U.S. Uses Attacks to Nudge Taliban Toward a Deal

KABUL, Afghanistan — Airstrikes on Taliban insurgents have risen sharply here over the past four months, the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.

American pilots pounded the Taliban with 2,100 bombs or missiles from June through September, with 700 in September alone, Air Force officers here said Thursday. That is an increase of nearly 50 percent over the same period last year, the records show.

The stepped-up air campaign is part of what appears to be an intensifying American effort, orchestrated by Gen. David H. Petraeus, to break the military stalemate here as pressure intensifies at home to bring the nine-year-old war to an end. In recent weeks, General Petraeus has increased raids by Special Forces units and launched large operations to clear territory of Taliban militants.

And it seems increasingly clear that he is partly using the attacks to expand a parallel path to the end of the war: an American-led diplomatic initiative, very much in its infancy but ultimately aimed at persuading the Taliban — or large parts of the movement — to make peace with the Afghan government.

In recent weeks, American officials have spoken approvingly in public of new contacts between Taliban leaders and the Afghan government. On Wednesday they acknowledged their active involvement by helping Taliban leaders travel to Kabul to talk peace.

On the diplomatic front, Afghan leaders said Thursday that they were seeing what they believed were the first positive signs from the Taliban. In a news conference in Kabul, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of a council charged with making peace, said that discussions with Taliban leaders — carried out through third parties — were under way.

“The Taliban have not rejected peace completely,” said Mr. Rabbani, a former Afghan president. They want the talks “to take place,” he added.

For all the efforts, American and Afghan officials were quick to play down any suggestion that peace was at hand — or even remotely near. Most of the Taliban leaders, if not the movement’s foot soldiers, have given no sign that they are willing to make any sort of deal.

Even on the battlefield, there are few indications that the large increase in firepower ordered by President Obama is having the intended effect. With the American-led war moving through its bloodiest phase since 2001, more American and NATO soldiers have been killed this year than at any time since the war began. In the past two days alone, at least 14 members of the Western forces here have been killed.

Indeed, senior American officials, gathering Thursday at a NATO conference in Brussels, indicated that they were trying to energize a peace process about whose contours and duration they could only guess.

“We just — you know, we need to be open to opportunities that arise,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said in Brussels.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and his advisers have been trying for months to engage the Taliban’s leaders about the possibilities of ending the war. In part, Mr. Karzai and his team are motivated by concerns about Mr. Obama’s plan to begin reducing the number of American forces here by next July.

So far, those diplomatic efforts have come to naught. Pakistani officials helped scuttle one incipient dialogue that was unfolding earlier this year.

For their part, the Taliban’s leaders have mostly dismissed the possibility of making a deal with Mr. Karzai’s government, declaring — not without reason — that time is on their side.

American officers said the intensified airstrikes were possible because of better intelligence, which enables pilots to be more precise in their attacks. Much of that intelligence, the officers said, is being supplied by remotely piloted aircraft like the Predator drones, which have flooded the skies in recent months.

According to the Air Force’s statistics, remotely piloted vehicles have flown more than 21,000 sorties so far this year, already surpassing the roughly 19,000 drone flights for all of last year. The targets for many of the airstrikes have been insurgents who were building or planting homemade bombs, which are the most prolific killers of American and NATO troops.

“We have been able to find a lot of places where they are putting these things together,” said Col. Jim Sturgeon, chief of air operations for NATO.

So far, the greater number of airstrikes does not appear to have resulted in more civilian casualties, at least not according to NATO statistics. In 2008, between January and September, 169 Afghans were inadvertently killed or wounded in NATO airstrikes. Over the same period in 2010, the number of Afghans killed or wounded was 88, the statistics show.

Insurgents cause the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths here, but errant strikes by NATO jets and helicopters have been a source of great tension with the Karzai government.

The statistics on American airstrikes were first published in Wired magazine.

The more intensive air campaign comes as American and NATO forces have stepped up the fight in other areas as well. The operation to pacify Kandahar, the epicenter of the insurgency, is well under way.

Members of Special Operations units have been unleashed with particular ferocity. In a three-month period ending Oct. 7, the units killed 300 midlevel Taliban commanders and 800 foot soldiers, and captured 2,000 insurgents.

“You’ve got to put pressure on the networks to get them to start thinking about alternatives to fighting,” said a senior NATO officer in Kabul. “We are not at the tipping point yet.”

General Petraeus appears to be following a template that helped him pull the Iraq war back from the cataclysmic levels of violence that engulfed the country after the American invasion. Beginning in 2006, American commanders simultaneously opened negotiations with insurgent leaders while killing or capturing those not inclined to make a deal.

Afghanistan is a different country, and it is not clear that the tactics that brought success in Iraq will work here. In particular, the Afghan insurgency is nowhere near to being as cohesive as the insurgency in Iraq, where guerrilla leaders could order their men to stop fighting with a reasonable expectation that they would obey.

Some Afghan experts believe that NATO’s two-track strategy is flawed — that bleeding the Taliban may actually make the insurgents less inclined to negotiate. Matt Waldman, an independent analyst who has worked extensively in the region, said that it was unlikely that many Taliban leaders could order their men to stop fighting.

“It’s dangerous to assume that you can bring off a senior commander and all his men will follow,” Mr. Waldman said.

