PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2017

MOBIL SEDAN COROLLA

Salah satu produk dari Toyota Motor Coorporation (TMC) yang masih eksis dari zaman dahulu sampai sekarang adalah Mobil Sedan Corolla, Mobil Sedan Corolla merupakan mobil terlaris didunia, sejak pertama kali diproduksi tahun 1966 sampai sekarang diusianya yang sudah 40 tahun, sudah lebih dari 40 juta unit terjual. bahkan Mobil Sedan Corolla tidak hanya diproduksi di negara asalnya Jepang namun juga Mobil Sedan Corolla diproduksi di berbagai negara seperti Amerika Serikat, Kanada, Afrika Selatan, Thailand, Inggris, Turki dan beberapa negara lainya dengan total 15 pabrik diseluruh dunia dan mencatat penjualan terbaik selama 76 tahun.

-- Mobil Sedan Corolla dari Generasi ke Geberasi --

Dari awal kelahiranya hingga sekarang, Mobil Sedan Corolla sudah terdapat beberapa generasi dari Mobil Sedan Corolla ini di berbagai masa.

1. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Pertama E10 Series (1966-1970)

Mobil Sedan Corolla pertama kali dipasarkan dan mendulang sukses di Amerika pada tahun 1968. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi pertama terdiri dari beberapa varian seperti mobil kecil sederhana bermesin 2K 1100 cc yang diberi kode KE10 untuk sedan, KE15 untuk coupe, dan KE16 untuk Wagon. Model facelift yang hadir pada tahun 1969 bermesin 3K 1200 cc diberi kode KE11 untuk Sedan, KE18 untuk Wagon dan KE17 untuk Sprinter Coupe. diluar negara Jepang, negara yang pertama kali mendapatkan Mobil Sedan Corolla adalah Australia.

2. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Kedua E20 Series (1971-1974)

Pada Genarasi Kedua dari Mobil Sedan Corolla ini dikenal 2 Varian yaitu KE dan TE, dengan Varian TE memiliki bentuk yang lebih sporty. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi kedua atau 20-series ini lebih besar dari Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi pertama. Ini merupakan model Toyota yang sukses di seluruh dunia. Mesin yang digunakan adalah 3K (1200 cc), 3K-B (1200 cc dengan 2 karburator), T (1400 cc), 2T (1600 cc), dan 2T-G (1600 cc DOHC) berkemampuan tinggi. Pada tahun 1972, diperkenalkan model sport Corolla Levin dan Sprinter Trueno. Corolla Levin menjuarai Press on Regardless Rally di Amerika, dan 1000 Lakes Rally di Finlandia.

Di Indonesia, Corolla generasi ini yang pertama kali dijual ke pasar dengan model sedan 4 pintu bermesin 1200cc dan transmisi 4 speed manual.

3. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Ketiga E30, E40, E50, E60 Series (1975-1979)

Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi ketiga diantaranya adalah Corolla Sedan, Hardtop, dan Wagon berbasis 30-series, Sprinter Sedan 40-series. Corolla dan Sprinter Sports Coupe dan Liftback berbasis 50-series. Semua model yang menggunakan mesin dengan emisi rendah serta Toyota Total Clean (TTC), 60-series, model ini hanya dijual di Jepang.

4. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Keempat E70 Series (1980-1984)

Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Keempat Ini merupakan Corolla terakhir untuk semua model yang menggunankan layout FR (berpenggerak roda belakang). Di Jepang banyak sekali varian dan bentuknya. Ada Sedan 2 dan 4 pintu, Hardtop, Coupe, Liftback, Station Wagon, dan Van. Mesin yang tersedia adalah 1300 cc 4K, 1500 cc 5K, 1600 cc 2T dan 2T-G(DOHC). Model di Amerika bermesin 2T-C(1600 cc) dan 3T-C(1800 cc) dengan bentuk body Sedan 2 pintu, 4 pintu, Coupe, Hardtop, Liftback, dan Wagon. Perusahaan karoseri di California ada yang membuat Corolla Convertible dengan atap kanvas yang bisa dibuka berbasis Corolla Hardtop.

Di Indonesia hanya tersedia dalam variant DX 4 pintu bermesin 1300 cc 4K. Platform generasi ini juga dipakai untuk Daihatsu Charmant. Corolla DX di Indonesia tahun 1980 memiliki 4 lampu depan yg berbentuk bulat, bumper masih menggunakan besi dengan karet di kedua ujungnya, pada tahun 1981 mengalami perubahan pada lampu depan jadi bentuk petak. Model tahun 1982 mempunyai perbedaan pada lampu sen depan yg melebar ke samping dan lampu belakang baru, sedangkan tahun 1983 Corolla DX hadir dengan tachometer dan bumper urethane yang panjang.

5. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Kelima E80 Series (1985-1987)

Apakah yang terlintas dibenak anda kalau melihat sekilas foto mobil diatas ? yap tidak salah lagi pasti anda akan teringat salah satu anime jepang yang sangat populer "Initial D" , tepat foto Mobil Sedan Corolla diatas adalah Mobil Sedan Corolla tipe AE86 yang digunakan Takumi balapan digunung akina yang merupakan Mobil Sedan Corolla generasi kelima.

Pada Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi kelima ini Hanya model sport Corolla Levin dan Sprinter Trueno yang berpenggerak roda belakang, model yang lain berpenggerak roda depan. Sprinter Trueno dijual di Amerika sebagai Corolla SR5 dan GT-S. AE86 adalah kode untuk Levin dan Trueno bermesin kemampuan tinggi 4A-GE(1600 cc DOHC), yaitu GT, GT-S, GT-V, dan APEX. AE86 sangat popular dengan sebutan Hachiroku, yang berasal dari Bahasa Jepang, hachi = 8, dan roku = 6.

Di Indonesia, Corolla generasi ini yang dipasarkan secara resmi hadir dalam versi GL (AE80) dengan mesin 2A 1300 cc dan versi facelift SE Saloon (EE80) dengan mesin 2E 1300 cc. 

6. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Keenam E90 Series (1988-1992)

Mulai generasi ini kebanyakan Mobil Sedan Corolla sudah bermesin Twincam 4A-F (Head sempit) atau 4A-G( Head lebar) dengan karburator atau injection. Mesin bensin 1300 cc dengan karburator dan diesel dipasang pada Corolla Sedan versi murah serta Station Wagon dan Van. Corolla Sedan juga dibuat dalam versi mewah yaitu SE Limited untuk Asia yang hampir sama dengan LE di Amerika. Mobil Sedan Corolla versi Amerika memiliki bumper yang lebih panjang dibanding versi untuk region lainnya, serta lampu indikator merah di fender belakang. Corolla GTi yang sporty dengan mesin 4A-GE dibuat dalam bentuk Hatchback, Sedan, dan Liftback.

