," a takedown of Lyndon B. Johnson in Shakespearean verse, she has focused more recently on economics. Her books include "All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work" (1975), "The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers are...

Kay Kapoor Position: The newly named managing director, U.S. federal practice, of Accenture, a management consulting and technology services company in Reston. Raised in a small town in India, Kay Kapoor left home to pursue the American dream. Taking advice from friends who noticed the growing information technology industry, she quickly entered IT and spent 20 years at Lockheed Martin. Now she is transitioning to a company that she says "marries everything I had done so far in serving the federal government.

LAS VEGAS — Republican leaders have begun reckoning with the fact that their party has grown increasingly out of step with a broad majority of American voters. While party leaders remain confident in their beliefs, they have identified a litany of problems and a steep set of challenges: flawed candidates, a problematic message, the alienation of nonwhite Americans who account for a growing share of the population, outdated technology and a political operation that is not up to that of the Democrats.

Saving the middle class has become a battle cry in the 2012 presidential campaign — and it's no wonder. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, the percentage of Americans considered middle class has dwindled to 51 percent from 61 percent in 1971. But the Pew report does not explain the political and economic forces behind this decline. That's a task Hedrick Smith sets for himself in his new book, "Who Stole the American Dream?" Long before most reporters and social scientists took...