John B. Judis

There is widespread agreement that the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States ushered in a new stage of world history, one distinct from the last 50 or 100 years. Secretary of State Colin Powell has referred to the period since 9-11 as the “post-post-Cold War.” NewYork Times columnist Thomas Friedman has described it […]

In the past, the great post-World War II institutions of international economics–the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the enforcement bodies of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)–have operated under the cover of bureaucratic darkness. Some lobbyists in Washington knew about them, but few voters knew what the Kennedy Round was […]

A s Bill Clinton prepared to leave office and public attention swiveled toward the incoming administration, the outgoing president spent his last months in the Oval Office making recess appointments and issuing a flurry of new regulations and executive orders. Many of these have been in the works for years but were blocked by the […]

In South Carolina, the National Right to Life Committee ran radio ads bludgeoning Arizona Senator John McCain. “If you want a strongly pro-life president,” the ads said, “don’t support John McCain.” But McCain has never voted for abortion and until this election has always been known as a pro-life senator. Why the attack ad? The […]

Republican strategists have been quick to dismiss the significance of the Democratic victories during this November’s elections. Republican pollster Whit Ayres declared that they “tell us almost nothing about the likely election outcomes a year from now.” But the off-year gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia–held in the first year of a new president’s […]

T he Bush campaign would like you to think this election is about taxes and character; the Gore campaign is focusing on the dangers of debt and the promise of expanded health insurance; and the various interest groups in Washington are pushing their own favorites–from abortion to gun control. But who wins might not make […]

Want to know how the Democrats will do in 2002–and whether President Bush will win re-election in 2004? For a reliable prediction, watch Virginia in the fall. The state’s off-year elections have for the last three decades foreshadowed the political trends that shape American politics. This November’s gubernatorial election will be a test of how […]

K arl Rove, George W. Bush’s chief campaign strategist, has compared this year’s election to that of 1896 and Bush himself to victorious Republican presidential candidate William McKinley. Rove argued that just as McKinley’s election created a new political alignment that reflected the industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century, Bush’s election in 2000 would […]