Di Jepang, model sports coupe Corolla Levin dan Sprinter Trueno ada yang menggunakan mesin 4A-GZE dengan Supercharger. Corolla Coupe untuk Amerika sebenarnya adalah Sprinter Trueno dengan lampu depan retractable. Tersedia dalam 2 pilihan yaitu SR5 dan GT-S.

Corolla All-Trac Wagon yang memiliki body berbeda dengan Wagon biasa berbasis pada Sprinter Carib di Jepang. Mobil berkode AE95 ini merupakan model pertama Mobil Sedan Corolla generasi keenam yang dijual di Australia pada tahun 1988. Corolla AE90 dan AE92 dalam bentuk Sedan, Hatchback, serta AE92 Liftback yang disebut Seca baru hadir pada tahun 1989.

Di Indonesia, model Mobil Sedan Corolla ini dikenal dengan nama Corolla Twincam, meskipun yang 1300 cc bermesin single cam (SOHC).

Tersedia 4 tipe yang resmi dipasarkan oleh Toyota Astra Motor:

1. 1.3 SE sedan, mesin 2E (72 hp -6000 rpm)
2. 1.6 SE Limited sedan, mesin 4A-F (94 hp - 6000 rpm, 12,9 kgm - 4000 rpm)
3. 1.6 GTi sedan, mesin 4A-GE (140 hp - 7200 rpm; 15 kgm - 6000 rpm)
4. 1.6 Liftback 5-door, mesin 4A-F (94 hp - 6000 rpm, 12.9 kgm - 4000 rpm)

 7. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Ketujuh E100 Series (1992-1997)

Diluncurkan di Jepang pada pertengahan tahun 1991 dengan mesin 1300 cc 4E, 1500 cc 5E, 1600 cc 4A, dan 2000 cc diesel 2C. Model Sedan  dan Coupe diproduksi sampai tahun 1995, sedangkan model Station Wagon dan Van tetap dibuat sampai tahun 2000.

Disebut Great Corolla di Indonesia dengan model SE menggunakan mesin 2E 1300 cc dan SE-G dengan mesin 4A-FE 1600 cc. 1.3 SE digantikan oleh 1.6 SE pada tahun 1994.

Model baru untuk tahun 1993 di Amerika dengan model Standard, DX, and LE Sedan, serta DX Station Wagon. Model standard bermesin 4A-FE(1600 cc), DX dan LE menggunakan mesin 7A-FE(1800 cc). Untuk tahun 1996, Mobil Sedan Corolla versi Amerika mendapat facelift dan semua model di produksi di Amerika. Model LE and Station Wagon yang di import dari Jepang tidak dijual lagi. Mobil Sedan Corolla CE (Classic Edition) mulai dipasarkan.

Di Australia, Mobil Sedan Corolla generasi ini diluncurkan pada tahun 1994, dan diproduksi secara lokal. Corolla Sedan terdiri dari model 1.6 CSi, 1.6 CSX, 1.8 CSX Conquest, and 1.8 Ultima, sedangkan Corolla Hatchback adalah 1.6 Seca CSi, 1.8 Seca Conquest, dan 1.8 Seca RV. Hanya satu model yang di import dari Jepang yaitu Corolla Sprinter Liftback.

8. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Kedelapan E110 Series (1995-2002)

Untuk generasi ini, Toyota membuat Mobil Sedan Corolla yang berbeda untuk region yang berbeda. Versi Jepang mulai dipasarkan di Jepang pada pertengahan tahun 1995, dan beberapa negara Asia, Amerika Selatan, serta Afrika pada tahun 1996. Versi Eropa untuk Eropa dan Australia hadir pada tahun 1997. Versi Amerika hanya untuk USA dan Canada baru untuk model tahun 1998. Versi Eropa hadir dengan penampilan yang sangat berbeda dengan versi untuk region lainnya. Mobil Sedan Corolla Eropa memiliki lampu depan berbentuk bulat.

Untuk di Indonesia, digunakan mesin 4A-FE (AE111 - dikenal dengan nama All New Corolla) dengan tahun edar 1996-1998 dengan variant 1.6 XLi, 1.6 SE-G, dan 1.6 S-Cruise. Model facelift bermesin 7A-FE (AE112) dengan tahun edar 1998-2001 tersedia dalam variant 1.8 XLi dan 1.8 SE-G.

Output mesin : 4A-FE : 115 hp - 6000 rpm, torsi 15 kgm - 4800 rpm. 7A-FE : 120 hp - 6000 rpm, torsi 16 kgm - 4400 rpm. Kedua mesin ini memakai teknologi Twincam 16 valve EFI

Corolla AE112 atau dikenal dengan nama New Corolla ini merupakan sedan dengan fitur terlengkap dan termewah di kelasnya saat itu. Dilengkapi dengan ABS, dual airbag, variable timing wiper, dan sebagainya.

9. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Kesembilan E120, E130 Series (2000-2006)

Pada Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Kesembilan ini, Dimensi lebih besar dari generasi sebelumnya. Ada 2 macam body untuk Sedan 4-pintu, yaitu versi Jepang yang juga dijual di Eropa dan Australia, dan Corolla Altis yang lebih besar untuk Asia Tenggara dan Amerika. Model Station Wagon disebut Corolla Fielder di Jepang, dan juga diekspor ke Australia dan Eropa.

Di Amerika, Corolla Sedan dipasarkan dalam trim level CE, S, LE, dan XRS. CE, S, dan LE bermesin 1ZZ-FE VVT-i, ZRS menggunakan mesin 2ZZ-GE VVTL-i. Corolla Matrix yang berbentuk crossover Wagon / SUV dibuat hanya untuk pasar Amerika.

Di Eropa, Corolla Hatchback 3 dan 5 pintu lebih popular dibanding Sedan dan Wagon. Juga ada Hatchback berkemampuan tinggi T-Sport bermesin 2ZZ-GE. Corolla Hatchback 5 pintu dijual di Australia dengan nama Corolla Seca, dan tersedia dalam versi Ascent, Ascent Sport, Conquest, Levin, dan Sportivo. Levin adalah versi mewah dan sporty dengan body kit, bukan coupe seperti Levin terdahulu. Sportivo adalah model berkemampuan tinggi yang sama dengan T-Sport. Mobil Sedan Corolla Sedan di Australia dipasarkan dalam versi Ascent, Conquest, dan Ultima.

