What Bush Could Learn From JFK
John F. Kennedy was decorated for his military heroism in the South Pacific in World War II. However, he showed even greater courage as president during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. At that time, his right-wing critics were denouncing him for pursuing a “no-win policy” in his approach to the Soviet Union’s Cold…
Funny, They Don’t Look Jewish
The hallmark of the Bush foreign policy has been a naive radicalism married to an operational incompetence. A small clique with a preconceived blueprint took advantage of a national emergency and a callow president, blowing a containable threat into war while dismissing more ominous menaces. These people are out to remake the world, with little…
Head Rush
The news that Rush Limbaugh will be spending the month trying to kick his OxyContin habit provides a tempting opportunity to kick a thug while he’s down. Rush, after all, told his audience just eight years ago that “we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good…
Book ‘Em
Let’s just agree up front that there’s no augury or metaphor in it, but the fact remains that South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle spoke at length for the first time about his new book, which is due out in November, at something called the Deadwood Pavilion. Addressing an audience at his state’s first-ever book fair,…
FOXic Waste
Say what you will about its bias and inaccuracies, FOX News is succeeding at its mission. Of course, that mission is to spread bias and inaccuracies that bolster the position of the Bush White House. A new survey from the Program on International Policy Attitudes (a joint project of the Center on Policy Attitudes and…
Ashcroft on the Case
It’s not every investigation that lays its cards on the table at the outset, but the modus operandi of John Ashcroft, public eye, became apparent at the very moment the Justice Department got on the Joseph Wilson retaliatory leak case. As all signs pointed to a White House leaker, Justice announced that it would widen…
Indoor Pollution
Confirmation hearings are pending for Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, the nominee to replace Christie Whitman at the troubled Environmental Protection Agency. Leavitt surprised many in mid-August when he accepted the nomination, as he’d been offered the post just two months earlier and had turned it down because he was still undecided about seeking a fourth…
Up from Weequahic
New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture and the Class of ’58 By Sherry B. Ortner, Duke University Press, 334 PAGES, $29.95 Sometimes the announcement of a book just leaps out of a publisher’s catalog and grabs you by the throat, and such was the case with this study by Sherry Ortner, a MacArthur Prize-…
End of the Line
Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market By Pierre Bourdieu, Translated by Loïc Wacquant, New Press, 112 PAGES, $14.95 At the time of Pierre Bourdieu’s death in January 2002, he stood as the dominant intellectual in France, if not in Europe. Only Jürgen Habermas in Germany, now age 74, is of the…
It Wasn’t Deficit Reduction
The Roaring Nineties By Joseph E. Stiglitz, W.W. Norton and Company, 379 pages, $25.95 Like many academic economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz went into government hoping to tutor as well as to serve. Unlike most, Stiglitz has significant doubts about whether markets usually work as advertised. His research in this genre won him the…
The Life of the Parties
Party of the People: A History of the Democrats By Jules Witcover, Random House, 758 pages, $35.00 Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans By Lewis L. Gould, Random House, 588 pages, $35.00 Few institutions of any sort in American life have remained relevant for as long as the two national…
Soul on Ice
In The Fog of War, a revelatory new documentary about his life and times, a disquieted Robert McNamara implores us to understand why he did the things he did as an Air Force lieutenant colonel who helped plan the firebombing of Japanese cities in World War II, and, later, as a secretary of defense and…
Through a Lens, Starkly
To hear American television networks talk about documentaries — well, there’s a self-canceling sentence. If they did talk about documentaries, they’d say that they’re like bomb threats: they clear the room. Those eye-glazing, ad-killing relics of a stodgier age might be good for awards, but they’re bad for thrills and therefore bad for business. It’s…
A Durable Middle East Peace
Had they survived, the Oslo accords would have turned 10 this year. Instead, a disheartening record of on-again, off-again negotiations has been followed by three years of deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Year after year, the Oslo approach and variants thereof have been tried, always with the same dispiriting results: agreements not reached or…
A Well-Regulated Militia
Few Americans know that we have two armies and that both are acknowledged by the United States Constitution. One is the military that we know best, the regulars: the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy, joined later in history by the Marines and the Air Force. The other, originally known as the militia, is now…
Rumsfeld’s Folly
