Jonathan Alter

We can now be confident that last week’s massacre of 26 women and children at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, will not be swept under the carpet like so many mass shootings of the past. President Barack Obama said Dec. 19 that he would act “without delay” after hearing from Vice President Joe Biden’s […]

Cruelty, fear, cowardice, xenophobia and disrespect invaded the inner sanctum of the U.S. government this week, bringing embarrassment and dishonor to what was once the greatest deliberative body in the world: the U.S. Senate. On Dec. 4, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, an 89- year-old Republican whose right arm was shattered in combat during […]

For all the talk of tax increases and debt-cutting, President Barack Obama’s biggest and most- revealing decision this year may be which candidate he chooses to be his new secretary of state. It will tell us whether the president allows comfort to trump qualification. The two candidates are Susan Rice, the U.S. envoy to the […]

U.S. presidents’ second terms often turn out to be failures in domestic policy, largely because lame ducks are almost by definition political figures of the past. Yet President Barack Obama’s winning coalition is aligned with the future of the country, giving him a fresh chance to lead. To do so, he must repair his badly […]

The victory of Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts marks the arrival in the Senate of a major new figure in American politics. To be effective, she will have to lay low for a few years, as Hillary Clinton and Al Franken did. We’ll see if she has the patience and good sense to do so. But […]

You have to hand it to Mitt Romney and his team. Starting in the first debate, he pivoted almost effortlessly to the center, which is where elections are won. If he beats President Barack Obama, it will be because he Etch-A- Sketched his earlier positions and convinced enough people that he would be a moderate […]

Florida Senator Marco Rubio recently appeared for coffee at Bloomberg View in New York and made a good impression, if you don’t count his failure to identify even one tax loophole or deduction he would eliminate to help pay for a 20-percent reduction in tax rates. But he didn’t make any news until he was […]

Who woulda thunk that Joe Biden, of all people, would drag a onetime rock-star president over the finish line? Only a few months ago, plenty of Democrats wanted the vice president dumped from the ticket in favor of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now he is saving Barack Obama’s bacon. Historically, vice-presidential debates have had […]

A funny thing’s happening on the way to Nov. 6. The billionaires trying to buy the U.S. election with contributions of $1 million, $10 million or even $100 million aren’t succeeding. If trends continue and the Democrats have a good year (still a big if), the notion that in order to win candidates must accept […]

Mitt Romney’s attack on the nearly half of America that doesn’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives” may not have been “elegantly stated,” as he said last night in his effort at damage control, but it clearly reflected his world view. For a fuller explanation of the thinking behind his remarks, here’s what […]