It was more likely, he said, that the midlevel commanders now being killed by NATO would be replaced by others ever more committed to fighting. After all, one of the principles of the Afghan campaign, enunciated by General Petraeus himself and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal before him, was that NATO would never be able to kill and capture its way to victory.

“The idea that killing insurgents will take us to negotiations seems pretty doubtful,” Mr. Waldman said. “They have an infinite capacity to regenerate.”

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Thom Shanker from Brussels and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

U.S. Uses Attacks to Nudge Taliban Toward a Deal

KABUL, Afghanistan — Airstrikes on Taliban insurgents have risen sharply here over the past four months, the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.

American pilots pounded the Taliban with 2,100 bombs or missiles from June through September, with 700 in September alone, Air Force officers here said Thursday. That is an increase of nearly 50 percent over the same period last year, the records show.

The stepped-up air campaign is part of what appears to be an intensifying American effort, orchestrated by Gen. David H. Petraeus, to break the military stalemate here as pressure intensifies at home to bring the nine-year-old war to an end. In recent weeks, General Petraeus has increased raids by Special Forces units and launched large operations to clear territory of Taliban militants.

And it seems increasingly clear that he is partly using the attacks to expand a parallel path to the end of the war: an American-led diplomatic initiative, very much in its infancy but ultimately aimed at persuading the Taliban — or large parts of the movement — to make peace with the Afghan government.

In recent weeks, American officials have spoken approvingly in public of new contacts between Taliban leaders and the Afghan government. On Wednesday they acknowledged their active involvement by helping Taliban leaders travel to Kabul to talk peace.

On the diplomatic front, Afghan leaders said Thursday that they were seeing what they believed were the first positive signs from the Taliban. In a news conference in Kabul, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of a council charged with making peace, said that discussions with Taliban leaders — carried out through third parties — were under way.

“The Taliban have not rejected peace completely,” said Mr. Rabbani, a former Afghan president. They want the talks “to take place,” he added.

For all the efforts, American and Afghan officials were quick to play down any suggestion that peace was at hand — or even remotely near. Most of the Taliban leaders, if not the movement’s foot soldiers, have given no sign that they are willing to make any sort of deal.

Even on the battlefield, there are few indications that the large increase in firepower ordered by President Obama is having the intended effect. With the American-led war moving through its bloodiest phase since 2001, more American and NATO soldiers have been killed this year than at any time since the war began. In the past two days alone, at least 14 members of the Western forces here have been killed.

Indeed, senior American officials, gathering Thursday at a NATO conference in Brussels, indicated that they were trying to energize a peace process about whose contours and duration they could only guess.

“We just — you know, we need to be open to opportunities that arise,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said in Brussels.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and his advisers have been trying for months to engage the Taliban’s leaders about the possibilities of ending the war. In part, Mr. Karzai and his team are motivated by concerns about Mr. Obama’s plan to begin reducing the number of American forces here by next July.

So far, those diplomatic efforts have come to naught. Pakistani officials helped scuttle one incipient dialogue that was unfolding earlier this year.

For their part, the Taliban’s leaders have mostly dismissed the possibility of making a deal with Mr. Karzai’s government, declaring — not without reason — that time is on their side.

American officers said the intensified airstrikes were possible because of better intelligence, which enables pilots to be more precise in their attacks. Much of that intelligence, the officers said, is being supplied by remotely piloted aircraft like the Predator drones, which have flooded the skies in recent months.

According to the Air Force’s statistics, remotely piloted vehicles have flown more than 21,000 sorties so far this year, already surpassing the roughly 19,000 drone flights for all of last year. The targets for many of the airstrikes have been insurgents who were building or planting homemade bombs, which are the most prolific killers of American and NATO troops.

“We have been able to find a lot of places where they are putting these things together,” said Col. Jim Sturgeon, chief of air operations for NATO.

So far, the greater number of airstrikes does not appear to have resulted in more civilian casualties, at least not according to NATO statistics. In 2008, between January and September, 169 Afghans were inadvertently killed or wounded in NATO airstrikes. Over the same period in 2010, the number of Afghans killed or wounded was 88, the statistics show.

Insurgents cause the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths here, but errant strikes by NATO jets and helicopters have been a source of great tension with the Karzai government.

The statistics on American airstrikes were first published in Wired magazine.

The more intensive air campaign comes as American and NATO forces have stepped up the fight in other areas as well. The operation to pacify Kandahar, the epicenter of the insurgency, is well under way.

Members of Special Operations units have been unleashed with particular ferocity. In a three-month period ending Oct. 7, the units killed 300 midlevel Taliban commanders and 800 foot soldiers, and captured 2,000 insurgents.

“You’ve got to put pressure on the networks to get them to start thinking about alternatives to fighting,” said a senior NATO officer in Kabul. “We are not at the tipping point yet.”

General Petraeus appears to be following a template that helped him pull the Iraq war back from the cataclysmic levels of violence that engulfed the country after the American invasion. Beginning in 2006, American commanders simultaneously opened negotiations with insurgent leaders while killing or capturing those not inclined to make a deal.

Afghanistan is a different country, and it is not clear that the tactics that brought success in Iraq will work here. In particular, the Afghan insurgency is nowhere near to being as cohesive as the insurgency in Iraq, where guerrilla leaders could order their men to stop fighting with a reasonable expectation that they would obey.

