Listen to the audio excerpt from George Packer’s “The Unwinding”

PROLOGUE

No one can say when the unwinding began—when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way. Like any great change, the unwinding began at countless times, in countless ways—and at some moment the country, always the same country, crossed a line of history and became irretrievably different.

If you were born around 1960 or afterward, you have spent your adult life in the vertigo of that unwinding. You watched structures that had been in place before your birth collapse like pillars of salt across the vast visible landscape—the farms of the Carolina Piedmont, the factories of the Mahoning Valley, Florida subdivisions, California schools. And other things, harder to see but no less vital in supporting the order of everyday life, changed beyond recognition—ways and means in Washington caucus rooms, taboos on New York trading desks, manners and morals everywhere. When the norms that made the old institutions useful began to unwind, and the leaders abandoned their posts, the Roosevelt Republic that had reigned for almost half a century came undone. The void was filled by the default force in American life, organized money.

The unwinding is nothing new. There have been unwindings every generation or two: the fall to earth of the Founders’ heavenly Republic in a noisy marketplace of quarrelsome factions; the war that tore the United States apart and turned them from plural to singular; the crash that laid waste to the business of America, making way for a democracy of bureau-crats and everymen. Each decline brought renewal, each implosion re-leased energy, out of each unwinding came a new cohesion.

The unwinding brings freedom, more than the world has ever granted, and to more kinds of people than ever before—freedom to go away, free-dom to return, freedom to change your story, get your facts, get hired, get fired, get high, marry, divorce, go broke, begin again, start a business, have it both ways, take it to the limit, walk away from the ruins, succeed be-yond your dreams and boast about it, fail abjectly and try again. And with freedom the unwinding brings its illusions, for all these pursuits are as fragile as thought balloons popping against circumstances. Winning and losing are all-American games, and in the unwinding winners win bigger than ever, floating away like bloated dirigibles, and losers have a long way to fall before they hit bottom, and sometimes they never do.

The former Democratic congressman’s rising stock in New York and national politics seemed over after he sent lewd pictures over social media to several women — and his nascent comeback for New York City mayor has already gotten off to a rocky start this week: Weiner admitted there could be more damning photos to surface, and he was caught with the wrong city skyline on his campaign website.

Weiner’s attempted rehabilitation comes just weeks after former Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., was elected in a congressional special election four years after he admitted he disappeared from the state and revealed he had been having an affair with an Argentinian woman.

There are big differences between the two men’s comeback attempts, but one common thread—partisanship is often the biggest factor in determining whether politicians survive or fail. Sanford’s biggest hurdle was winning the GOP primary, and even against a vaunted Democratic rival, he still won a bigger than expected victory.

Similarly, Weiner’s toughest challenge will be in the Big Apple race’s Democratic primary, where New York City Council President Christine Quinn is still the frontrunner, albeit a fragile one. But if he does manage to win the Democratic nod, his chances skyrocket.

Weiner was forced from office when it became clear Democratic leadership had abandoned him– but it was also the subsequent coverup and his initial lies that his Twitter account had been hacked that may have sealed his fate. While Sanford had initially told his staff he was “hiking the Appalachian trail,” he did fully admit to the affair — maybe in more detail than some had wished at the time — and he managed to stay in office.

While not all sex-scandal related, there are a few other races to keep an eye on in the next election cycle, and how partisanship could — and sometimes has already been — chief in these ongoing stories already

– Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn., was a surprise winner in the 2010 GOP wave, defeating Blue Dog Democrat Lincoln Davis. This seat was one Democrats weren’t hopeful at gaining back, especially given that President Obama had gotten just 36% there in 2008. Then, testimony from DesJarlias’ divorce surfaced showing that the physician had inappropriate relationships with several patients and co-workers and that the anti-abortion doctor had supported his ex-wife’s decision to terminate two pregnancies.

That behavior would seem like a cardinal sin within the GOP and in the conservative state. But, even as that part of his past dripped out, DesJarlais went on to defeat his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Eric Stewart, by 12 points as Romney won the district by 32 points. This week, DesJarlais received a fine and admonishment for the past relationships from the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners.

