Michael Tomasky

Wesley Clark, speaking on Tuesday to a liberal foreign-policy conference sponsored by the Prospect, the Center for American Progress (John Podesta’s new outfit) and The Century Foundation, could have gone in any of several directions in attacking the Bush administration’s foreign policy. The $87 billion, so unpopular with voters, would have been the obvious target. […]

The bulk of Bill Clinton’s time now is devoted to his book and to the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, which delivers medicines to sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. But there’s always time for politics. The Clinton on display here is combative, and he has some surprising things to say about how this election’s crop of […]

Virtually any day of the week, you can pick up The Washington Times and count on its writers to reflect a view of reality not far removed from that of the Republican National Committee. Everyone understands they do that; it’s their printing press and it’s their right. What I didn’t think they also did, however, […]

If you’ve been feeling that the Bush administration may be skating free of having to wrestle with the Valerie Plame controversy and are wondering why this is happening, let me submit one possible explanation: The major media are putting no pressure whatsoever on the administration, or the president, to do anything. See, back in the […]

President Bush spoke to the press at some length yesterday on the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame matter. He said: I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there’s a lot of senior officials. I don’t have any idea. I’d like to. I want to […]

As George W. Bush has tanked in the polls, a question has gained prevalence on the op-ed pages and chat shows: Will the son repeat the mistakes of the father? By which is meant, of course, that Bush Senior went from a 90-something percent approval rating to losing his re-election bid — will Junior do […]

To hear the right wing tell it, Bill Clinton has been downstairs in his laboratory, piecing together his Frankenstein candidate, Wesley Clark. The erstwhile general has now arisen from the lab table, ready to obey Dr. Clinton’s every command and utterly unaware of the mad doctor’s ultimate scheme to use him as a stalking horse […]

Well, the Pete Dawkins factor has been subdued, at least for now. While Wesley Clark was deciding whether to run for president, sources who spoke with him tell me that he wrestled mightily with the question of whether he would end up “Dawkinsed.” Pete Dawkins, you might recall, was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate […]

Two years ago today, I was sitting at my computer and listening to the radio, much as I’m doing right now, when I heard the news. In short order I rushed over to a little park in my Brooklyn neighborhood that had a perfect view of the harbor and lower Manhattan. It’s across the street […]

Question: What is the highest rhetorical honor that can be paid to a political and intellectual critic today? The answer seems clearly to be that so-and-so is “the Orwell of his generation.” One sees this apposition applied to this writer or that on occasion; it is always reverentially and somberly placed, and invoked in such […]