Some Afghan experts believe that NATO’s two-track strategy is flawed — that bleeding the Taliban may actually make the insurgents less inclined to negotiate. Matt Waldman, an independent analyst who has worked extensively in the region, said that it was unlikely that many Taliban leaders could order their men to stop fighting.

“It’s dangerous to assume that you can bring off a senior commander and all his men will follow,” Mr. Waldman said.

It was more likely, he said, that the midlevel commanders now being killed by NATO would be replaced by others ever more committed to fighting. After all, one of the principles of the Afghan campaign, enunciated by General Petraeus himself and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal before him, was that NATO would never be able to kill and capture its way to victory.

“The idea that killing insurgents will take us to negotiations seems pretty doubtful,” Mr. Waldman said. “They have an infinite capacity to regenerate.”

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Thom Shanker from Brussels and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Push to End Job Barriers Rattles Greece and Economy

ATHENS — Antonios Avgerinos, 59, a retired army pharmacist, always wanted his own pharmacy here. And why not? Greek law ensures that pharmacists get a 35 percent profit on all drugs sold, even over-the-counter medications.

But Greek law also limits just about everything else about pharmacies. They must be at least 820 feet apart and have a likely market of no fewer than 1,500 residents. To break into the business, an aspiring pharmacist generally has to buy a license from a retiring one. That often costs upward of $400,000.

“It is an absurd system,” Mr. Avgerinos said recently. “But it has been that way my whole life.”

Maybe not for much longer.

As the government of Prime Minster George Papandreou struggles to get the nation’s financial house in order — reducing the size of its bloated civil service, chasing after tax evaders and overhauling its pension system — it has also begun to tackle a much less talked about problem: the cozy system of “closed professions” that has existed here for decades, costing the economy billions of dollars a year.

These efforts have prompted almost weekly strikes in the last few months from interest groups firmly opposed to breaking down the barriers to entry in lucrative professional niches. But experts say that much is at stake: Greece’s ability to service its tremendous debt to other European countries and avoid default rests on the government’s ability to inject more competition and dynamism into its sclerotic economy.

“Greece is the last Soviet-style economy in Europe,” said Yannis Stournaras, an economist and the director of the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research, known as IOBE Athens, who has studied the issue. “Other countries have some closed professions. But nothing like Greece. Every stone you turn here, there are regulations.”

For selling a cancer drug for $4,200, Mr. Stournaras said, a pharmacist makes a profit of around $1,400. “That’s a movement of the elbow that is more expensive than one of Roger Federer’s.”

Experts say there are about 70 closed professions here, including those of lawyers, engineers, taxi drivers, speech therapists, welders, notaries, street market vendors, newsstand operators and architects. Each is protected from competition by a byzantine tangle of regulations and licensing requirements that result in high prices for consumers and a reliable living for insiders.

No use shopping around for a less expensive lawyer or notary, for instance. They all charge fixed fees, as do many other professions. There are numerous restrictions on licenses, too. Some are not even available to some classes of citizens. For instance, newsstand licenses are reserved for war veterans, the disabled and those with large families to support. Others are limited, like the number of long-haul trucking licenses, which has been frozen for 25 years.

A study carried out by IOBE in 2006 estimated that opening these professions would increase gross domestic product by about $35 billion, or 10 percent, in five years.

But nobody expects change to be easy. Already, austerity measures in Europe have prompted unrest here and elsewhere. Thursday saw strikes by civil servants protesting cutbacks in Athens and in France. Many believe that tackling closed professions will mean even more groups taking to the streets.

That is what happened this summer when the government took on the trucking industry. Greece has issued only a few new licenses for truckers since 1970, though Greece’s economy has more than tripled in that time. This created a hot market for the licenses, which have sold at prices approaching $500,000. Not surprisingly, experts say, trucking costs in Greece are far higher than anywhere else in the European Union.

The IOBE report found it was more expensive to truck something from Athens to Thebes, about 45 miles, than from Athens to Rome, a distance of more than 600 miles. Businessmen say it is cheaper to ship goods here from China than it is to move them from Athens to the island of Rhodes, 285 miles away.

But when the government announced that it would begin issuing new licenses over the next three years, the truckers blocked the borders for weeks, creating shortages of all kinds, including fuel. Mr. Papandreou invoked an emergency regulation to force the truckers back to work.

Within a few weeks, however, work stoppages began again. The truckers did not cease their occasional blockades until Parliament passed a new law that could see them lose their licenses altogether.

For their part, the truckers say they should not be stripped unilaterally of their investment.

“All of a sudden you have nothing,” said Vassilis Sachinidis, the president of one of the truckers’ unions, representing about 3,000 owners of trucks with cranes. “That is not right.”

After tackling the truckers, the government plans to dismantle the remainder of the closed professions. It is likely, however, that it will wait until after local elections in November.

Push to End Job Barriers Rattles Greece and Economy

ATHENS — Antonios Avgerinos, 59, a retired army pharmacist, always wanted his own pharmacy here. And why not? Greek law ensures that pharmacists get a 35 percent profit on all drugs sold, even over-the-counter medications.

But Greek law also limits just about everything else about pharmacies. They must be at least 820 feet apart and have a likely market of no fewer than 1,500 residents. To break into the business, an aspiring pharmacist generally has to buy a license from a retiring one. That often costs upward of $400,000.