Mobil Sedan Corolla Altis di Indonesia dimulai tahun 2001 sampai sekarang dan telah mengalami beberapa kali perubahan 2001-2003 : generasi 1 Altis di Indonesia. mesin 1ZZ-FE non VVT-i (128 hp - 6000 rpm, 16,3 kgm - 4400 rpm) SAE NET. Dirakit secara terurai (CKD) dari Thailand. 2004-2005 : generasi 2 Altis di Indonesia, mesin 1ZZ-FE VVT-i (136 hp - 6000 rpm, 17,4 kgm - 4200 rpm) SAE NET. Untuk versi A/T telah dilengkapi Super ECT. Mulai tipe ini dan selanjutnya diimpor secara utuh (CBU) dari Thailand. 2006-sekarang : generasi 3 Altis, dengan penambahan fitur-fitur seperti MID, Audio control di stir, dll.

10. Mobil Sedan Corolla Generasi Kesepuluh E140, E150 Series (2006-Sekarang)

Mobil Sedan Corolla terbaru yang disebut Corolla Axio, dan Station Wagon Corolla Fielder diluncurkan di Jepang pada akhir tahun 2006. Model Hatchback bernama Auris, dan yang lebih exclusive adalah Blade. Axio, Fielder, dan Auris bermesin 1.5 liter VVT-i 1NZ-FE, atau mesin baru 1.8 liter Dual VVT-i 2ZR-FE. Blade menggunakan mesin 2.4 liter VVT-i 2AZ-FE.

Corolla untuk Amerika model tahun 2009 dipasarkan mulai awal tahun 2008 dengan model Standard (paling murah), LE (menengah), S (sporty), XLE (mewah), dan XRS (sport berkemampuan tinggi). Corolla XRS menggunakan mesin 2400 cc, sedangkan model lainnya 1800 cc.

Untuk pasar di negara besar Eropa, Corolla digantikan oleh Auris. Auris berbentuk Hatchback 3 dan 5 pintu. Mesin yang digunakan adalah 1.4 dan 1.6 liter bensin, serta 2.0 dan 2.2 liter common rail diesel. Versi termahal adalah T180 yang bermesin 2.2 liter diesel. Mobil Sedan Corolla  hanya dipasarkan di Irlandia and beberapa negara Eropa saja.

Di Australia, baik model Sedan maupun Hatchback tetap menggunakan nama Corolla. Trim level untuk Mobil Sedan Corolla sama seperti generasi sebelumnya. Corolla Hatchback versi Australia sama dengan Auris, dan tersedia dalam trim level Ascent, Conquest, Sportivo SX, dan Sportivo ZR.

Di Indonesia, Mobil Sedan Corolla terbaru ini diluncurkan pada 28 Februari 2008 dengan 3 grade, yaitu : 1.8 V A/T, 1.8 G A/T, dan 1.8 J M/T. Mesin yang digunakan tetap mesin 1ZZ-FE 1800 cc VVT-i 16 valve dengan mematuhi aturan emisi yang lebih ketat (EURO III). dilengkapi 4 speed A/T triptronic transmission dan 5 speed M/T; Fitur cruise control dapat ditemukan di 1.8 V A/T. Pada tahun 2009, Corolla dengan grade V mendapat mesin baru 3ZR-FE 2000 cc dengan Dual VVT-i, sedangkan model lainnya tetap menggunakan mesin 1800 cc.

Mobil Sedan Corolla Altis versi facelift diperkenalkan pada 2010 Indonesia International Motor Show. Semua model hadir dengan bumper, grille, dan lampu belakang baru. Model 1.8 E and 1.8 G hadir dengan mesin baru 2ZR-FE Dual VVT-i. Transmisi untuk 1.8 E adalah 6 speed manual, sedangkan 1.8 G menggunakan 5 speed CVT automatic.

-- Keuntungan dan Kelebihan Mobil Sedan Corolla --

1. Perawatan Yang Mudah
2. Harga Jual Kembali Yang Tinggi
3. Mudah Dimodifikasi
4. Komponen yang Mudah Didapat
5. Tidak Mudah Rewel dan Bandel
6. Gaya dan Cocok untuk semua kalangan

MENJELAJAHI MASJID AGUNG BRUSSEL DI BELGIA

Masjid Agung Brussel – Belgia yang terletak di kawasan elit dalam taman Cinquantenaire Park kota Brussel dan tak jauh dari markas  besar Uni Eropa itu pada awalnya tidak diperuntukkan sebagai masjid melainkan sebagai paviliun pameran kebudayaan negeri negeri timur, selesai dibangun tahun 1879 dan setahun kemudian di digunakan sebagai gedung eksebisi nasional Belgia. Di tahun tersebut komunitas muslim Belgia belum lagi dikenal.
Organisasi Islam pertama di Belgia, Islamic and Cultural Centre Belgium, baru berdiri di tahun 1963 atau 84 tahun setelah gedung pameran tersebut selesai dibangun.  Pada awal pendiriannya Islamic and Cultural Center Belgium berkantor di gedung sewaan di kawasan sederhana kota Brussels, berkat bantuan dari kedutaan negara negara Islam di Brussels waktu itu.

Bangunan aslinya dibangun oleh arsitek Ernest Van Humbeek dalam gaya bahasa Arab, untuk membentuk Pavilion Oriental dari National Exhibition di Brussels pada tahun 1880. Pada saat itu paviliun ditempati lukisan monumental pada kanvas : “Panorama Kairo”, oleh  pelukis Belgia Emile Wauters , yang telah sukses besar. Namun, kurangnya pemeliharaan pada abad kedua puluh menyebabkan bangunan memburuk secara bertahap.

Pada tahun 1967, King Baudouin membuat hadiah bangunan untuk Raja Faisal bin Abdul Aziz dari Arab Saudi , dalam kunjungan resmi ke Belgia, bangunan tersebut mungkin berubah menjadi tempat ibadah untuk penggunaan komunitas Muslim Belgia yang telah berkembang cukup pada saat itu. Masjid, setelah rekonstruksi panjang dilakukan dengan mengorbankan Arab Saudi oleh Tunisia arsitek Boubaker, diresmikan pada tahun 1978 di hadapan Khalid ibn Abd al-Aziz dan Baudouin. Masjid ini peran lembaga keagamaan terkemuka dalam Belgia Islam peran yang dimaksudkan sebagai jembatan diplomatik antara Saudi dan Belgia masyarakat serta monarki-telah menjadi titik perdebatan sejak kembali berdiri.

