Independence Day
If I had 15 minutes with the future President Kerry, I would not have to educate him about my ideas for energy security. That’s because he already has a deep understanding of them. Making America energy independent, strengthening our national security, and protecting the environment are causes that John Kerry has fought for his entire…
The Vital Middle
Remember all those speeches you gave filled with statistics and stories about the middle-class squeeze? You spoke the truth. Wages really are stagnant, and we really are struggling to buy the basics. The core of a middle-class life–a home, health insurance, a good education for our children, the things our parents could take for granted–is…
Civilization’s Price
If John Kerry is elected this fall, his no. 1 task will be to deal with the huge budget mess George W. Bush’s tax cuts have created. Which begs the question: How could President Kerry build public support for the higher taxes our country desperately needs? So far, Kerry hasn’t shown any inclination to talk…
Teaching Tolerance
Congratulations, Mr. President! The progressive lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) community is delighted that you have an opportunity to turn America back on a path to tolerance. Here’s what we expect in return: no more, and no less, than what we got from William Jefferson Clinton. What’s that? You say that Clinton botched every…
Fiscal Boldness First
If he takes the oath of office as president, John Kerry would inherit an upside-down economy marked by slow job growth, stagnant wages, and rising costs; twin deficits–budget and trade–that threaten havoc for the middle class; a health-care system that’s facing financial chaos; a dangerous and costly occupation in Iraq; a vitally important but vastly…
Leading the Races
We routinely screen presidential candidates for demonstrated competence on national security, economic policy, and other supreme responsibilities. But neither major candidate has demonstrated leadership or expertise on racial and ethnic justice (though George W. Bush’s record is far worse). To our collective shame, it’s been a “missing issue” in the campaign. But it must not…
We the Government
When we recall the now-famous incantation, “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” we focus on its content: John F. Kennedy invited Americans to become active participants in, rather than passive recipients of, American democracy. But the word that stands out for me is the…
The Return of Energy
Mr. Kerry, after four years of slothful leadership, the American people may be ready for the quality that the Framers referred to as “energy in the executive.” That energy, of course, can’t be solely of your own making. Since the nation’s founding, the eras that have decisively advanced democratic purposes have been built around a…
Labor — Inescapably!
Once upon a time — as in long, long ago — all presidents and presidential candidates were expected to have an answer for the “labor question.” Nowadays, not only are there no answers, there’s scarcely a question, at least not one demanding enough to command prolonged attention in this election year. Unasked, unanswerable, yet inescapable!…
Know Thine Enemies
Since World War II, American foreign policy in general has been both realistic and moderate. There have been occasional bursts of intensified anxiety and paranoiac fears, but, by and large, American presidents–both the Democrats and Republicans who’ve been elected since 1948–have been able to maintain a steady course. Today, however, we are facing the first…
“The Evil Was Very Grave … ”
The Cuban independence hero and poet José Martí lived in New York from 1880 to 1895. He was a New Yorker, and easily the most important literary figure then residing in the city (after Walt Whitman’s departure to rural New Jersey). During most of those years he made his living as a journalist, writing about…
The Courage to Lead
As president, John Kerry would inherit the most formidable grass-roots force in recent American history. Born in the rising populism of last year’s frenetic primaries, this force has generated its own cobblestone leadership. What will Kerry do with these exuberant leaders dispersed across country and city? What will they do with him? To hold this…
The Power of the Pen
Sure, the Democrats could hit the jackpot this year and take the White House and both chambers of Congress. But if John Kerry wins, he could just as easily be facing a Republican-controlled Congress that’s, well, not eager to cooperate. Luckily, his hands wouldn’t be tied. He’d still have the executive order to help promote…
Onward and Forward
On a blustery march day, Peter Schurman, the executive director of MoveOn.org, stands next to a Win Without War poster at a press conference on Capitol Hill. Schurman is a 34-year-old Yale School of Management graduate with a high forehead, blue eyes, and razor-sharp features who doesn’t like to talk about himself. He’s not a…
Climbing the Hill