“It is an absurd system,” Mr. Avgerinos said recently. “But it has been that way my whole life.”

Maybe not for much longer.

As the government of Prime Minster George Papandreou struggles to get the nation’s financial house in order — reducing the size of its bloated civil service, chasing after tax evaders and overhauling its pension system — it has also begun to tackle a much less talked about problem: the cozy system of “closed professions” that has existed here for decades, costing the economy billions of dollars a year.

These efforts have prompted almost weekly strikes in the last few months from interest groups firmly opposed to breaking down the barriers to entry in lucrative professional niches. But experts say that much is at stake: Greece’s ability to service its tremendous debt to other European countries and avoid default rests on the government’s ability to inject more competition and dynamism into its sclerotic economy.

“Greece is the last Soviet-style economy in Europe,” said Yannis Stournaras, an economist and the director of the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research, known as IOBE Athens, who has studied the issue. “Other countries have some closed professions. But nothing like Greece. Every stone you turn here, there are regulations.”

For selling a cancer drug for $4,200, Mr. Stournaras said, a pharmacist makes a profit of around $1,400. “That’s a movement of the elbow that is more expensive than one of Roger Federer’s.”

Experts say there are about 70 closed professions here, including those of lawyers, engineers, taxi drivers, speech therapists, welders, notaries, street market vendors, newsstand operators and architects. Each is protected from competition by a byzantine tangle of regulations and licensing requirements that result in high prices for consumers and a reliable living for insiders.

No use shopping around for a less expensive lawyer or notary, for instance. They all charge fixed fees, as do many other professions. There are numerous restrictions on licenses, too. Some are not even available to some classes of citizens. For instance, newsstand licenses are reserved for war veterans, the disabled and those with large families to support. Others are limited, like the number of long-haul trucking licenses, which has been frozen for 25 years.

A study carried out by IOBE in 2006 estimated that opening these professions would increase gross domestic product by about $35 billion, or 10 percent, in five years.

But nobody expects change to be easy. Already, austerity measures in Europe have prompted unrest here and elsewhere. Thursday saw strikes by civil servants protesting cutbacks in Athens and in France. Many believe that tackling closed professions will mean even more groups taking to the streets.

That is what happened this summer when the government took on the trucking industry. Greece has issued only a few new licenses for truckers since 1970, though Greece’s economy has more than tripled in that time. This created a hot market for the licenses, which have sold at prices approaching $500,000. Not surprisingly, experts say, trucking costs in Greece are far higher than anywhere else in the European Union.

The IOBE report found it was more expensive to truck something from Athens to Thebes, about 45 miles, than from Athens to Rome, a distance of more than 600 miles. Businessmen say it is cheaper to ship goods here from China than it is to move them from Athens to the island of Rhodes, 285 miles away.

But when the government announced that it would begin issuing new licenses over the next three years, the truckers blocked the borders for weeks, creating shortages of all kinds, including fuel. Mr. Papandreou invoked an emergency regulation to force the truckers back to work.

Within a few weeks, however, work stoppages began again. The truckers did not cease their occasional blockades until Parliament passed a new law that could see them lose their licenses altogether.

For their part, the truckers say they should not be stripped unilaterally of their investment.

“All of a sudden you have nothing,” said Vassilis Sachinidis, the president of one of the truckers’ unions, representing about 3,000 owners of trucks with cranes. “That is not right.”

After tackling the truckers, the government plans to dismantle the remainder of the closed professions. It is likely, however, that it will wait until after local elections in November.

Boehner’s Path to Power Began in Southern Ohio

READING, Ohio — John A. Boehner, the House Republican leader, laments that the America he grew up in has been “snuffed out” by Democrats. Yet Mr. Boehner’s hometown seems virtually untouched by the decades that have passed since he lugged kegs of beer around his father’s bar, tossed a Friday night football and frightened a driving instructor by burning rubber in a GTO.

The same Cape Cod houses dot the roadsides, among a smattering of family businesses. On the hill where Mr. Boehner grew up with 11 siblings, there are remnants of the fence that kept cows at bay. Mr. Boehner’s sister tends the bar his family ran through much of the last century.

With Republicans increasingly confident that they will capture the House in November, Mr. Boehner stands likely to become speaker and to lead his party’s effort to turn the nation in a new direction after two years under President Obama and the Democrats. It seems that almost everything about him stems from this spot at the southern tip of Ohio.

It defined his political viewpoints, shaped by his working-class Roman Catholic family. It formed his passions (golf, football, more golf), kindled his love of sharp clothes (and his caustic commentary about others’ wardrobes) and presaged his political trajectory, one influenced by his experience as a businessman and largely ignited by a lobbyist who became his patron and the first of many lobbyist-friends in his orbit.

Mr. Boehner — now Mr. Obama’s Gucci punching bag — has by his own account and those of people who know him remained as unchanged as Reading, just outside Cincinnati. “He’s been conservative, he’s been consistent and he’s been tan,” said Bob Hagan, an Ohio state representative who served with Mr. Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner) in the Statehouse in the late 1980s.

For Republicans who hope to recapture the House, the challenge is to shift the focus from Mr. Boehner’s country club image and tangerine hue back to his Midwestern conservative résumé, which they hope will attract a frustrated electorate.