Saat ini juga menjadi tuan rumah sebuah sekolah dan pusat penelitian Islam yang tujuannya adalah untuk menyebarkan agama Islam. Pusat ini juga menyediakan kursus bahasa Arab untuk orang dewasa dan anak-anak, serta kursus pengantar dalam Islam .

Sumber : http://khalistatour.com

Baca Artikel Lainnya : MAKNA IBADAH HAJI DAN UMRAH

Kekacauan di Area Penerbangan Setelah Kena Turbulensi

LONDON, Saco-Indonesia.com - Inilah yang terjadi ketika anda terkena turbulensi ekstrem sesaat setelah sarapan disajikan. Para penumpang sebuah penerbangan Singapure Airlines baru-baru ini mengalami kekacauan di kabin setelah penerbangan mereka mengalami guncangan keras dan mendadak terhempas (kehilangan ketinggian).

Sebanyak 11 penumpang dan seorang awak terluka dalam insiden yang dialami penumpang bernomor penerbangan SQ308 dari Singapura menuju London itu.

Seorang penumpang pada penerbangan itu, yang melihat kopinya berakhir di langit-langit kabin, berhasil mengambil sejumlah gambar yang ia posting ke Instagram. Penumpang bernama Alan Cross itu mengatakan kepada ABC News bahwa para penumpang dalam penerbangan itu telah diperingatkan akan mengalami turbulensi dan bahwa layanan sarapan akan dihentikan sementara.

Beberapa saat kemudian tanda sabuk dikenakan muncul. Kapten pun mengeluarkan perintah agar semua awak kabin segera kembali ke tempat duduk. Cross mengatakan, turbulensi yang kemudian terjadi terasa 'seperti berada dalam lift yang kabelnya terpotong atau seperti terjun bebas dari komedi putar."

Ia mengatakan, segala sesuatu yang tidak terikat, termasuk orang-orang, menghantam langit-langit.

Maskapai itiu mengatakan kepada Australia News seperti dikutip Mail Online, Senin, "Sebelas penumpang dan seorang awak menderita luka ringan saat pesawat itu tiba-tiba mengalami kehilangan ketinggian dan (mereka) menjalani perawatan medis saat tiba di Bandara Heathrow (London). Tanda-tanda kenakan sabuk pengaman telah muncul dan layanan makan sudah ditangguhkan."

Cross berkata, para awak kabin sangat mengagumkan setelah guncangan itu terjadi, mereka dengan tenang dan efisien melakukan bersih-bersih. Dia mengatakan para awak memeriksa yang cedera sebelum membersihkan kekacauan dan memberikan penumpang sejumlah kotak cokelat saat mereka di Heathrow, di mana mereka ditemui paramedis.

Menurut Mail Online, awal tahun ini, para ilmuwan sudah menyatakan bahwa perubahan iklim dapat mengakibatkan penerbangan dari London ke New York akan semakin menggucang di masa depan. Para peneliti dari universitas East Anglia dan Reading menganalisa simulasi superkomputer prihal kondisi atmosfer di atas Atlantik Utara dan mengklaim perubahan iklim akan meningkatkan turbulensi udara.

KIRIM MOBIL MURAH

Kirim Mobil dengan harga murah pasti telah banyak dinantikan oleh semua orang kan, apalagi diindonesia sangat cinta dengan yang nama nya diskon, kalo yang namanya potongan harga dimana mana pasti akan dikerubungi oleh pembeli.

Nah, Jika ada Jasa Pengiriman Mobil murah , mungkin bisa jadi dikerubungi oleh banyak orang , ya kan ? semua bisa terjadi

Jasa kirim Mobil akan Dibutuhkan oleh orang orang yang baru membeli mobil dari luar kota, jasa ini mungkin salah satu solusinya, nggak mungkin kalo mobil tu dibawa dengan tas jinjing ada ada saja.

Ok , Semangat Ya Menjalani Hari ini.

ATUT SAMBANGI GEDUNG KPK

saco-indonesia.com, Tersangka dalam kasus suap Pemilukada Lebak, Ratu Atut Chosiyah telah kembali menyambangi Gedung KPK untuk dapat menjalani pemeriksaan. Atut datang bersama tersangka dalam suap pengurusan impor daging sapi di Kementerian Pertanian, Maria Elizabeth Liman.

Setibanya di KPK, Atut yang berpakaian serba hitam ini juga tak mau berkomentar apapun. Dia datang dengan mengenakan batik celana, jilbab, dan sepatu kets New Balance MR085 warna hitam. Ini adalah kali kedua Atut telah diperiksa sebagai tersangka.

Atut sendiri nampak segar. Wajah Atut telah menunjukkan kesiapannya untuk dapat diperiksa KPK dan tak nampak tertekan.

Bidikan kamera yang lebih menyorot Atut, dimanfaatkan Maria yang berjalan di belakang Atut untuk dapat menghindari pertanyaan wartawan. Dia langsung melenggang masuk ke ruang penyidikan.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Ruth Rendell, Novelist Who Thrilled and Educated, Dies at 85

Ms. Rendell was a prolific writer of intricately plotted mystery novels that combined psychological insight, social conscience and teeth-chattering terror.

Bruce Alger, 96, Dies; Led ‘Mink Coat’ Protest Against Lyndon Johnson

Mr. Alger, who served five terms from Texas, led Republican women in a confrontation with Lyndon B. Johnson that may have cost Richard M. Nixon the 1960 presidential election.

Ben Carson Says He’ll Seek 2016 G.O.P. Nomination

ate in February, Dr. Ben Carson, the celebrated pediatric neurosurgeon turned political insurrectionist, was trying to check off another box on his presidential-campaign to-do list: hiring a press secretary. The lead prospect, a public-relations specialist named Deana Bass, had come to meet him at the dimly lit Capitol Hill office of Carson’s confidant and business manager, Armstrong Williams. Carson sat back and scrutinized her from behind a small granite table, as life-size cardboard cutouts of more conventional politicians — President Obama, with a tight smile, and Senator John McCain, glowering — loomed behind each of his shoulders. (The mock $3 bill someone had left on a table in Williams’s waiting room undercut any notion that this was a bipartisan zone; it featured Obama wearing a turban.)

