15th Anniversary

Stanley B. Greenberg’s Fall 1991 article, “From Crisis to Working Majority,” was widely considered a key manifesto for the 1992 Clinton campaign. Bob Woodward reported that Bill Clinton said he had read it three times. On the eve of Bill Clinton’s announced candidacy for president, I reviewed a wave of provocative books about the “deepening […]

In December 1992, according to Bob Woodward’s The Agenda, President-elect Bill Clinton was about to announce Laura Tyson’s appointment as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, when Tyson mentioned she and Robert Reich had debated in The American Prospect whether the nationality of a firm was important. Suddenly recalling the debate, Clinton said, “You […]

Well before Bill Clinton pledged to “end welfare as we know it,” the first issue of The American Prospect included a long article by Kathryn Edin and myself [see “The Real Welfare Problem,” Spring 1990] urging liberals to rethink welfare. Our argument rested on two facts. First, both Edin’s research and national surveys showed that […]