B ill Clinton’s first term effectively lasted two years, until the disastrous midterm elections of 1994. Then came the two-year Clinton-Gingrich government of national disharmony, ending in the President’s miraculous revival. Now we have the third Clinton presidency, the second Gingrich Congress, and a gathering storm of investigations that may well dominate national politics for […]
Paul Starr
Paul Starr is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American history, he is the author of eight books, including American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now (Yale University Press, October 2025).
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
America’s Parliamentary Election
The 2000 presidential election, we’ve all heard, is “front loaded” because early primaries are likely to decide the nominations, and candidates consequently have had to accumulate money and support long in advance. But this past year, the race became front loaded in another way- many people were already bored when it had scarcely begun. Very […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
How Low Can You Go?
THE UPSIDE OF UNEMPLOYMENT Our last issue described PaineWebber’s “happiness index” for bonds, which goes up when unemployment increases. But unemployment, we’ve now learned, can prolong your life too. Our impeccable source is a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research: “Are Recessions Good for Your Health?” by Christopher Rohm (NBER Working Paper […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
How Low Can You Go?
Gambling on the Presidency T he College of Business Administration at the University of Iowa runs the Iowa Electronic Market, a futures market on this year’s presidential election. Anyone can buy a contract on President Clinton, the yet-to-be-designated Republican candidate, or someone else. It’s a winner-take-all market: Contracts on the winner pay off at $1 […]
Posted inFeatures
Rights under the Knife
The Congress that made the impeachment of President Clinton its first item of business is now approaching its end with little to brag about. During the impeachment, I disagreed with liberals who thought the proceedings were an unmitigated disaster. Anything that distracted this Congress from actually passing legislation seemed to me worth public encouragement. Yet […]
Posted inFeatures
Airpower and Our Power
When the war began in early October, no one knew how long and difficult it would be, and many pointed to the Russians’ failed invasion of Afghanistan as a warning that the enterprise could prove to be a disaster. Two months later, as I write, the Taliban regime is in its final death throes in […]
Posted inFeatures
Parodies Lost
On April 20, a federal judge named Charles Pannell, Jr., barred Houghton Mifflin from publishing Alice Randall’s novel The Wind Done Gone–a takeoff on Gone With the Wind from a slave’s perspective–on the grounds that the book’s borrowings of characters and scenes constitute “piracy.” The ruling has prompted widespread critical derision and may well be […]
Posted inAmerica and the World
The Choice in Kosovo
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans have been uncertain about the purposes that ought to guide our foreign policy, particularly our use of military power. Now that anticommunism no longer serves as an overarching cause, should we follow the dictates of national interest narrowly understood, or do democratic values and commitments to human […]
Posted inFeatures
The Executive-Class President
We are so used to a politics of blurred class interests in America that clarityis actually confusing. Throughout our history, the major parties have beeneconomically heterogeneous, and the basic tenets of the American creed havedenied any legitimacy to class as a basis of political action–except, that is,for measures in aid of the great, sprawling middle […]
Posted inFeatures
Bush’s Luck, Clinton’s Dilemma
T he final indignity of the Clinton presidency may bring yet another piece of good fortune to the man who just won the White House while getting fewer votes than his opponent. Although the Independent Counsel Act is defunct and will therefore never cause the least trouble for George W. Bush, the office created under […]