Bass seemed momentarily speechless, and not just because no one had warned her that a New York Times reporter would be sitting in on her job interview. Though she knew Williams — a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur who owns several television stations and a public-affairs business and who hosts a daily talk-radio show — through Washington’s small circle of black conservatives, the two hadn’t spoken in years until he called her two days earlier. He had been struggling to come up with the perfect national spokesperson, he told her. Then, at the gym, her name popped into his head; Williams was fairly certain she was the one. Sitting across from a likely candidate for president, Bass was adjusting to the idea that her life might be about to take a sudden chaotic turn.

“It’s like getting the most random call on a Monday that you simply do not see coming,” she said. “Oftentimes, that is how the Lord works.”

Carson concurred: “It’s always how he works in my life.” Carson is soft-spoken and often talks with his eyes half closed, frequently punctuating his sentences with a small laugh, even if the humor of his statement is not readily apparent. Bass told Carson that she had been a Republican staff member on Capitol Hill then worked for the Republican National Committee. In 2007 she started a Christian public-relations firm with her sister. She enjoyed working on the Hill, she said, but the pay wasn’t as high as the hours were long. “We figured that we worked like slaves for other people, and we wanted to work for ourselves.”

Carson stopped her. “You know you can’t mention that word, right?” Carson waited a beat, then laughed, and Williams and Bass joined in. He was getting to the point; he needed a professional who could help him check his penchant for creating uncontrolled controversy just by talking.

The Ben Carson movement began in 2013, when Carson, a neurosurgeon, whose operating-room prowess and up-from-poverty back story had made him the subject of a television movie and a regular on the inspirational-speaking circuit, was invited to address the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. With Barack Obama sitting just two seats away, Carson warned that “moral decay” and “fiscal irresponsibility” could destroy America just as it did ancient Rome. He proposed a substitute for Obamacare — Health Savings Accounts, which, he said, would end any talk of “death panels” — and a flat-tax based on the concept of tithing. His address, combined with the president’s stony reaction, was a smash with Republican activists. Speaking and interview requests flooded in. Carson, then 61, announced his planned retirement a few weeks later, freeing his calendar to accept just about all of them. In the months that followed, his rhetoric became increasingly strident. The claim that drew the most attention, perhaps, was that Obamacare was “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

Bass’s own use of the word prompted Carson to ask her what she thought about that incident. She considered for a moment.

“If you want to reach people and have them even understand what you’re saying, there is a way to do it, without that hyperbole, that might be. . . . ” She paused. “I just think it’s important not to shut people off before they —”

Carson jumped in. “That doesn’t allow them to hear what you’re saying?”

Bass nodded.

Likening Obamacare to slavery — and slavery was incomparably worse, Carson said — had its political advantages for a candidacy like his. It was the kind of statement that stoked the angriest of the Republican voters: conservative stalwarts who can’t hear enough bad things about Obama. This, in turn, led to more talk-radio and Fox News appearances, more book sales, more donations to the super PAC started in his name, more support in the polls. (The day before the meeting, one poll of Republican voters showed Carson statistically tied for first place with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.)

Rhetorical excess was good for business, but Carson now wants to be seen as more than a novelty candidate. He has come to learn that such extreme analogies, while true to his views, aren’t especially presidential. They alienate more moderate voters and, perhaps even more damaging, reinforce the impression that he is not “serious” — that he is another Herman Cain, the black former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive who rose to the top of the early presidential polls in 2011 but then bowed out before the Iowa caucuses, largely because of leaked allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied but from which he never recovered. Cain lingers as a cautionary tale for the party as much as for a right-leaning candidate like Carson. The fact that Cain, with his folksy sayings (“shucky ducky”) and misnomers (“Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”), reached the top of the national polls — much less that he was eventually followed there by the likes of Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who all topped one or another poll in the 2012 primary season — wound up being a considerable embarrassment for the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, and for the longtime party regulars who were trying to fast-track his way to the nomination.

Carson liked Bass and, without directly saying so, made it clear the job was hers for the taking. Carson’s campaign chairman, Terry Giles — a white lawyer whose clients have included the comedian Richard Pryor and the stepson of the model Anna Nicole Smith and who helped reconcile the business interests of the descendants of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — had assembled a mostly white campaign team, including many from the 2012 Gingrich effort, and Carson wanted a person of color to speak for him. Bass said she would have to mull it over, pray about it. Carson nodded approvingly. “Pray about it,” he said. “See what you think.”

Williams knew the party was intent on protecting the eventual 2016 nominee from the same embarrassment Romney suffered. Already, suspiciously tough articles about Carson were showing up in conservative magazines and on right-wing websites. “They’re protecting these establishment candidates,” Williams said. “This is coming from within the house. This is family.” At the very least, he wanted to make sure that Carson didn’t do their work for them. (Carson would commit another unforced error a week later, when he told CNN that homosexuality was clearly a choice, because a lot of people go in prison straight and “when they come out, they’re gay”; he later apologized.)

“We need somebody to protect him, sometimes, from himself,” he told Bass — laughing, but only half kidding.

A candidacy like Carson’s presents a new kind of problem to the establishment wing of the G.O.P., which, at least since 1980, has selected its presidential nominees with a routine efficiency that Democrats could only envy. The establishment candidate has usually been a current or former governor or senator, blandly Protestant, hailing from the moderate, big-business wing of the party (or at least friendly with it) and almost always a second-, third- or fourth-time national contender — someone who had waited “his turn.” These candidates would tack predictably to the right during the primaries to satisfy the evangelicals, deficit hawks, libertarian leaners and other inconvenient but vital constituents who made up the “base” of the party. In return, the base would, after a brief flirtation with some fantasy candidate like Steve Forbes or Pat Buchanan, “hold their noses” and deliver their votes come November. This bargain was always tenuous, of course, and when some of the furthest-right activists turned against George W. Bush, citing (among other apostasies) his expansion of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, it began to fall apart. After Barack Obama defeated McCain in 2008, the party’s once dependable base started to reconsider the wisdom of holding their noses at all.

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This insurgent attitude was helped along by changes in the nomination rules. In 2010, the Republican National Committee, hoping to capture the excitement of the coast-to-coast Democratic primary competition between Obama and Hillary Clinton, introduced new voting rules that required many of the early voting states to award some delegates to losing candidates, based on their shares of the vote. The proportional voting rules would encourage struggling candidates to stay in the primaries even after successive losses, as Clinton did, because they might be able to pull together enough delegates to take the nomination in a convention-floor fight or at least use them to bargain for a prime speaking slot or cabinet post.

