As he golfs and bikes on Martha’s Vineyard, President Barack Obama will have plenty of time to think about how to get his presidency back on track. Some aides are calling the major speech he plans to deliver after Labor Day a “reset” of his administration. That may understate its political importance. Obama prides himself […]
Jonathan Alter
Jonathan Alter, a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, is a former senior editor and columnist at Newsweek, a filmmaker, journalist, political analyst, and the publisher of the Substack Old Goats with Jonathan Alter where this piece also appears. He is the author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life. His latest book is American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial--And My Own.
Posted inPolitics
Obama Shows Spunk Pushing Brave Education Plan
Although President Barack Obama is on the ropes, with even some Democratic allies describing him as weak and passive, this week he showed boldness and imagination in one vital area: education. Obama backed Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s announcement that he will grant waivers to states that want to be excused from the punitive provisions of […]
Posted inPolitics
Coming Lobbyist Brawl May (Really) Fix Our Taxes
Lobbyists, of all people, may soon inadvertently bring us what lobbyists have long fought against – – a flatter, simpler tax code that offers fewer gifts for special interests. As a bonus, it would also help bring down the deficit. To understand why this happy result may be in reach, we must return to a […]
Posted inPolitics
A Smart Jobs-Creation Idea Both Parties Can Love
Where’s Franklin Roosevelt when we need him? While campaigning amid 25 percent unemployment in 1932, Roosevelt argued for what he called “bold, persistent experimentation.” As he put it: “It is common sense to take one method and try it. If it fails, admit failure frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” This spirit […]
Posted inPolitics
Echoes: Who Really Won the Clinton-Gingrich Budget Showdowns?
I agree with what Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote recently, about the immediate future: the pressure is now on for even more deficit reduction. But her rosy view of Newt Gingrich and the 1990s leaves a lot out. First, wind back the clock to the summer of 1993, when Bill Clinton […]
Posted inMagazine
How the World Sees Us
or political reasons, Barack Obama cannot stress it on the campaign trail, but the stakes in 2008 are simple: the restoration of our image in the world and our image of ourselves. Everything else flows from that. Americas prestige in the world is central not for grandiose reasons but strictly pragmatic ones. Every big international […]
Posted inMagazine
The Fireside Chat that Roosevelt Threw Away
On Sunday, March 5, 1933, his first full day in the presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt awoke in a creaky narrow bed in the small bedroom of the White House family quarters he had chosen for himself. After his valet, Irvin McDuffie, helped him with the laborious task of putting on his iron leg braces and […]
Posted inMagazine
Beam Me Up, Scotty
This, I knew even then, was deeply unfair to Reston and his career. Over 40 years, he published an astonishing number of major scoops, and his analytical batting average was high. Through most of Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism, John F. Stacks judiciously explains Reston’s contributions and shortcomings […]
Posted inMay 2000
Political Booknotes: Chicago’s Cubs
I WAS A PEE-WEE BLEACHER bum-11 years old during the summer of 1969 when the Chicago Cubs broke my heart by blowing the pennant to the New York Mets. I grew up seven short blocks from Wrigley Field and on dozens of days each summer my mother would heed my pleas to pack me a […]
Posted inMagazine
TWM
One of the most enduring visual images of the news business is the “zipper” – the electronic display belt (most famously in Times Square) that relays breaking news to passersby. “Pearl Harbor attacked,” “FDR dead” “Space shuttle launched” – the zipper has always been concise, clear, and as “objective” as it is possible to be. […]
