Garance Franke-Ruta

THE FANTASY TENSE. President Bush’s tortured grasp of the English language is legendary, but I submit that during this morning’s presser he actually provided an important clue to understanding what it is he’s been saying about Iraq. He is speaking in a new tense that the rest of us have thus far failed to note […]

SECOND VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST. The New York Times reports today that Republican former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore plans to form a presidential exploratory committee to look into a possible ’08 bid. Close readers of the Prospect will recall that Gilmore, like former Va. Gov. George Allen before him, served on the board of […]

THE BUSH-MCCAIN WAR PLAN. The New York Sun‘s Eli Lake reports some interesting news on John McCain‘s problematic Iraq war proposal: Unless the president’s new strategy proves a clear success by the beginning of 2008, Mr. McCain could find his judgment on matters of national security being called into question. The chairman of the American […]

MYTHS ABOUT HILLARY. The new Washington Post-ABC News poll on the ’08 contenders busts a couple of developing myths on the Democratic side. Myth 1: Hillary Clinton can’t rely on support from women because women are ambivalent about her due to her marriage and because women, more generally, are just awful to each other. In […]

THE COMING BLOG PEAK. Via the BBC comes the prediction that worldwide blogging activity will peak next year, then level out at about 100 million. And also this not totally surprising news: The firm has said that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs… “A lot of people have been in and out […]

HUMILIATION & JIHAD. The new issue of Democracy has an important piece by Peter Bergen and Michael Lind about the root causes of Islamic terrorism, and the contribution of feelings of grievance among upper- and middle-class Arabs to radical anti-Americanism. They conclude that material global inequality is not issue, it is global inequality in status: […]

HISTORY VS. AMERICA. While Tom makes some good points about meta-historical attitudes towards women, I think the question at hand is really much smaller and more specific: In America, in recent history, in the political arena, what are the precedents? Nagourney wrote: Many analysts suggested that changing voter attitudes can best be measured in choices […]

THE CHESS GAME BEGINS. Not that these polls mean anything this far out, but CNN yesterday released a poll of voters about the potential ’08 candidates, and it’s interesting to note that the only discernable trends thus far are a decline in support for John Edwards and John Kerry, and a rise in the percent […]

UNIFORMITY AND CONFORMITY. Yesterday, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell detailed the lack of diversity among Post columnists and then concluded, “The point is not to toss excellent white male columnists; the point is to add more and lively voices to The Post.” Today, however, Ezra bemoans the lack of excellence and accountability among those throngs […]

UNEVEN PROGRESS. Adam Nagourney‘s smart Week in Review piece definitively answered the question Ben Wallace-Wells asked in The Washington Post about a month ago: “Is America too Racist for Barack? Too Sexist for Hillary?” Nagourney’s answer: when it comes to winning elected office, America has proven more enduringly racist than sexist. Over the past of […]