Features

So, what, if anything, could a president Kerry get through Congress? It’s beyond question that a President Kerry would inherit a Congress that, for the past half-decade, has been spiraling into an ever deeper dysfunctionality. During the past two years, under the control of the Bush administration and the leadership of Republicans Tom DeLay in […]

Head north out of Phnom Penh, and within a few miles the cacophonous traffic of Cambodia’s capital gives way to herds of oxen and water buffalo, their shoulder blades rolling underneath their hides. As you travel, the riverside restaurants — frequented by well-off Khmers and thick with neon lights and the sound of karaoke — […]

At the June 2003 G8 summit in Evian, France, President George W. Bush met with the other heads of state at a private dinner. There, according to sources close to two dinner guests, he promised the Europeans that if they gave $1 billion to a new joint AIDS fund, he would match it. But by […]

The first two times I dealt with John Kerry, when he had his initial brush with notoriety many years ago, I didn’t know what to make of him. It was actually a little later, after he had screwed up and taken one on the jaw, that I became intrigued by him. He lost his first […]

Not long ago, I watched a panel of noted literary scholars conclude a conference at Yale. The professors were just putting away their papers and wrapping up when, somehow, they started passionately debating the case of James Yee, the Guantanamo Bay chaplain accused of espionage. To explain the government’s charges, they hauled out whatever lingering […]

As Democrats flock to Boston to nominate John Kerry for president, few surprises will await them at the Fleet Center. Today’s political conventions stay relentlessly “on message,” and they serve as mere heralds of the home stretch of a seemingly endless presidential campaign. A key part of that unwavering message is a recounting of party […]

Abu Ghraib. L’Affaire Chalabi. George Tenet’s resignation. More conservative defections from the war enterprise. A circular firing squad of feuds — between John McCain and Denny Hastert, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. These have been, to state the obvious, a rough couple of months for the Republicans. Talk of the administration’s “wheels coming off” abounds. […]

If one had asked the leaders of the United Nations to choose a test case through which they could demonstrate the organization’s efficacy before the world, they would hardly have chosen Iraq. With a volatile security situation, too few peacekeeping troops, and a recent political history that has bitterly divided the members of the UN […]

Intro Eric Alterman “Whatever your first issue of concern,” media scholar Robert McChesney writes, “media had better be your second, because without change in the media, progress in your primary area is far less likely.” Media concentration has reached unprecedented proportions in America. Where we once had a vigorous “press” that defined and defended […]

For two decades, the Democratic party has been riven by sharp ideological arguments. Those debates were in some respects necessary and important. But it’s obvious that many of those conflicts are irrelevant to our moment, and say far more about the past than the future. The road to nowhere is paved with rote disputes between […]