In 1945, the average age in the Senate was fifty-nine. Today, it’s sixty-two. As our democracy becomes a gerontocracy, it raises all sorts of policy challenges. But for speechwriters, it raises a unique one. Over the course of the Senate’s history, 299 sitting senators have died in office—one death every nine months. That’s a lot […]
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Posted inPolitics
Monopoly Profits and Broken Promises
This Timothy Noah piece, from January 1984, examines the Washington Post at its period of greatest strength. Every now and then those of us who enthusiastically endorse the virtues of capitalism get a glimpse of its unattractive side. One particularly vivid moment of self-examination for the news business came in 1981, when the Washington Star […]
Posted inJuly/August 2013, Magazine, Politics
Talk of the Toons
A selection of recent political cartoons:
Posted inMagazine
The Monthly Interview: Ted Nordhaus
A conversation with Ted Nordhaus, the head of a green think tank who thinks that environmentalism is dead, nuclear energy and gas are alive, and maybe the conservatives had it right all along.
Posted inMagazine, May/June 2013, Politics
Talk of the Toons
A selection of political cartoons from the past few weeks.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, March/April 2013
The Monthly Interview
A conversation with Alexis Tsipras, the Greek opposition leader who could save, or blow up, the world economy.
Posted inMagazine, March/April 2013, Politics
Talk of the Toons
A selection of political cartoons from the past few weeks.
Posted inMagazine
Reflections on Race in America
“Certainly this is a country that was founded on slavery, genocide, land stealing, and policy marked by racism. But at the same time there are struggles to find our better angels, there are the struggles against slavery, for emancipation, civil rights, suffrage, and liberalization of immigration policy. So people should be focusing on our better […]
Posted inMagazine
The Stiff Man Has A Spine
There seems to be an unwritten rule in newsrooms today: A mention of Al Gore is incomplete without a reference to his wooden presence. “[M]ost of the press about Gore on the stump could run under the headline ‘Stiff man still stiff,’” Melinda Henneberger observed in The New York Times. Gail Collins remarked on Gore’s […]
