Robert Kuttner

One of the many lamentable things about this presidential campaign is how the real issues have been obscured in a sea of mud and deception. Exhibit A is education. President Bush campaigned as an education president and pledged to leave no child behind. His main legacy, however, is a most un-Republican brand of federal mandates […]

John Kerry is in trouble because the Bush campaign has seized control of what psychologists call the “frame” of this year’s presidential contest. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and company have framed the election starkly: Bush will keep us safe in a time of terror. He will put money in people’s pockets by cutting our […]

Among Democrats, we are already hearing the recriminations. Is Kerry blowing it, and whose fault is it? Eight weeks before Election Day, the campaign is said to be turning into a referendum on Kerry rather than Bush. The president got his convention bounce (with more to come on September 11), and Democrats are already making […]

We will shortly hear from the president himself, but the outlines of his domestic program for a second term are already all too clear. Take five key areas of economic policy — health, Social Security, energy, taxes, and the deficit. All five have this in common: In each case the administration program doesn’t really address […]

If you like the Karl Rove-inspired attack on John Kerry’s Swift Boat service, you’re going to love the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s coming assault on John Edwards. Like the right-wing vets smearing Kerry’s Vietnam record, the anti-Edwards group is nominally an independent committee. But as The New York Times reports, the cochairmen of the new […]

There is something quite lunatic about the entire debate on whether to permit imports of drugs from Canada. It’s not as if Canada manufactures drugs more cheaply. Nor are drugs like trees, or bauxite, or hydro power, which just happen to be naturally plentiful in Canada. No, the cheaper Canadian drugs are the same ones […]

A feeble economy could help make John Kerry president. But then it would suddenly be his economy and his problem. Despite high deficits and low interest rates, both of which provide economic stimulus, this economy is barely treading water. Last month, the best the economy could manage was a paltry 32,000 new jobs. And it’s […]

Thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts, the federal government faces a long-term fiscal crisis. An intended side effect is to undercut social investment of the sort that has bonded two generations of voters since Franklin Roosevelt to the Democratic Party. The current year’s deficit is projected at $440 billion. If elected, John Kerry will […]