So, what, if anything, could a president Kerry get through Congress? It’s beyond question that a President Kerry would inherit a Congress that, for the past half-decade, has been spiraling into an ever deeper dysfunctionality. During the past two years, under the control of the Bush administration and the leadership of Republicans Tom DeLay in…
Follow the (Saudi) Money
Head north out of Phnom Penh, and within a few miles the cacophonous traffic of Cambodia’s capital gives way to herds of oxen and water buffalo, their shoulder blades rolling underneath their hides. As you travel, the riverside restaurants — frequented by well-off Khmers and thick with neon lights and the sound of karaoke –…
Promises, Promises
At the June 2003 G8 summit in Evian, France, President George W. Bush met with the other heads of state at a private dinner. There, according to sources close to two dinner guests, he promised the Europeans that if they gave $1 billion to a new joint AIDS fund, he would match it. But by…
Mr. Huntington’s Nightmare
Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity By Samuel P. Huntington • Simon & Schuster • 408 pages • $27.00 Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist and author of The Clash of Civilizations, argues in his new book that America (he calls the United States “America” throughout) cannot continue to open…
Think Different
On a steamy Washington night in early June, a moneyed crowd of gay men and lesbians gathered in the vaulted hall at the National Museum of Women in the Arts for a John Kerry fund raiser. The big draw that night was not actress Sharon Gless (Queer As Folk, Cagney and Lacey) but the arguably…
Prospects
Think back to last summer. George W. Bush’s approval ratings stood near 60 percent. Iraq, a “mission” the president had famously declared “accomplished” aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that May, was no paradise, but it was also not yet the political disaster it later became. Democratic candidates, portrayed by the media as knock-kneed Barney Fifes,…
The Breakfast Crowd
I have two words for our next president: no excuses. You will be facing an angry country frustrated by the serious challenges we confront and hungry for a leader who will actually get things done. I am from a small town in Maine, where I occasionally join in an early-morning breakfast with a few longtime…
Build an “A” Team
My advice, President Kerry, is that you assemble a political “A” team, install it in the West Wing, and fight like hell against the right over the next four years. “We ought to have two real parties,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told speechwriter and adviser Sam Rosenman in 1942, “one liberal and the other conservative.”…
Teachable Moments
Every week, celebrate a public hero.
The Kerry I Know
The first two times I dealt with John Kerry, when he had his initial brush with notoriety many years ago, I didn’t know what to make of him. It was actually a little later, after he had screwed up and taken one on the jaw, that I became intrigued by him. He lost his first…
From Bush’s Playbook
Given his lack of mandate, one might have expected moderation and caution from George W. Bush. Instead, Bush moved aggressively to reframe the basic dialogue of American politics and restructure the institutions of American government. What has Bush to teach John Kerry? Bush adhered consistently to three core principles: 1. Vision. Unlike his father, this…
Be a Hero
The inauguration of President Kerry on January 20, 2005, will be the beginning of the global post-Bush era. As a young American, I would give President Kerry one central, and simple, piece of advice: Be a hero. His success at recasting the issues in a progressive light can only occur if he takes immediate hold…
The Next Generation
“Boy, this is really standing-room only,” complained a man outside the AFL-CIO hall in Peoria, Illinois, on a bright Tuesday morning in late June. U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama was set to start speaking soon to the diverse crowd, and a line of people dozens deep wended its way into the packed union hall. They’d…
Life After Theory
Not long ago, I watched a panel of noted literary scholars conclude a conference at Yale. The professors were just putting away their papers and wrapping up when, somehow, they started passionately debating the case of James Yee, the Guantanamo Bay chaplain accused of espionage. To explain the government’s charges, they hauled out whatever lingering…
Lyndon Agonistes
As Democrats flock to Boston to nominate John Kerry for president, few surprises will await them at the Fleet Center. Today’s political conventions stay relentlessly “on message,” and they serve as mere heralds of the home stretch of a seemingly endless presidential campaign. A key part of that unwavering message is a recounting of party…
Based on a True Story
My Life By Bill Clinton • Knopf • 957 pages • $35.00 Presidential memoirs are among the worst of all literary genres. That is not because they are invariably self-serving and less than wholly honest. Even the greatest memoirs are both. It is because they are relentlessly inauthentic. One can read the memoirs of virtually…