But the statewide GOP knives are already coming out for the two-term congressman, who has remained defiant that he’s running for a third term regardless. He’s gotten at least two primary challengers so far in state Sen. Jim Tracy and state Rep. Joe Carr — but a crowded primary could be the best thing for DesJarlais. Tennessee doesn’t have a runoff, and DesJarlais could win with even a small plurality if his opponents split the anti-DesJarlais vote. If that’s the case, he’d likely defeat any Democratic sacrificial lamb in the fall again.

–Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., survived a spirited primary challenge last year amid investigations into his finances and taxes, leading to his censure by the House in 2010. The longtime Harlem pol had a significant chunk of new territory thanks to redistricting, and with an increasingly Hispanic electorate, had an energetic challenge from state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, but other challengers also helped split the vote. In the heavily Democratic seat, Rangel won easily in November.

The scandals seem to have passed for the 22-term congressman, but there’s questions as to whether the 82-year-old Democrat will seek another term in 2014. Rangel spokeswoman Hannah Kim told The Daily Rundown in a statement that Rangel “has just been reelected” and was “extremely busy holding numerous events in the newly-drawn district” but didn’t elaborate on his plans for next year. But other pols are already eyeing his seat, including Espaillat and even former Gov. David Paterson, who had his own scandals in office too.

–Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., was a surprise winner in 2012 — even though he sits in a heavily Democratic seat in Massachusetts. The congressman weathered bad press after his brothers-in-law were convicted in an illegal gambling ring, and his wife was even convicted of of tax fraud. While Tierney continually denied any wrongdoing despite his brother-in-laws’ statement otherwise, Republicans saw a prime chance, and even recruited moderate Republican Richard Tisei, an openly gay, pro-choice former nominee for lieutenant governor, to challenge him. In the race’s waning days even Democrats thought this was a lost cause, but Democratic turnout was too much for Tisei to overcome, and Tierney won by one point, 48%-47%, with a libertarian candidate getting nearly 5%, as Obama won the district by 11 points. Republicans think this seat is still within their grasp, maybe in a midterm year with dropoff turnout and without a third-party candidate. Tisei is weighing another run, but Democrats think Tierney may have survived the worst.

–Sen. David Vitter, R-La., seems to be the political anomaly among sex scandals. In 2007, the conservative Republican senator admitted he was was a client of the “D.C. madam” prostitution ring, but stood up at a press conference with his wife by his side and asked for forgiveness. Both his party, and the voters, gave it. In 2010, he won re-election with 57% of the vote. Vitter’s past may be behind him, but as the senator now seems to be weighing a gubernatorial bid in 2015, Democrats will surely bring up his past sins again.

Speaking at the U.S. Naval Academy commencement ceremony, Obama urged new graduates to exhibit honor and courage in tackling incidents of sexual assault as they assume leadership positions in the military.

A Pentagon report estimates up to 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year and that thousands of victims are still unwilling to come forward. Obama says he is determined to stop the problem, saying sexual assault has “no place” in the military.

Obama also vowed to maintain America’s “military superiority,” even in an era of budget cuts, and promised to provide troops with all of the resources they need.

The president also spent much of the week trying to revive his legislative agenda–which looked all-but-doomed following the Internal Revenue Service scandal, a fresh round of Benghazi hearings, and the Department of Justice’s decision to seize phone records of Associated Press journalists. This was a pivotal moment for the president, who is seeking to keep his second term moving forward.

Here’s how the week played out.

First, Oklahoma: At a news conference on Tuesday, Obama spoke forcefully, intent on showing leadership and engagement—traits that critics said he lacked during scandalpalozza. Besides promising aid, Obama pointed to American resilience in the face of other natural disasters that have struck the nation, including in Joplin, Mo., Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Breezy Point, N.Y. He also mentioned Boston, which was rocked by twin bombings at last month’s marathon.

“In some cases there will be enormous grief that has to be absorbed, but you will not travel that path alone. Your country will travel with you, Obama said. “We are a nation that stands with our fellow citizens as long as it takes.” The president will travel to the tornado-ravaged town of Moore on Sunday to survey the twister’s devastation and to meet with survivors.

