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Nicholas Confessore

Nicholas Confessore is a reporter for The New York Times. Previously he was an American Prospect senior correspondent and an editor of The Washington Monthly.

Recent Articles

George Bush's Texas Trouble:

Nicholas ConfessoreMay 13, 2002

When Karen Hughes announced her decision to leave the White House and return to Texas, the only thing Washington could agree on was that it was a loss for George W. Bush. It was Hughes who helped Bush find his voice during the 2000 elections, who signed off on speeches, who helped loosen him up. It was Hughes, the pundits agreed, who kept the White House "leak-proof and disciplined"; Hughes, wrote Newsweek, steered Bush toward "an almost pitch-perfect tone of strength and reassurance" in the weeks after September 11. "What will he do without her?" fretted Time magazine.

The Tyranny of Triangulation

Nicholas ConfessoreApr 26, 2002

John Kerry and Joe Lieberman have a lot in common. Both went to Yale. Both are senators from the Northeast. Both are prominent, well-liked members of the Democratic caucus. And both very much want to be president someday.

Control Freaks

Nicholas ConfessoreMar 20, 2002

It just seemed like a lot of kids were getting
killed
with guns," mused Andrew McKelvey, recalling the days after the Columbine school
shootings in 1999. "I said to myself, someone should do something about it." So
McKelvey -- a multimillionaire business executive and political neophyte -- did. In
the three years after Columbine, McKelvey poured millions of dollars into
advertising, legal action, and groups like the Million Mom March and Handgun
Control, Inc., giving gun-control advocates a financial strength approaching
that of the National Rifle Association. He also launched a new organization,
Americans for Gun Safety (AGS), which set out to unify the otherwise

Beat the Press

Nicholas ConfessoreFeb 15, 2002

It's safe to say that Bob Woodward doesn't have much trouble getting his calls to the White House returned. If Woodward's latest opus for The Washington Post -- an interminable eight-parter titled "10 Days in September" co-reported with Dan Balz -- is any measure, the Bush administration practically gave Woodward a key to the Oval Office and a desk in the West Wing. And why not? In the Post's breathless account of the days after 9-11, the president and his staff are always resolute, action is always decisive, and pressure is always met by grace. "The plane was now 60 miles out," Woodward and Balz write. "'Should we engage?' [Vice President Dick] Cheney was asked. 'Yes,' he replied again.

Loving Leon

Nicholas ConfessoreJan 29, 2002

Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, is finally getting some good press. In this week's issue of the Weekly Standard, contributing editor Andrew Ferguson -- a witty and normally skeptical writer -- knocks the New York Times for obliquely identifying Kass with "religious conservatives." He pens a breezy account of the commission's first meeting, at which Kass and Princeton scholar Robert George traded thoughtful aperçus about Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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