Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, as well as a distinguished senior fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week and continues to write columns in The Boston Globe. He is the author of Obama's Challenge and other books.

Recent Articles

Comment: The Great Obfuscator

President Bush's heavily choreographed decision
to support "limited" stem cell research generated the desired headlines and TV
commentary. He had anguished over the decision, we were told, and navigated a
prudent course between zealous scientists who would play God and zealous
traditionalists who claim a pipeline to God. Under Bush's guidelines, stem cell
research can qualify for federal funding if it involves existing "lines" of
privately developed embryonic stem cells. Others could not, but the harvesting of
stem cells from human embryos can continue with private funding. Bush had
carefully chosen a middle ground between, as he put it, the good and the good.

Comment: The Stakes

One of the many depressing things about the 2000 election

has been the tactical blurring of principled differences. Al Gore is for patients' rights? So is George W. Bush. Gore has a plan for prescription drug coverage. Bush does, too. Gore would allocate trillions to Social Security. Likewise Bush.

Never mind that Gore's plans are closer to the genuine article. Most voters pay attention only to the headlines. The details are numbing. Bush gets away with seeming to be for popular Democratic positions that most of his party opposes. What the headline promises, the details take back. But the headline is sufficient to steal Gore's thunder.

Comment: The Persistence of Politics

The first casualty of war is said to be truth, but
more precisely the casualty is complexity. In war, there are Evil and Good,
Enemies and Allies, a Them and an Us, conveniently spelled U.S. George Bush
declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." Excoriating an
enemy whose suicide bombers fly in the name of Allah, Bush also clarified that
God is, in fact, on our side.

Comment: No Ordinary Time

All of us find ourselves shocked to be living, abruptly, in a wholly new era--and none were more shocked than the Bush administration. Globally, the White House is now pursuing a feverish multilateralism, a reversal of the Powell Doctrine to avoid "shooting wars" that we can't easily win, and even may soon embrace yesterday's conservative epithet "nation building." Domestically, the holy free market stands impeached, and even Republicans are necessarily looking to government for everything from civil defense to public health to economic stimulus. As a partisan, Bush seems more like Clinton, governing in coalition with the opposition party and outraging his own troops.


Comment: Senatorial Courtesy

The nomination of defeated Missouri Senator John Ashcroft as attorney general will test whether Democrats will spend the next four years getting rolled. This is George W. Bush's signature appointment, his thank-you gift to the far right. How bad is Ashcroft? This bad:

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