Michael Tomasky

If John Kerry decides to refuse to accept his party’s nomination at the Boston convention in late July, he may well be doing us all a favor in the long run. Quadrennial conventions have long since outlived their actual usefulness, and it’s time they were replaced with something else. I’m not, however, so sure that […]

We aren’t witnessing just the disastrous meltdown of Bush administration policy in Iraq. Nor are we witnessing merely the potential end of the line for one cabinet official, although it does seem possible that, in the wake of Sy Hersh’s devastating New Yorker takeout this week, George W. Bush will downgrade his assessment of Defense […]

Appallingly, yet predictably, the it’s-never-our-fault brigades of the right have now set out after some of the administration’s critics with respect to the Abu Ghraib disaster. On CNN’s Capitol Gang last Saturday night, The National Review‘s Kate O’Bierne and a backbenching Republican member of Congress both lit into House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi for remarks […]

It may not be news, at this point, the way this administration stonewalls the political opposition, the media, and even bipartisan undertakings like the September 11 commission, whose very creation the administration resisted for months. But vigorous debate is supposedly one of the most important underpinnings of a functioning democracy, and in George W. Bush’s […]

It’s amazing how often first impressions — in love, in friendship, and in politics — end up being exactly right. Relatedly, how often people live up (or down) to what seem to be, based on those impressions, their destinies. When Bill Clinton first emerged in the summer of 1991 as someone who was likely to […]

For a group of people who have spent a lot of time over the last 25 years or so lecturing the rest of us about “personal responsibility,” Republicans sure don’t seem to have any passion for displaying any of their own. It’s incredible that President Bush could go before reporters — as he just did– […]

I remember hearing the warnings in December 1999 about the imminent possibility of millennial terrorist attacks on American soil. And I remember, as most Americans who think back probably would, giving the warnings about eight seconds’ thought. Fortunately for all of us, I wasn’t one of the people being paid to think about such things. […]

I remember hearing the warnings in December 1999 about the imminent possibility of millennial terrorist attacks on American soil. And I remember, as most Americans who think back probably would, giving the warnings about eight seconds’ thought. Fortunately for all of us, I wasn’t one of the people being paid to think about such things. […]

Well, it’s been almost a week now, and the verdict is in: The usual smears and deceits aren’t working this time. Some of the administration’s attempts to heap discredit on Richard Clarke have been comical, like Dick Cheney’s assertion that Clarke was “out of the loop.” Uh, out of the loop? Your counterterrorism czar? If […]

John McCain as John Kerry’s vice president? Really? It’s a tantalizing thought. The mind goes immediately to two words: “swing” and “voters.” They adore McCain. Their support helped him beat George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire Republican primary, and there seems little reason to doubt that swing voters across the country, whose souring […]