This shift in incentives did not go unnoticed by potential 2012 candidates, nor did changes in election law that allowed billionaire donors to form super PACs in support of pet candidacies. At the same time, increasingly widespread broadband Internet access allowed candidates to reach supporters directly with video and email appeals and supporters to send money with the tap of a smartphone, making it easier than ever for individual candidates to ignore the wishes of the party.

Into this newly chaotic Republican landscape strode Mitt Romney. There could be no doubt that it was his turn, and yet his journey to the nomination was interrupted by one against-the-odds challenger after another — Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul; always Ron Paul. It was easy to dismiss the 2012 primaries as a meaningless circus, but the onslaught did much more than tarnish the overall Republican brand. It also forced Romney to spend money he could have used against Obama and defend his right flank with embarrassing pandering that shadowed him through the general election. It was while trying to block a surge from Gingrich, for instance, that Romney told a debate audience that he was for the “self-deportation” of undocumented immigrants.

At the 2012 convention in Tampa, a group of longtime party hands, including Romney’s lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, gathered to discuss how to prevent a repeat of what had become known inside and outside the party as the “clown show.” Their aim was not just to protect the party but also to protect a potential President Romney from a primary challenge in 2016. They forced through new rules that would give future presumptive nominees more control over delegates in the event of a convention fight. They did away with the mandatory proportional delegate awards that encouraged long-shot candidacies. And, in a noticeably targeted effort, they raised the threshold that candidates needed to meet to enter their names into nomination, just as Ron Paul’s supporters were working to reach it. When John A. Boehner gaveled the rules in on a voice vote — a vote that many listeners heard as a tie, if not an outright loss — the hall erupted and a line of Ron Paul supporters walked off the floor in protest, along with many Tea Party members.

At a party meeting last winter, Reince Priebus, who as party chairman is charged with maintaining the support of all his constituencies, did restore some proportional primary and caucus voting, but only in states that held voting within a shortened two-week window. And he also condensed the nominating schedule to four and a half months from six months, and, for the first time required candidates to participate in a shortened debate schedule, determined by the party, not by the whims of the networks. (The panel that recommended those changes included names closely identified with the establishment — the former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, the Mississippi committeeman Haley Barbour and, notably, Jeb Bush’s closest adviser, Sally Bradshaw.)

Grass-roots activists have complained that the condensed schedule robs nonestablishment candidates — “movement candidates” like Carson — of the extra time they need to build momentum, money and organizations. But Priebus, who says the nomination could be close to settled by April, said it helped all the party’s constituencies when the nominee was decided quickly. “We don’t need a six-month slice-and-dice festival,” Priebus said when we spoke in mid-March. “While I can’t always control everyone’s mouth, I can control how long we can kill each other.”

All the rules changes were built to sidestep the problems of 2012. But the 2016 field is shaping up to be vastly different and far larger. A new Republican hints that he or she is considering a run seemingly every week. There are moderates like Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and former Gov. George Pataki of New York; no-compromise conservatives like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; business-wingers like the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina; one-of-a-kinds like Donald Trump — some 20 in all, a dozen or so who seem fairly serious about it. That opens the possibility of multiple candidates vying for all the major Republican constituencies, some of them possibly goaded along by super-PAC-funding billionaires, all of them trading wins and collecting delegates well into spring.

Giles says his candidate can capitalize on all that chaos. Rivals may laugh, but Giles argues that if Carson can make a respectable showing in Iowa, then win in South Carolina — or at least come in second should a home-state senator, Lindsey Graham, run — and come in second behind Bush or Senator Marco Rubio in their home state of Florida, he could be positioned to make a real run. But that would depend on avoiding pitfalls like Carson’s ill-considered comments on homosexuality. Rather than capitalizing on the chaos, Carson may only contribute to it.

Ben Carson is, in many ways, the ideal Republican presidential candidate. With a not-too-selective reading of his life story, conservative voters can — and do — see in him an inspiring, up-from-nowhere African-American who shares their beliefs, a right-wing answer to Barack Obama. Before he was born, his parents moved to Detroit from rural Tennessee as part of the second great migration. His father, Robert Solomon Carson, worked at a Cadillac factory. His mother, Sonya — who herself had grown up as one of 24 children and left school at third grade — cleaned houses. When Carson was 8, Sonya discovered that Robert was keeping a second family. She moved, with her two sons, into a rundown group house. It was in a part of town that Carson described to me as crawling with “big rats and roaches and all kinds of horrible things.” Sonya worked several jobs at a time and made up the shortfall with food stamps. (Carson has called for paring back the social safety net but not doing away with it.)

Carson recounts this story in his best-selling 1990 memoir, “Gifted Hands,” which also became the basis for a 2009 movie on TNT, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carson. Raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, Carson realized that he wanted to become a physician during a church sermon about a missionary doctor who, while serving overseas, was almost attacked by thieves but found safety by putting his faith in God. When Carson, then 8, told his mother his new dream, “She said, ‘Absolutely, you could do it, you could do anything,’ ” he told me. Forced by his mother to read two extra books a week, he made it to Yale, then to medical school at the University of Michigan, where he decided to specialize in neurosurgery. He was selected for residency at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, where he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at 33, becoming the youngest person, and the first black person, to hold the title. He drew national attention by conducting a succession of operations that had never been performed successfully, most famously planning and managing the first separation of conjoined twins connected through major blood vessels in the brain.

Carson, a two-time Jimmy Carter voter, traces his conservative political awakening to a patient he met during the Reagan years. During a routine obstetrics rotation, he found himself treating an unwed pregnant teenager who had run away from her well-to-do parents. When Carson asked her how she was getting by, she informed him she was on public assistance; this led him to ponder the fact that the government was paying for the result of what he did not view as a “wise decision.” The incident, he says, fed his growing sense that the welfare system too often saps motivation and rewards irresponsible behavior. (When we spoke, he suggested that the government should cut off assistance to would-be unwed mothers, but only after warning them that it would do so within a certain amount of time, say five years. “I bet you’d see a dramatic decrease in unwed motherhood.”)

Carson’s friends at Hopkins say they do not remember him being particularly outspoken about his conservatism. He devoted most of his public engagement to urging poor kids in bad neighborhoods to use “these fancy brains God gave us,” through weekly school visits, student hospital tours and, ultimately, a multimillion-dollar scholarship program. “His issues were always medical care for the poor, education for the poor, equal opportunity — helping the less fortunate and really inspiring them as an example,” a mentor who named him to the chief pediatrics-neurosurgery post at Hopkins, Dr. Donlin Long, told me.