But the effort by Democrats to portray Mr. Boehner, 60, as lazy and retrograde — speak loudly and carry a large cocktail — is equally arduous. He is a man who paws through large briefing books for committee meetings, Democrats who have worked with him acknowledge. He can foil challengers with his charm, as his opponents in his first Congressional race found out. He is surprisingly emotional, given to occasional waterworks during House speeches or three-hanky stops among supporters on the campaign trail.

Mr. Boehner explains his rise from a childhood with little money to the Congressional leadership by recalling his ambition to improve his life.

“I was determined, I was miserable and I didn’t have anything,” he said in a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office, as he pulled on a series of Camel cigarettes (filtered). “I was trying to make something out of nothing.”

Mr. Boehner’s parents were Democrats, and politics did not define his upbringing, nor even really infuse it. “We were lucky to know who the president was,” said George Luning, a high school classmate of the congressman. “His dad owned a bar, and I think being around older people who had their opinions about this or that all day made it so when he got home, he didn’t much want to talk about that stuff.”

The culture wars that would later define the Republican Party were also far from the minds of the boys of Reading. “There just weren’t as many issues then,” said Jerry Vanden Eyden, Mr. Boehner’s closest childhood friend. “You didn’t know anything about gays, you didn’t know anything about abortion, you didn’t know anything about a lot of the social issues they got today,” he said. “We didn’t hear about it, didn’t worry about it, didn’t talk about it, didn’t think about it.”

It was work, and taxes, that politicized Mr. Boehner.

“Growing up, we were probably Kennedy Catholics because we were a strong devout Catholic family,” said Bob Boehner, the congressman’s older brother, who like all his siblings eventually switched party allegiance. “But the first time you get a real job and get your paycheck, you look down and you wonder, where’s the rest of your money, and they explain to you that that’s the tax you have to pay to the government, you start thinking more and more about becoming a Republican."

Jennifer Steinhauer reported from Reading, Ohio, and Carl Hulse from Washington. Eric Lipton contributed reporting from Washington.

Boehner’s Path to Power Began in Southern Ohio

READING, Ohio — John A. Boehner, the House Republican leader, laments that the America he grew up in has been “snuffed out” by Democrats. Yet Mr. Boehner’s hometown seems virtually untouched by the decades that have passed since he lugged kegs of beer around his father’s bar, tossed a Friday night football and frightened a driving instructor by burning rubber in a GTO.

The same Cape Cod houses dot the roadsides, among a smattering of family businesses. On the hill where Mr. Boehner grew up with 11 siblings, there are remnants of the fence that kept cows at bay. Mr. Boehner’s sister tends the bar his family ran through much of the last century.

With Republicans increasingly confident that they will capture the House in November, Mr. Boehner stands likely to become speaker and to lead his party’s effort to turn the nation in a new direction after two years under President Obama and the Democrats. It seems that almost everything about him stems from this spot at the southern tip of Ohio.

It defined his political viewpoints, shaped by his working-class Roman Catholic family. It formed his passions (golf, football, more golf), kindled his love of sharp clothes (and his caustic commentary about others’ wardrobes) and presaged his political trajectory, one influenced by his experience as a businessman and largely ignited by a lobbyist who became his patron and the first of many lobbyist-friends in his orbit.

Mr. Boehner — now Mr. Obama’s Gucci punching bag — has by his own account and those of people who know him remained as unchanged as Reading, just outside Cincinnati. “He’s been conservative, he’s been consistent and he’s been tan,” said Bob Hagan, an Ohio state representative who served with Mr. Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner) in the Statehouse in the late 1980s.

For Republicans who hope to recapture the House, the challenge is to shift the focus from Mr. Boehner’s country club image and tangerine hue back to his Midwestern conservative résumé, which they hope will attract a frustrated electorate.

But the effort by Democrats to portray Mr. Boehner, 60, as lazy and retrograde — speak loudly and carry a large cocktail — is equally arduous. He is a man who paws through large briefing books for committee meetings, Democrats who have worked with him acknowledge. He can foil challengers with his charm, as his opponents in his first Congressional race found out. He is surprisingly emotional, given to occasional waterworks during House speeches or three-hanky stops among supporters on the campaign trail.

Mr. Boehner explains his rise from a childhood with little money to the Congressional leadership by recalling his ambition to improve his life.

“I was determined, I was miserable and I didn’t have anything,” he said in a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office, as he pulled on a series of Camel cigarettes (filtered). “I was trying to make something out of nothing.”

Mr. Boehner’s parents were Democrats, and politics did not define his upbringing, nor even really infuse it. “We were lucky to know who the president was,” said George Luning, a high school classmate of the congressman. “His dad owned a bar, and I think being around older people who had their opinions about this or that all day made it so when he got home, he didn’t much want to talk about that stuff.”

The culture wars that would later define the Republican Party were also far from the minds of the boys of Reading. “There just weren’t as many issues then,” said Jerry Vanden Eyden, Mr. Boehner’s closest childhood friend. “You didn’t know anything about gays, you didn’t know anything about abortion, you didn’t know anything about a lot of the social issues they got today,” he said. “We didn’t hear about it, didn’t worry about it, didn’t talk about it, didn’t think about it.”

It was work, and taxes, that politicized Mr. Boehner.

