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Truth in Capitalism
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism by John C. Bogle (Yale University Press, 260 pages, $25.00) The stock market collapse of 2000-2001 was the most serious since the crash of 1929. But unlike the earlier Great Crash, the recent one led neither to a general depression nor to a wider indictment of…
Accidental Tourists
Had they been born and raised on this side of the Atlantic, they might have turned up as characters in a Bruce Springsteen ballad. They are the sort Springsteen tends to memorialize: Their roots are in a faded manufacturing neighborhood; their brushes with the law were petty scrapes that did not keep them from retaining…
How the War Was Lost
Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor (Pantheon Books, 603 pages, $27.95) This vivid book wraps a political bombshell inside a riveting tale. Its central chapters deliver a blow-by-blow account of the unstoppable American dash toward Baghdad, blinding sandstorms and all, in…
Pastor Strangelove
Texan John Hagee has a huge following, the ear of the White House, and a theory that an invasion of Iran was foretold in the Book of Esther.
The Commissar’s in Town
At the very heart of U.S. Middle East policy, from the war in Iraq to pressure for regime change in Iran and Syria to the spread of free-market democracy in the region, sits the 39-year-old daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney. Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney, appointed to her post in February 2005, has a tongue-twisting title:…
Vive Les Jeunes
In early April, after weeks of massive student demonstrations, the French government backed down and withdrew its proposed changes in national labor law. Under French law, workers are protected from arbitrary firings by a system that requires employers to justify dismissals. The government, most notably Prime Minister Dominque de Villepin, wanted to allow employers the…
Woman at Point Zero
Cairo, Egypt — The view from the 26th floor of Nawal el Saadawi’s apartment in Shoubra Gardens, a working-class neighborhood in east Cairo, may once have been spectacular. But as I sit in a rattan chair in Saadawi’s sunroom, enjoying a cool breeze and a view of the nearby Nile through the haze of a…
Burnt Offering
Iran’s “mad mullahs” want nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and can only be stopped by the threat or use of military force. That’s what the Bush administration would have the public believe, as it pushes toward a confrontation with Iran over that country’s nuclear program. A key link in the argument is that Tehran has…
Ken
“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.” –John Maynard Keynes * * * John Kenneth Galbraith loved words. Above all, he loved words he and others wrote about him. On this, “Galbraith’s First Law” left no confusion: “Modesty is a vastly overrated…
The Doable Dozen
National health care? Demolition and reconstruction of the tax code? A comprehensive war on poverty? Well, maybe not — yet. But if the pollsters are right and Election 2006 proves to be a dark day for the right and a bright dawn for the left, there’s plenty that a renewed progressive majority could enact immediately.…
Courting an Advantage
The temporary lull in judicial confirmation battles has come to an end. Hoping to ramp up its base in time for the midterm elections, the White House recently promised supporters that it will flood the Senate with more right-wing appeals court nominees. Simultaneously, Senate Republicans have pushed for votes on existing ones, some of whom…
The Real Tax Test
Iraq in continuing meltdown. Oil prices at record highs. Forty-five million uninsured. A still-large budget deficit and an ever-increasing debt. How to respond? Hey, let’s cut taxes! That was the congressional rejoinder to our nation’s several crises in early May, when lawmakers passed a five-year, $70 billion tax cut, which news accounts affirmed that the…
Blood Not-So-Simple
A “no-consent” medical study of an experimental blood substitute is creating an uproar among researchers and bioethicists. Controversy over the study, which is under way at 31 hospitals across the nation, is pulling back the curtain on similar studies ready to be launched under President Bush’s “war on terrorism” as well as Project Bioshield, an…
Not So Fast
The Good Fight: Why Liberals — and Only Liberals — Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again by Peter Beinart (HarperCollins, 304 pages, $25.95) Has the time come for liberals to put Iraq behind us? The answer depends to some extent on which Iraq we’re talking about. Iraq the…
Parliament Lament
Suppose that you wanted to find a list of the 30 or 40 Republican members of Congress most vulnerable to defeat this fall (and assume that you couldn’t afford the Cook Political Report). Here’s an easy trick: Take a particularly egregious piece of legislation passed by the House, then look at the Republicans who voted…
Truly Locked in the Cabinet
Shortly after the Senate confirmed John Snow’s nomination as Treasury secretary at the end of January 2003, Snow phoned me. He wanted to thank me for the guidance I had indirectly given him for how to survive a nomination hearing in my erstwhile memoir, Locked in the Cabinet. “Don’t defend yourself. Don’t lecture. Don’t take…
Credit Hog
The Bill Clinton of the 2008 election is not, in fact, likely to share his surname. Hillary will probably run, to be sure. But the part Clinton played in 1992 — that of an attractive, technocratic, successful governor from a state normally hostile to his kind and boasting substantive accomplishments on issues his party rarely…
Who’s Your Daddy Party?
“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.” President George W. Bush has made that statement many times. So has Vice President Dick Cheney. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Multiple principals endlessly repeating themselves — that’s the mark of a premium White House…