Next up, immigration reform: The president is urging lawmakers to pass a final plan after the bill cleared a major hurdle in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. “None of the committee members got everything they wanted and neither did I, but in the end, we all owe it to the American people to get the best possible result over the finish line,” said Obama after the vote.

The proposal that passed–after weeks of hearings–beefs up border security and would allow the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship. The 13-5 vote occurred only after panel chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy agreed to drop a provision allowing gay Americans to seek green cards for their same-sex spouses or partners.

Republicans had made clear they would not support a bill that included the LGBT visa proposal. The trade-off was painful for many Democrats (and perhaps also for Obama) but it kept alive the prospect of achieving immigration reform. The full Senate is expected to begin debating the bill next month.

The IRS scandal continues to simmer, amid Congressional hearings on the tax collection agency’s targeting of conservative groups before the 2012 election. Obama says he was unaware of the practice, and the White House seemingly offered a new account of how and when it learned the IRS was specially scrutinizing certain groups.

Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, along with other top officials, about the IRS’ findings nearly a month ago. Ruemmler decided the information should not be delivered to the president because the inspector general’s report had not been released. Previously, the White House said they did not know about the targeting until the report was released last week.

And then, on Wednesday, Lois Lerner, the IRS official who heads the tax-exempt division at the IRS, invoked her constitutional right to not testify as a witness at a House Oversight committee hearing. She insisted, however, that “I have not done anything wrong.” She quickly came under fire from Republicans for not elaborating on her role.

The White House, still reeling from headlines that the Department of Justice issued subpoenas for AP phone records while investigating the disclosure of classified information having to do with a CIA operation in Yemen, was dealt another blow, too: it was revealed that the DOJ sought a warrant in 2010 to inspect the private emails of Fox News correspondent James Rosen as well.

On Thursday, Obama had a chance to make news rather than react to it, giving a major speech on national security. He repeated his call to close the controversial detention facility in Guantanamo Bay where more than 100 detainees are on a hunger strike. He also defended the use of drones, insisting that the tactic is both effective and legal. “We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war—a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.” The remarks come as Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged for the first time that the U.S. killed four Americans in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Muslim cleric.

Obama made the case that drones were the best available option in certain circumstances. “For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen–with a drone or with a shotgun–without due process. Nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil,” he said. “But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens, and when neither the United States nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team,” he said, referring to al-Awlaki, who planned a Christmas Day 2009 bombing of a plane over Detroit.

Obama said he’s asked his administration to review proposals to extend oversight of drone strikes and wants to work with Congress on establishing an independent court to review future potential strikes.

In the Thursday speech Obama discussed the future of Gitmo. As a candidate, Obama promised to close the Guantanamo detention center. The fact that it remains open–holding detainees who have been cleared or never charged, and with increasing concerns about the force-feeding of hunger-strikers–is seen by many in the president’s progressive base as the most significant disappointment of his presidency.

During his foreign policy speech, Obama repeated his call for Congress to close the prison camp. He announced he would lift (his own) moratorium on transferring the prison’s Yemeni detainees to their home country. But he didn’t disavow the practice of indefinite detention.

Even with the human rights questions that remained unanswered, the national security speech was a strong performance. Obama–with his speech about race and Rev. Wright, his defense of “just wars” when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize–has shown an ability to communicate complex ideas to the public with nuance and authority.

He is also apparently benefiting from optimism about the economy: despite the messy week, Obama’s approval rating stayed above 50%.

The next few weeks will be full of more tests for the president as he seeks to regain control of the political conversation. He will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping early next month in California to discuss cyber security and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. He’ll also visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. And there’s nothing like an exotic backdrop to produce some fresh headlines–even as his political opponents show no sign of letting go of the old ones.

It’s not that women aren’t capable, Jones said in April at a University of Virginia panel discussion in front of students, “they are very capable,” but babies are a “killer” to a trader’s focus.

Jones posited that having children hurts the success of women just as traumatic emotional events, like divorce, affect male traders.

“As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it,” Jones said, recalling two women who worked with him in the late 1970s. “They both got married,” he said, “and then they both had—which in my mind is as big of a killer as divorce is—they both had children.”