“Growing up, we were probably Kennedy Catholics because we were a strong devout Catholic family,” said Bob Boehner, the congressman’s older brother, who like all his siblings eventually switched party allegiance. “But the first time you get a real job and get your paycheck, you look down and you wonder, where’s the rest of your money, and they explain to you that that’s the tax you have to pay to the government, you start thinking more and more about becoming a Republican."

Jennifer Steinhauer reported from Reading, Ohio, and Carl Hulse from Washington. Eric Lipton contributed reporting from Washington.

N.B.A. Cracks Down on Whining About Foul Calls

In a recent preseason game against the Nets, Boston’s Paul Pierce punched the air in frustration after being whistled for a foul. He then looked around in curiosity after hearing the whistle again. In a circumstance that could repeat itself all season, the official, Steve Javie, had assessed Pierce with a technical foul for his demonstrativeness.

“He was like, ‘Sorry, but that’s the new rule,’ ” Pierce said Javie told him.

The new rule that Javie referred to is an attempt by the N.B.A. to cut down on the whining and muttering, the arm-waving and air-punching, the drawn-out contentiousness that is often generated by foul calls players disagree with. If players cannot keep a lid on the complaining, they will receive a technical.

On Wednesday night, in a preseason game between the Celtics and the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, that new policy was on full display. Officials called four technicals in a span of 16 seconds, with Boston’s Jermaine O’Neal igniting the second-quarter whistlefest. Kevin Garnett received two technicals as he seemed to come to O’Neal’s defense, drawing an ejection before O’Neal even realized what occurred.

“I was still dazed by mine,” O’Neal said.

Six seconds later, the Knicks’ Timofey Mozgov was introduced to the N.B.A. with his first technical foul. He later said he had only spoken to the officials in his native Russian.

Frequent technical fouls are not new for the Celtics, one of the league’s more marketable — and volatile — teams. They accumulate technicals like points, registering a league-high 107 last season. “It is an emotional game,” Celtics Coach Doc Rivers said recently. “That’s tough to understand when you’re not out there.”

Rivers said he did not think that the N.B.A. needed a new policy to cut down on complaining about calls, that officials “are good enough to know the difference” between normal bellyaching and behavior that is over the top.

But other coaches and players are less critical. Asked in recent weeks what they thought of the new measure, they noted that other rules had been put in place before the beginning of a season and that players had always adjusted.

“I thought it was great,” Cleveland Cavaliers Coach Byron Scott said of the new policy. “I don’t think there should be players that can run up on referees, that can throw punches in the air. There shouldn’t be players blatantly trying to let everybody know that they got hit by slapping their hands and things like that.”

Billy Hunter, the executive director of the Players Association, called the change “an unnecessary and unwarranted overreaction on the league’s behalf” and said the union had seen no increase in the level of complaining. He said the union would file a legal challenge.

The union and others said they worried that the policy would remove some of the game’s natural vibrancy.

“It’s impossible to not show emotion playing basketball,” the Denver Nuggets’ Chauncey Billups told The Denver Post. “Shoot, it’s impossible to do playing golf. And that’s no physical contact at all.”

The league’s veteran players know the officials on a first-name basis. In the search for a bit of leeway, they often talk to officials more often than younger players do. But now they will have to be more careful about their tone and accompanying gestures.

“At the end of the day, it’s letting us as players know we’ve got to have better relationships with referees and we’ve always got to come correct,” Boston’s Ray Allen said in support of the new policy.

The N.B.A. has also raised the fines for technicals to $2,000 each for a player or coach for the first five offenses. They will be docked $3,000 for each of the next five technicals and $4,000 for technicals 11-15. If a player exceeds 15 technicals, he is suspended for one game for every two technicals and draws a $5,000 fine for each additional technical.

As it is, some of the biggest complainers are top players. So what will the reaction be if LeBron James or Kobe Bryant is tossed from a pivotal game for punching the air? “That would be my concern,” O’Neal said.

On Wednesday, when nothing was really at stake, Garnett laughed his way off the court after being ejected for his second technical. Rivers and Knicks Coach Mike D’Antoni each ended up grinning.

O’Neal, a 14-year veteran, said he received his technical after asking the official, Zach Zarba, if he could talk to him after a call. Under the new rules, players may talk to referees if they do not use demonstrative gestures.

But O’Neal said he had barely talked to Zarba before he was whistled. Afterward, O’Neal said he empathized with Zarba, who he knew was following orders.

““I’ve never been given a tech where I just asked, ‘Can I talk to you?’ ” O’Neal said. “And I’m talking about seconds. As soon as it came out of my mouth it was a tech.”

The league said it adopted the stronger policy because fans had complained about the frequent bickering. O’Neal predicted that the league would back off after witnessing the impact of the new policy during the regular season.

“It’s going to make it look like it’s about the officials,” O’Neal said. “If I’m a fan looking at it, O.K., the referees are too big for the players to talk to, to communicate.”

The N.B.A. has sent officials to talk to teams about the new policy. They have the support of the Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudemire, who said the tougher rules made for a “clean game, a fun game.” But others aren’t so sure.

Opening night, meanwhile, is 11 days away.

N.B.A. Cracks Down on Whining About Foul Calls

In a recent preseason game against the Nets, Boston’s Paul Pierce punched the air in frustration after being whistled for a foul. He then looked around in curiosity after hearing the whistle again. In a circumstance that could repeat itself all season, the official, Steve Javie, had assessed Pierce with a technical foul for his demonstrativeness.