Even when Carson got the chance, in 1997, to speak in front of President Bill Clinton, at the national prayer breakfast, he mostly discussed the lack of role models for black children who were not sports stars or rappers. (There was possibly an oblique reference to Clinton’s sex scandals, when he told the audience that, if they are always honest, they won’t have to worry later about “skeletons in the closet.”)

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In 2011, Carson’s politics took a strident turn, mirroring that of many in his party during the Obama years. “America the Beautiful,” his sixth book, which he wrote with Candy Carson, his wife of 39 years, included a get-tough-on-illegal-immigration message and offered anti-establishment praise for the Tea Party. It suggested that blacks who voted for Obama only because he was black were themselves practicing a form of racism. (Earlier this year he admitted to Buzzfeed that portions of the book were lifted directly from several sources without proper attribution.) His prayer-breakfast performance in 2013, and the extremity of his remarks in the months afterward (Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery; the United States is “very much like Nazi Germany”; allowing same-sex marriage could lead to allowing bestiality), left some of his old friends bewildered. Students at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine protested his planned convocation address there in 2013, and he eventually backed out. When I asked Carson about the view at Hopkins that he had changed, he said his themes are still the same: “hard work, self-reliance, helping other people.” If he had become more overtly political, he said, it was only because the Obama years had led him to believe that “we’re really moving in a direction that is very, very destructive.”

None of this went unnoticed by campaign professionals. In August 2013, John Philip Sousa IV and Vernon Robinson, each of whom professes to be a virtual stranger to Carson, and who had previously been active in the anti-illegal-immigration movement, started the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. Sousa was just coming off a campaign to defend the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, from a recall effort, and he told me that he found Carson’s lack of political experience refreshing. “We have 500 guys and gals with probably a collective 5,000 years experience, and look at the mess we’re in,” he said.

Many others in the party feel the same way. Carson’s PAC finished 2014 with more than $13 million in donations, more than Ready for Hillary. Much of its money has gone toward further fund-raising, but Sousa — the great-grandson of the famous composer — points out that their effort has already built far more than just a war chest, organizing leaders in all 99 of Iowa’s counties. Regardless, Carson credits the fund-raising success of Sousa and Robinson with persuading him to enter the race.

Very early the morning after the job interview, Carson was in a black S.U.V., heading from Washington to the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., where he was to give the opening candidate speech of the Conservative Political Action Conference. The event, which functions as an early tryout for Republican presidential contenders, tends to skew rightward in its audience, drawing many of the same sorts of people who shouted at Boehner in Tampa. As such, it tends to favor anti-establishment candidates, but the news leading up to this year’s event was that Jeb Bush hoped to make inroads there.

It was still dark when we set out, and I joked with Carson about the hour, telling him he’d better get used to it. He retorted that his career in pediatric brain surgery made him no stranger to early mornings. This is a big theme of Carson’s presidential pitch: that neither the rigors of the campaign nor those of the White House can faze a man who held children’s lives in his hands. His life in brain surgery has prepared him for the presidency, he maintains, better than lives in politics have for his rivals. At the very least, he says, it conditioned him against getting too worked up about any problem that isn’t life threatening. “I mean, it’s grueling, but interestingly enough, I don’t feel the pressure,” he said.

At the convention hall, we were quickly surrounded by admirers. Two women were already waiting to meet him — white, middle-aged volunteers for Carson’s super PAC, who had traveled from South Carolina. One of them, Chris Horne, was holding a dog-eared and taped Bible. A founding member of the Charleston Tea Party who went on to work for Gingrich’s successful South Carolina primary campaign in 2012, Horne lamented over the attacks that Carson was sure to face. “You served us, you served the Lord, just don’t let them steal that from you,” she said. Her friend told him, “You’ve got God behind you!” Such religious evocations trailed Carson constantly while I walked the CPAC floor with him. Evangelicals are impressed not only with his devotion to their politics but also with his career path; as one of them told me, what’s more pro-life than saving babies?

During our ride to the conference, Carson told me his speech was not looking to “feed the beast.” When his appointed time came, he kept his remarks as tame as promised. “Real compassion” meant “using our intellect” to help people “climb out of dependency and realize the American dream,” he said. The national debt is going to “destroy us,” Obamacare was about “redistribution and control,” but Republicans better come forward with their own alternative before they repeal it, he said.

Because his speech was first, and it started several minutes early, the auditorium was slow to fill. Still, the first day saw a crush of people seeking autographs and pictures as he roamed the hall. The Draft Carson committee’s 150 volunteers swarmed the auditorium, collecting emails and handing out “Run Ben Run” stickers. After a quick interview with Sean Hannity, the conservative-radio and Fox News host — his second in two days — Carson was off to Tampa.

In the hours that followed his talk, the hall offered a view in miniature of what the next 12 to 14 months might hold for the party. Chris Christie, sitting across from the tough-minded talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, boasted about his multiple vetoes of Planned Parenthood funding, his refusal to raise income taxes and his belief that “sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up.” Cruz, an audience favorite, warning his fellow Republicans against falling for a “squishy moderate,” declared, “Take all 125,000 I.R.S. agents and put ’em on our Southern border!” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, surging in polls, boasted that if he could face down the 100,000 union supporters who protested his legislation limiting collective bargaining for public employees, he could certainly handle ISIS. The next day, the traditional CPAC favorite Rand Paul spoke, packing the hall with his supporters who chanted “President Paul.” He warned, counter to the overall hawkish tenor of the event, that “we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad.” But he also vowed to end foreign aid to countries whose citizens are seen burning American flags. “Not one penny more to these haters of America.”

Perhaps the defining moment came near the end of the conference, when Jeb Bush spoke. In a neat trick of political gamesmanship — and a show of establishment muscle — his team had bused in an ample cheering section for the dozens of cameras on hand for his appearance. But a small contingent of Tea Party activists and Rand Paul supporters staged a walk out. When Bush began a question-and-answer session, they turned and left the auditorium to chant “U.S.A., U.S.A.” in the hallway, led by a man in colonial garb waving a huge “Don’t Tread on Me” banner. Plenty of other detractors stayed in the hall and peppered Bush’s remarks with booing as he stood by positions unpopular with the conservative grass roots: support for the Common Core standards and an immigration overhaul that provides a “path to legal status” for undocumented immigrants. Bush took it all in good humor, but finally seemed to give up.

“For those who made an ‘oo’ sound — is that what it was? — I’m marking you down as neutral,” he said. “And I want to be your second choice.”

