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Terence Samuel

Terence Samuel is a Prospect senior correspondent and the author of The Upper House: A Journey behind the Closed Doors of the U.S. Senate, published in May by Palgrave Macmillan. Follow him on Twitter.

Recent Articles

Chairman Dean

Terence SamuelFeb 03, 2005
Next week in Washington, the hugely angst-producing debate over whether Howard Dean should lead the Democratic Party out of the George W. Bush wilderness will be decided in a contentious, probably bitter, and ultimately disastrous election, at least for the losers and certainly for the supporters of the losers. A bigger question, of course, is whether it will be a disaster for the party, but the best odds you could get on that kind of speculation is even money. Yet the debate over what it means to have Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is likely to endure because he is likely to win. The emergence, and seeming success, of this anti-anti-Dean movement is still something of a stunner to many who believe that the former governor of Vermont is simply a man in search of a cliff over which to take the party. Here I have in mind the people at the Democratic Leadership Council, where the Dean ascension is creating the most anxiety. The Dean surge, they believe, is...

Battle Born

Terence SamuelJan 28, 2005
Beginning what looks like a full-scale party offensive, Senate Democrats released a series of legislative proposals this week, which, they say, will serve as their Top 10 agenda items for the current session of Congress. There was a coherence to the enterprise that betrayed some of the policy strategizing and message-messaging that party leaders have been promising for some time. There was even a tag line with reasonable battle-cry potential: “Security, Opportunity, and Responsibility.” Acknowledging their disadvantage on national-security issues, the first three proposed bills deal with expanding troop strength, targeting terrorists, and increasing support for National Guard and Reserve units and for veterans. The rest is a lot of what you might expect from congressional Democrats: keeping jobs from going offshore and making health care more affordable; improving education, reducing the deficit, and increasing the minimum wage. “[O]pportunity, in America, is a fundamental value, and...

Attention, Bloggers

Terence SamuelJan 20, 2005
Big secret! And remember: You heard it here first. Democrats need a win in Washington. The need something, anything, to get the bad taste of the last four years out of the mouth and to reassure themselves that they actually have a purpose beyond their recent role as GOP fodder. Ironically, as President George W. Bush -- their nemesis of the moment -- begins his second term, he may be providing Democrats with exactly the opportunity for the little victory they need to get their blood moving again. By choosing Social Security as the top agenda item in his second term, Bush is reprising the common Republican strategy of casting himself as the reformer up against the entrenched and decadent status quo. The result in the past has been that Democrats then find themselves in the uncomfortable position of defending this or that government program, which, almost by definition, represents the status quo. The defense tends to be lame and tired, largely because the defenders often assume that the...

Swivel Chair

Terence SamuelJan 13, 2005
For a few weeks before the holidays, there was a school of thought that embraced and promulgated the idea that, at this particular moment, the choice of a new chair of the Democratic National Committee was an inconsequential event. The argument was that the party was so confused at this juncture, embroiled in so many contentious debates, that whomever got the job now would likely no longer have the job two years from now, in the run-up to the next presidential cycle. Therefore, the new chair would have little influence on the most important thing the party can do: to win presidential elections. This, in other words, was to be a caretaker chairmanship until a heavy-hitter is revealed. The adherents of this view were, if small in number, boundlessly determined not to care about the exercise of choosing a new party chair. The retreat was a common response to the horrible losses in November. “Who cares?” declared one activist, still bitter from the last brutal days of a losing senate...

Arlen, Barack, Paris, and More

Terence SamuelDec 23, 2004
Arlen “Scottish Law” Specter will be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and there will be at least one Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the next session of Congress. Robert Bork meets Anita Hill. Specter is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Tom “Lesbian Outbreak” Coburn is the newest committee's newest member. Don “the Unknowable” Rumsfeld is staying, and you have to stay with the defense secretary you have, not the one you want. Tom “Chain Gang, Don't-Call-Me-the-Hammer” DeLay is staying for now, but may decide to run for district attorney in Travis County, Texas. Someone in the White House has to explain how borrowing $2.2 trillion to introduce private investment accounts into Social Security -- in other words, to privatize it -- is a fiscally prudent maneuver. Trent “Majority Leader in Elba” Lott is still mad at the White House for torpedoing him over the whole “when Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him -- and if the rest of the country had...

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