“He was like, ‘Sorry, but that’s the new rule,’ ” Pierce said Javie told him.

The new rule that Javie referred to is an attempt by the N.B.A. to cut down on the whining and muttering, the arm-waving and air-punching, the drawn-out contentiousness that is often generated by foul calls players disagree with. If players cannot keep a lid on the complaining, they will receive a technical.

On Wednesday night, in a preseason game between the Celtics and the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, that new policy was on full display. Officials called four technicals in a span of 16 seconds, with Boston’s Jermaine O’Neal igniting the second-quarter whistlefest. Kevin Garnett received two technicals as he seemed to come to O’Neal’s defense, drawing an ejection before O’Neal even realized what occurred.

“I was still dazed by mine,” O’Neal said.

Six seconds later, the Knicks’ Timofey Mozgov was introduced to the N.B.A. with his first technical foul. He later said he had only spoken to the officials in his native Russian.

Frequent technical fouls are not new for the Celtics, one of the league’s more marketable — and volatile — teams. They accumulate technicals like points, registering a league-high 107 last season. “It is an emotional game,” Celtics Coach Doc Rivers said recently. “That’s tough to understand when you’re not out there.”

Rivers said he did not think that the N.B.A. needed a new policy to cut down on complaining about calls, that officials “are good enough to know the difference” between normal bellyaching and behavior that is over the top.

But other coaches and players are less critical. Asked in recent weeks what they thought of the new measure, they noted that other rules had been put in place before the beginning of a season and that players had always adjusted.

“I thought it was great,” Cleveland Cavaliers Coach Byron Scott said of the new policy. “I don’t think there should be players that can run up on referees, that can throw punches in the air. There shouldn’t be players blatantly trying to let everybody know that they got hit by slapping their hands and things like that.”

Billy Hunter, the executive director of the Players Association, called the change “an unnecessary and unwarranted overreaction on the league’s behalf” and said the union had seen no increase in the level of complaining. He said the union would file a legal challenge.

The union and others said they worried that the policy would remove some of the game’s natural vibrancy.

“It’s impossible to not show emotion playing basketball,” the Denver Nuggets’ Chauncey Billups told The Denver Post. “Shoot, it’s impossible to do playing golf. And that’s no physical contact at all.”

The league’s veteran players know the officials on a first-name basis. In the search for a bit of leeway, they often talk to officials more often than younger players do. But now they will have to be more careful about their tone and accompanying gestures.

“At the end of the day, it’s letting us as players know we’ve got to have better relationships with referees and we’ve always got to come correct,” Boston’s Ray Allen said in support of the new policy.

The N.B.A. has also raised the fines for technicals to $2,000 each for a player or coach for the first five offenses. They will be docked $3,000 for each of the next five technicals and $4,000 for technicals 11-15. If a player exceeds 15 technicals, he is suspended for one game for every two technicals and draws a $5,000 fine for each additional technical.

As it is, some of the biggest complainers are top players. So what will the reaction be if LeBron James or Kobe Bryant is tossed from a pivotal game for punching the air? “That would be my concern,” O’Neal said.

On Wednesday, when nothing was really at stake, Garnett laughed his way off the court after being ejected for his second technical. Rivers and Knicks Coach Mike D’Antoni each ended up grinning.

O’Neal, a 14-year veteran, said he received his technical after asking the official, Zach Zarba, if he could talk to him after a call. Under the new rules, players may talk to referees if they do not use demonstrative gestures.

But O’Neal said he had barely talked to Zarba before he was whistled. Afterward, O’Neal said he empathized with Zarba, who he knew was following orders.

““I’ve never been given a tech where I just asked, ‘Can I talk to you?’ ” O’Neal said. “And I’m talking about seconds. As soon as it came out of my mouth it was a tech.”

The league said it adopted the stronger policy because fans had complained about the frequent bickering. O’Neal predicted that the league would back off after witnessing the impact of the new policy during the regular season.

“It’s going to make it look like it’s about the officials,” O’Neal said. “If I’m a fan looking at it, O.K., the referees are too big for the players to talk to, to communicate.”

The N.B.A. has sent officials to talk to teams about the new policy. They have the support of the Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudemire, who said the tougher rules made for a “clean game, a fun game.” But others aren’t so sure.

Opening night, meanwhile, is 11 days away.

In Nevada Senate Debate, a Clash of Candidates and Political Philosophies, Too

LAS VEGAS — The debate Thursday evening between Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Sharron Angle, the Republican running with Tea Party support, had been promoted as a climactic duel between two opponents for a Nevada Senate seat, locked in an exceedingly tight contest in what may well be the most closely watched race of the fall.

What viewers saw here was a vivid contrast of philosophy between two competing forces in American politics this election cycle: Mr. Reid, the face of the Democratic establishment and champion of President Obama’s policies, and Ms. Angle, the hero of the Tea Party. They offered fundamentally different visions of the role of government in dealing with issues including health care, regulating banks and the insurance industry, and using government programs to create jobs.

Mr. Reid said he viewed the role of government as creating jobs, pointing, for example, to federal projects like the Boulder Dam, now known as the Hoover Dam.