The billionaire who tops the Forbes 400 list at number 108 said men aren’t affected by their children in this way.

“Every desire to understand what is going to make this go up or go down is going to be overwhelmed by the most beautiful experience,” he said, “which a man will never share, about a mode of connection between that mother and that baby.”

A video of a panel discussion obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“The emotional distraction that comes from divorce is so overwhelming,” he said. “You can just automatically subtract 10- to 20% from any manager if he is going through a divorce.”

Jones responded to the newspaper, saying “my off-the-cuff remarks at the University of Virginia were with regard to global macro traders, who are on-call 24/7 and of whom there are likely only a few thousand successful practitioners in the world today. Macro trading requires a high degree of skill, focus and repetition. Life events, such as birth, divorce, death of a loved one and other emotional highs and lows are obstacles to success in this specific field of finance.”

The Morning Joe panel discussed the comments with a panel of powerful women. Watch below.

On the West Coast, he joined the Antelope Valley Dynasty All-Stars, a competitive extracurricular cheerleading club. As a first-time cheerleader, he learned in a week what other athletes take months to perfect. His new middle school in Palmdale didn’t offer football, but he hoped to play the sport again when he entered high school. Nigel looked forward to traveling with the cheerleading team to Las Vegas, Anaheim, and Palm Springs for competitions.

“It seemed the gym was a release or escape for him,” Nigel’s father, James Hardy, told MSNBC.

Nigel also enjoyed playing his guitar and listening to music with his older sister; when he lived with her in Indiana, he often asked for advice about dealing with the girls at his middle school.

(Photo courtesy of the Hardy family)

Nigel was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 15 at a restaurant in Rosamond, Calif., after being reported missing and possibly armed with a gun.

More children’s stories>

A Wall Street trader is touching off a firestorm after he said you will never see as many great women investors or traders as men, because they have babies. We’ll talk to the reporter who broke the story, Jenna Johnson and former Newsweek Senior Editor Lynn Povich.

Plus, a look at the New Jersey shore and the politics involved with Steve Kornacki and strategists John Brabender and Jamal Simmons.

President Obama will address the graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy as cases of sex abuse skyrocket in all branches of the military. White House officials say the president will address the epidemic of abuse.

In his major speech yesterday on terrorism, President Obama vowed the end of the perpetual war on terror, a war he said was unsustainable for democracy.

President Obama defied his critics in nominating the State Department official who had a key role editing the Benghazi talking points to a high-ranking position. Obama nominated Victoria Nuland to be assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs.

Meanwhile the official at the heart of the IRS scandal has been suspended. Lois Lerner, who refused to testify before a Congressional panel this week, has been placed on administrative leave.

It’s no surprise that Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ pick to win the 2016 Iowa caucuses, but look who’s leading among the Republicans…

Finally, President Obama will once again team up with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie along the Jersey Shore. In the days before the election, Obama’s appearance touring the damage from Hurricane Sandy with the Republican governor burnished the president’s bipartisan bonafides, while some Republicans were angered at Christie for praising the president’s efforts.

Boy Scout ban lifted. On Thursday the Boy Scouts of America “voted to lift its ban on openly gay children,” MSNBC reports, but “the new policy, which passed with more than 60% of the vote, still excludes openly gay adults from participation.”

Lerner on leave. Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS division that targeted conservative groups, has been placed on administrative leave, NBC News reports. Lerner faced even more criticism from both parties after she invoked her Fifth Amendment right on Wednesday in refusing to testify before Congress, though in her opening statement she asserted her innocence, which some GOP members now say means she waived her rights and say she can be compelled to testify again. The IRS has selected Ken Corbin as acting director during Lerner’s absence.

Bonner out at end of summer. Former House Ethics Committee Chairman Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) will resign August 15 to take a newly created job as vice chancellor of government relations and economic development at the University of Alabama system, he announced Thursday. Bonner’s resignation will likely set up a competitive and crowded Republican primary to replace him, but the seat should easily stay in GOP hands in this Mobile district that gave Mitt Romney 62% last fall. There’s more on the race and possible names to replace Bonner on NBCnews.com.