Bush strategists told me they would not repeat Romney’s mistakes. Of course they would love to glide to an early nomination, they said, but they are prepared for a long contest and won’t be wasting any energy bending under pressure from a Paul or a Cruz or a Carson.

No one doubts that the pressure will increase, though. Despite the best wishes of the party’s leaders, GOP primary voters have given little indication that they will narrow the field quickly.

Before I left, I spotted Newt Gingrich, himself a fleeting presidential front-runner during those strange primary days of 2012. I asked him whether he thought all the party maneuvering — all the attempts to change the rules and fast-track the process — would preclude someone from presenting the sort of outside primary challenge he had carried out in the last election.

“No,” he told me, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Look at where Ben Carson is right now.”

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With Iran Talks, a Tangled Path to Ending Syria’s War

UNITED NATIONS — Wearing pinstripes and a pince-nez, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, arrived at the Security Council one Tuesday afternoon in February and announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to halt airstrikes over Aleppo. Would the rebels, Mr. de Mistura suggested, agree to halt their shelling?

What he did not announce, but everyone knew by then, was that the Assad government had begun a military offensive to encircle opposition-held enclaves in Aleppo and that fierce fighting was underway. It would take only a few days for rebel leaders, having pushed back Syrian government forces, to outright reject Mr. de Mistura’s proposed freeze in the fighting, dooming the latest diplomatic overture on Syria.

Diplomacy is often about appearing to be doing something until the time is ripe for a deal to be done.

Now, with Mr. Assad’s forces having suffered a string of losses on the battlefield and the United States reaching at least a partial rapprochement with Mr. Assad’s main backer, Iran, Mr. de Mistura is changing course. Starting Monday, he is set to hold a series of closed talks in Geneva with the warring sides and their main supporters. Iran will be among them.

In an interview at United Nations headquarters last week, Mr. de Mistura hinted that the changing circumstances, both military and diplomatic, may have prompted various backers of the war to question how much longer the bloodshed could go on.

“Will that have an impact in accelerating the willingness for a political solution? We need to test it,” he said. “The Geneva consultations may be a good umbrella for testing that. It’s an occasion for asking everyone, including the government, if there is any new way that they are looking at a political solution, as they too claim they want.”

He said he would have a better assessment at the end of June, when he expects to wrap up his consultations. That coincides with the deadline for a final agreement in the Iran nuclear talks.

Whether a nuclear deal with Iran will pave the way for a new opening on peace talks in Syria remains to be seen. Increasingly, though, world leaders are explicitly linking the two, with the European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, suggesting last week that a nuclear agreement could spur Tehran to play “a major but positive role in Syria.”

It could hardly come soon enough. Now in its fifth year, the Syrian war has claimed 220,000 lives, prompted an exodus of more than three million refugees and unleashed jihadist groups across the region. “This conflict is producing a question mark in many — where is it leading and whether this can be sustained,” Mr. de Mistura said.

Part Italian, part Swedish, Mr. de Mistura has worked with the United Nations for more than 40 years, but he is more widely known for his dapper style than for any diplomatic coups. Syria is by far the toughest assignment of his career — indeed, two of the organization’s most seasoned diplomats, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan, tried to do the job and gave up — and critics have wondered aloud whether Mr. de Mistura is up to the task.

He served as a United Nations envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and before that in Lebanon, where a former minister recalled, with some scorn, that he spent many hours sunbathing at a private club in the hills above Beirut. Those who know him say he has a taste for fine suits and can sometimes speak too soon and too much, just as they point to his diplomatic missteps and hyperbole.

They cite, for instance, a news conference in October, when he raised the specter of Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims were massacred in 1995 during the Balkans war, in warning that the Syrian border town of Kobani could fall to the Islamic State. In February, he was photographed at a party in Damascus, the Syrian capital, celebrating the anniversary of the Iranian revolution just as Syrian forces, aided by Iran, were pummeling rebel-held suburbs of Damascus; critics seized on that as evidence of his coziness with the government.

Mouin Rabbani, who served briefly as the head of Mr. de Mistura’s political affairs unit and has since emerged as one of his most outspoken critics, said Mr. de Mistura did not have the background necessary for the job. “This isn’t someone well known for his political vision or political imagination, and his closest confidants lack the requisite knowledge and experience,” Mr. Rabbani said.

As a deputy foreign minister in the Italian government, Mr. de Mistura was tasked in 2012 with freeing two Italian marines detained in India for shooting at Indian fishermen. He made 19 trips to India, to little effect. One marine was allowed to return to Italy for medical reasons; the other remains in India.

He said he initially turned down the Syria job when the United Nations secretary general approached him last August, only to change his mind the next day, after a sleepless, guilt-ridden night.

Mr. de Mistura compared his role in Syria to that of a doctor faced with a terminally ill patient. His goal in brokering a freeze in the fighting, he said, was to alleviate suffering. He settled on Aleppo as the location for its “fame,” he said, a decision that some questioned, considering that Aleppo was far trickier than the many other lesser-known towns where activists had negotiated temporary local cease-fires.

“Everybody, at least in Europe, are very familiar with the value of Aleppo,” Mr. de Mistura said. “So I was using that as an icebreaker.”

The cease-fire negotiations, to which he had devoted six months, fell apart quickly because of the government’s military offensive in Aleppo the very day of his announcement at the Security Council. Privately, United Nations diplomats said Mr. de Mistura had been manipulated. To this, Mr. de Mistura said only that he was “disappointed and concerned.”

Tarek Fares, a former rebel fighter, said after a recent visit to Aleppo that no Syrian would admit publicly to supporting Mr. de Mistura’s cease-fire proposal. “If anyone said they went to a de Mistura meeting in Gaziantep, they would be arrested,” is how he put it, referring to the Turkish city where negotiations between the two sides were held.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon remains staunchly behind Mr. de Mistura’s efforts. His defenders point out that he is at the center of one of the world’s toughest diplomatic problems, charged with mediating a conflict in which two of the world’s most powerful nations — Russia, which supports Mr. Assad, and the United States, which has called for his ouster — remain deadlocked.

R. Nicholas Burns, a former State Department official who now teaches at Harvard, credited Mr. de Mistura for trying to negotiate a cease-fire even when the chances of success were exceedingly small — and the chances of a political deal even smaller. For his efforts to work, Professor Burns argued, the world powers will first have to come to an agreement of their own.

“He needs the help of outside powers,” he said. “It starts with backers of Assad. That’s Russia and Iran. De Mistura is there, waiting.”