“My job is to create jobs,” he said, looking into the camera as he addressed a state burdened with the highest unemployment rate in the nation. “What she is talking about is extreme: We have to do it.”

Ms. Angle looked over at her opponent and also to the camera. “Harry Reid,” she said, “it’s not your job to create jobs. It’s your job to create policies that create confidence in the private sector so they can create jobs.”

Ms. Angle said she opposed forcing insurance companies to cover any kind of procedures — including mammograms and colonoscopies — arguing that these decisions should be left to the private market. “America is a country of choices, not forcing people to buy things they don’t need,” she said, adding, “The free market will weed out those companies who don’t offer as many choices.”

Mr. Reid, in defending the health care law passed this year, argued that that kind of coverage was essential to hold down insurance costs by allowing doctors to catch diseases before they progressed too far and by guarding the public’s health. “Insurance companies don’t do anything out of the goodness of their hearts,” he said. “They do it out of the profit motive.”

The 60-minute encounter at the PBS station here, the only one the two candidates are scheduled to have, included attacks from both sides that were often personal. Mr. Reid repeatedly used the word “extreme” to describe Ms. Angle, echoing a central theme of his campaign advertisements.

Ms. Angle started attacking Mr. Reid in her opening remarks.

“The contrast is, I’m not a career politician; I’m a grandmother,” she said, also noting that Mr. Reid lives at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington. And in the closing moments, she said he had gone from a hardscrabble life as the son of a miner in Searchlight to being, as she put it, one of the wealthiest men in the Senate.

“How did that happen?” she demanded.

Mr. Reid seemed taken aback by the suggestion that he had somehow profited from his job as senator. “That really is kind of a low blow,” he said. “I think everybody knows I have been a very successful lawyer. I lived off what I made. Her suggestion that I made money being a senator is false.”

Mr. Reid and Ms. Angle — two candidates who have proved to have an unusual propensity to make the kind of misstatement that haunts them for days — did not appear to make any kind of egregious mistake on Thursday that could, by itself, turn the course of this campaign.

Ms. Angle smiled and laughed, sometimes a bit nervously, at the start of almost every answer. Mr. Reid looked pale and slightly wan at the start, but loosened up — at least for him; his strengths, as he acknowledges, do not include public speaking — as the night went on.

In Nevada Senate Debate, a Clash of Candidates and Political Philosophies, Too

LAS VEGAS — The debate Thursday evening between Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Sharron Angle, the Republican running with Tea Party support, had been promoted as a climactic duel between two opponents for a Nevada Senate seat, locked in an exceedingly tight contest in what may well be the most closely watched race of the fall.

What viewers saw here was a vivid contrast of philosophy between two competing forces in American politics this election cycle: Mr. Reid, the face of the Democratic establishment and champion of President Obama’s policies, and Ms. Angle, the hero of the Tea Party. They offered fundamentally different visions of the role of government in dealing with issues including health care, regulating banks and the insurance industry, and using government programs to create jobs.

Mr. Reid said he viewed the role of government as creating jobs, pointing, for example, to federal projects like the Boulder Dam, now known as the Hoover Dam.

“My job is to create jobs,” he said, looking into the camera as he addressed a state burdened with the highest unemployment rate in the nation. “What she is talking about is extreme: We have to do it.”

Ms. Angle looked over at her opponent and also to the camera. “Harry Reid,” she said, “it’s not your job to create jobs. It’s your job to create policies that create confidence in the private sector so they can create jobs.”

Ms. Angle said she opposed forcing insurance companies to cover any kind of procedures — including mammograms and colonoscopies — arguing that these decisions should be left to the private market. “America is a country of choices, not forcing people to buy things they don’t need,” she said, adding, “The free market will weed out those companies who don’t offer as many choices.”

Mr. Reid, in defending the health care law passed this year, argued that that kind of coverage was essential to hold down insurance costs by allowing doctors to catch diseases before they progressed too far and by guarding the public’s health. “Insurance companies don’t do anything out of the goodness of their hearts,” he said. “They do it out of the profit motive.”

The 60-minute encounter at the PBS station here, the only one the two candidates are scheduled to have, included attacks from both sides that were often personal. Mr. Reid repeatedly used the word “extreme” to describe Ms. Angle, echoing a central theme of his campaign advertisements.

Ms. Angle started attacking Mr. Reid in her opening remarks.

“The contrast is, I’m not a career politician; I’m a grandmother,” she said, also noting that Mr. Reid lives at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington. And in the closing moments, she said he had gone from a hardscrabble life as the son of a miner in Searchlight to being, as she put it, one of the wealthiest men in the Senate.

“How did that happen?” she demanded.

Mr. Reid seemed taken aback by the suggestion that he had somehow profited from his job as senator. “That really is kind of a low blow,” he said. “I think everybody knows I have been a very successful lawyer. I lived off what I made. Her suggestion that I made money being a senator is false.”

Mr. Reid and Ms. Angle — two candidates who have proved to have an unusual propensity to make the kind of misstatement that haunts them for days — did not appear to make any kind of egregious mistake on Thursday that could, by itself, turn the course of this campaign.

Ms. Angle smiled and laughed, sometimes a bit nervously, at the start of almost every answer. Mr. Reid looked pale and slightly wan at the start, but loosened up — at least for him; his strengths, as he acknowledges, do not include public speaking — as the night went on.