Magazine

His predictions were wrong as often as they were right; his poll-obsessions and willingness to work for racist Jesse Helms verged on nihilism. But, on the very biggest strategic questions, Morris gave Clinton advice that helped save his presidency. He understood that Clinton had blurred his political identity as a New Democrat in his first […]

Yet for those of us who served in the early Clinton White House, the little ways the Bush administration has tried so hard to look different are less striking than the one big way it looks familiar. A Southern governor with lots of charm but an uncertain mandate wins the presidency by promising to take […]

As her new book, Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism, reveals, that’s about par for the course. Ross’s journalism follows a conspicuous pattern: She meets a delightful subject, joins them on an exotic outing, and emerges with a sparkling piece of writing and a new friend. Examples here include, but are not limited to, Adlai Stevenson, […]

To divine whether Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is running for president, look no further than his garage. Kerry recently swapped his Italian-made Ducati racing motorcycle for an all-American Harley-Davidson. While it might help his populist appeal, motorcycling pols rarely find hog heaven: According to the company, no U.S. president has ever ridden a Harley-Davidson. Two […]

On March 4, 1841, about an hour and a half into the longest inaugural address in American history, President William Henry Harrison turned from his clause-by-clause celebration of the Constitution to warn of the lessons posed to the American republic from ancient Rome: “[T]he senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk […]

In Supreme Command, Eliot A. Cohen, professor and director of strategic studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, offers a look at the matter of civilian control of the military. Mercifully, his book enjoys a brevity that his title lacks. Cohen, who writes with concision and insight, […]

Like Bill Clinton, Cramer characterizes the Baby Boomer trait of wanting to prove to everyone that he’s smarter than they are, and at the same time be loved for it. It is an elusive objective. Cramer, who on tumultuous trading days has been known to post his penses on his Web site up to 12 […]

To anyone who’s followed foreign affairs for the last couple of decades, the names of the neoconservative hawks will be familiar–or, if you’re a liberal, chilling. Their eminence grise is Richard Perle, who serves simultaneously as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, a heretofore somnolent committee […]

If only I had been born a decade or two later. As a 6th grader in 1981, instead of enduring taunts about my emerging mustache, I could have found myself in high style, mocking those poor stylish Hollywood blondes who are now struggling to grow peach fuzz as they mimic the style of the late […]

Everyone knows the horror stories of managed care: the denied treatment, the preauthorizations, refusals to allow specialty care, etc. So there is little reason to mention the motorized wheelchairs denied for patients with spinal bifida — “our evaluation team has determined that your patient can walk assisted with braces or walker the prescribed twenty meters […]