Republicans killed it. The White House strategy misfired. Reformers couldn’t unite. The center failed. And the moment was lost.
Features
Posted inEducation in America
The New School Wars: How Outcome-Based Education Blew Up
It seemed like a conservative idea; then progressive educators got hold of it. Now a firestorm has erupted that could jeopardize the effort to raise national curriculum standards.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Do Poor Women Have a Right to Bear Children?
The current movement to reform welfare implies an uncomfortable thought: Perhaps poor women don’t have the right to bear children. Are we really prepared to say that?
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Cracking Open the IQ Box
The Bell Curve has given genetic determinism new currency, but the science on which it rests is even less persuasive today than it was a century ago.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Inequality Express
While the trend toward greater inequality is no longer in doubt, recent work in the social sciences suggests a number of possible explanations. We can now begin to sort them out.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Up From 1994
S ince Franklin Roosevelt, the central liberal credo has been the use of government to benefit ordinary people. That premise is now battered–fiscally, politically, ideologically. In 1994, swing voters rejected both the concept and the party of government. The 1994 midterm election is not yet the epochal realignment that prefigures a new governing coalition and […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Friends of Bill? Why Liberals Should Let Up on Clinton
In Clinton’s first two years, myopic liberals complained about his compromises and disparaged his accomplishments. Now there will be fewer accomplishments and bigger compromises. Insisting on purity could only make things worse.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Who Killed Campaign Finance Reform? (and How To Revive It)
On October 17, The American Prospect cosponsored a conference on campaign finance reform at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Only weeks earlier, reform legislation had died in Congress. Participants in the conference included representatives of public interest organizations and both Democrats and Republicans; the conference received financial support from the Arca, Schumann, and Joyce Foundations, […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Bank Failure: The Financial Marginalization of the Poor
In poor areas across the country, banks have been replaced with check-cashers and pawn shops. While both liberals and conservatives extol the virtues of savings, the recent trend encourages just the opposite.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Diary of the American Nightmare
T he Book of Revelations does not say whether the apocalypse will be televised. But if it is, WSVN in Miami will not have to interrupt its regular programming. It’s July 18 — the day of a visit by President Clinton to Miami — and WSVN, the nation’s most notorious tabloid station, is leading its […]