Since coming into office, the Bush administration has radically altered national-security and military doctrines that had successfully safeguarded American interests for more than 50 years. The changes, as the current crisis in Iraq demonstrates, have actually undermined U.S. security. George W. Bush’s new national-security doctrine, officially promulgated on Sept. 17, 2001, discards the long-standing American…
Bush’s Flawed Revolution
George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. In less than three years in office, he has discarded or redefined many of the key principles governing how America engages the world. He has relied on the unilateral exercise of American power rather than on international law and institutions to get his way.…
The Homeland Security Muddle
When word leaked that the Department of Defense had funded a scheme to allow investors to use futures-market analysis to predict the likelihood of terrorist acts or international incidents — and to profit if their predictions were correct — the public reacted with both shock and awe. The $8 million idea, known as the Futures…
Regime Change: The Legacy
A very happy group of men convened at the White House on Sept. 4, 1953, to hear a cloak-and-dagger story that would resonate through all of subsequent American history. Two weeks before, the Central Intelligence Agency had overthrown Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran. It was the first time the CIA had deposed a foreign…
Safe at Home
President Bush got one thing right: The greatest threat to American security is a rogue state providing a terrorist group with a weapon of mass destruction and the means to deliver it in the United States. Unfortunately, almost everything he has done since September 11 has made this problem worse rather than better. We need…
Shock of the Old
The smallest crowd of Howard Dean’s Sleepless Summer Tour in late August consisted of about 450 people. They’d gathered at the airport outside Boise, Idaho, on a splash of tarmac surrounded by sparkling, cloudless sky. There, where the crumpled, arid desert gave way to the pine-covered Boise Foothills, amid the mingled scents of jet fuel…
The Democrats’ Military Option
Count me among the skeptics as to whether a politically untested general can successfully run the gauntlet of a Democratic presidential-primary campaign in America today. The organizational confusion, inconsistent statements and other troubles that beset Wesley Clark in the first weeks of his campaign all testified to his lack of political experience. But count me…
Gimme Shelters
If you thought President Bush was done with tax cutting for the rest of his term — as Bush’s budget director promised in June — you’ve got another think coming. Pending in Congress this fall, with Bush’s avid backing, is still another round of huge tax cuts. This time our lawmakers are planning their third…
A Foreign-Policy Emergency
The hallmark of the Bush foreign policy has been a naive radicalism married to an operational incompetence. A small clique with a preconceived blueprint took advantage of a national emergency and a callow president, blowing a containable threat into war while dismissing more ominous menaces. These people are out to remake the world, with little…
Importing Government
As Congress diddles with a Medicare prescription-drug plan, citizens are busing and clicking their way to Canadian pharmacies, where drugs are affordable. U.S. politicians, refusing to control drug prices, are also flocking to Canada for help by endorsing what’s euphemistically called “reimportation.” But make no mistake: What we are really importing from Canada is effective…
Head Cases
Throughout American history, the Senate — where small and conservative states have disproportionate weight and where rules allow one senator to block key legislation — has far more often been a force for reaction than for progress. But these are unusual times, and with an ideologically rigid administration and scores of zealots in the House,…
NOW What?
When Carol Moseley Braun made her formal announcement on Sept. 22 that she was running for president, newspaper stories on the senator-turned-ambassador ran with a paragraph reminding readers that the announcement came on the heels of twin endorsements by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Women’s Political Caucus. The news of that…
Not Quite the Big One
So, is it a wrap for progressive California? According to many political observers, largely but not entirely on the right, the recall of Democrat Gray Davis and the election of Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger mark a tectonic shift in California’s political makeup. Over the past decade, as Latinos have voted in greater numbers and independents have…
Red State Army
In the context of the democratic primary, retired Gen. Wesley Clark’s campaign seems less like Sherman’s quick and decisive March to the Sea and more like Grant’s shaky, protracted offensive against Vicksburg. Initially some were heralding the general’s candidacy as the beginning of the end for an already-peaked former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.) and an…
A Fan Gloats
I would point out for the everlasting record that so-called serious people who discuss serious issues in a serious way for serious paychecks still believe that Rush Limbaugh knows what he’s talking about. I also would point out that he lasted less than a month on ESPN, where he attempted to fit Philadelphia Eagles quarterback…
