While the hazmat crews continue to clean up the raw sewage that flowed from the podium at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland last week, I hope Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Senator Tim Kaine, Senator Bernie Sanders, Vice President Biden and President Obama can make some last-minute adjustments that will strengthen the speeches they […]
George W. Bush
Posted inPolitical Animal
A Segregated Selfie
Am I the only person who thinks House Speaker Paul Ryan’s whites-only intern photo was just slightly more disturbing than Iowa imbecile Steve King’s statement supporting supremacy? I expect boorish, bigoted behavior from Rep. King, who once infamously declared that undocumented immigrants have “calves the size of cantaloupes” as a result of their alleged devotion […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Will George Bush Be the Last Republican President?
Bush himself says he’s worried about the prospect.
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Fox News Channel’s Culture of Chauvinism
Two weeks ago, I noted the 25th anniversary of President George H. W. Bush’s notorious nomination of Clarence Thomas to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. You may recall this anecdote from Jeffrey Toobin’s 1993 New Yorker profile of Thomas: Thomas can no longer take runs along the [National] Mall, as […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Chilcot Report Puts Too Much Focus on WMD
What the intelligence community missed and refuses to acknowledge.
Posted inPolitical Animal
Brain-Free Zones
Will the 2016 Republican National Convention set a new record for the largest collection of losers in one arena? This year’s catastrophe in Cleveland will not be uniquely disastrous, only because the quadrennial event has always been a hot mess. Can you think of one GOP convention in recent history that didn’t display the worst […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Those Who Do Not Learn from History
Look how much has changed–and how much has not. It was fifteen years ago today that President George W. Bush, flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney, spoke in the Rose Garden and defied right-wing ideology by acknowledging that human-caused climate change was real. It was a frustrating speech in many respects, filled with the usual […]
Posted inBooks, Government, Magazine, March/April/May 2015
The Reckless Reign of W.
We are still living with the forty-third president’s legacy.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, November/December 2013, Politics
Dark Sidekick
How Dick Cheney controlled, and lost control of, George W. Bush.
Posted inMagazine, November/December 2012, Politics
George W. Bush, On the Ballot Again
One early summer day in 2000 I was summoned to the Oval Office along with several other White House staffers to get instructions from President Bill Clinton on what he wanted to say in his upcoming speech at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, a speech I was assigned to cowrite. But the president […]
