Harold Meyerson

Senator Paul Wellstone, who died today along with his wife Sheila, his daughter Marcia and five others in a plane crash in Minnesota, was perhaps more than any other individual the very heart of American liberalism. His death leaves a gaping hole in our politics — liberal politics, American politics — that will be very […]

As war with Iraq looms bewilderingly larger this summer, it would be an overstatement to say that there’s now a Peace Camp (or more precisely, an Anti-Invasion-Now Camp) in Washington. There sure as hell is a Privately Held Doubts Camp, however. People worry about the costs — in lives, money and reputation — that such […]

Epochs do not change on a dime. Yes, the era of market extremism is waning, Republicans’ ratings are plummeting, and, the polls agree, more of us believe that Elvis is hiding in the hills with the Shining Path than still have faith in American big business. But none of this means that the liberal era, […]

Where in the annals of class conflict do we put the current tiff between America’s investors and its CEOs? Up until a few weeks ago, this would have been considered a question not worthy of an answer. Both groups bobbed on the same tide. They felt the same exultation when their stock rose, the same […]

Ask any liberal to identify the force in American politics most intent on destroying progressive prospects and causes and you’re sure to hear that it’s the Bush administration or the Republican right or some such reactionary power. Let me gently suggest, however, that a very different force has wormed its way onto this list, and […]

Few things in contemporary American politics have been more certain than the Senate’s support for free trade. While the critics and criticisms of global laissez-faire have been growing in number and the House’s support for free trade has become increasingly iffy, the Senate has rolled merrily along, Republicans and Democrats alike ratifying whatever trade bill […]

In Europe, the year 1968 has always meant only half of what it’s meant here in the United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, 1968 was the year of the great youth uprising, of the emergence of a distinct New Left. The protesters who took to the streets from Chicago to Paris weren’t simply […]

If the administration’s foreign-policy apparat (minus the increasingly isolated Colin Powell) were placed under one roof — Rice, Rumsfeld, and Reich; Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Bush — what watchword would be inscribed over the door? No, not “Abandon all hope, ye who enter.” There are any number of supplicants who should not abandon hope — […]

Some doctrinaire conservatives are growing a bit cranky over the ideological impurities of George W. Bush. California Republicans rebelled when he promoted the candidacy of Richard Riordan — Horrors! An electable moderate! — for governor. Free-market ideologues blanched when he supported protections for the steel industry. “Steel tariffs are not just anti-market,” grumped Sebastian Mallaby […]