Nicholas Confessore

If you ask liberals who their favorite conservative pundit is, odds are they will name New York Times columnist David Brooks a writer with a reputation for perceptive social observation and less of an appetite for partisan red meat than the Bill Kristols and Charles Krauthammers of the world. But in a 2004 book review, […]

Not only was Brooks perhaps the first among that group of conservative thinkers who had advocated war against Iraq for nearly a decade to concede that his side had gotten things dreadfully wrong. He had also put his finger on the central failing of the war hawks–their purblind arrogance and self-delusion–with a degree of precision […]

Until recently, the Democrats could even the scales somewhat by raising “soft” money, the unlimited contributions from rich individuals, corporations, and labor unions that flowed to both parties in roughly equal amounts during the 1990s. But two years ago, the McCain-Feingold Act prohibited parties from raising soft money, a goal long sought by liberal newspaper […]

But perhaps Dean’s most impressive feat, admirers and critics alike agree, has been “taking on the Washington Democratic establishment,” as pundit Tucker Carlson recently put it on CNN. Dean has faced a phalanx of Washington-based candidates–Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.)–each of whom enjoys such establishment advantages as […]

In the fall of 1999, journalist James K. Glassman and economist Kevin A. Hassett published a book provocatively titled Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. The New Economy was not a high-tech version of tulipmania, they argued, and the stock market was not overvalued. Properly understood, […]

The chief purpose of these gatherings is to discuss jobs–specifically, the top one or two positions at the biggest and most important industry trade associations and corporate offices centered around Washington’s K Street, a canyon of nondescript office buildings a few blocks north of the White House that is to influence-peddling what Wall Street is […]

During the fall of 1999, George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas and a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, introduced what would become a staple of his stump speech over the following year. Appearing at The Citadel military academy, Bush painted a grim picture of the U.S. armed forces under Bill Clinton. […]

There have always been columnists who, for better or worse, commanded the greatest attention of their day. Think of Walter Lippmann during the postwar consensus, Joseph Kraft during the Vietnam era, or George Will during the Reagan years. William Safire heralded the Clinton backlash of the early 1990s, Maureen Dowd the frothy, decadent latter half […]