David Hackett Fischer’s new book, Paul Revere’s Ride, is a cautionary tale for Democrats who expect their heroes to produce results overnight. The story of Paul Revere has come down to us as a tale of individual daring. In our national memory, he rides through the night single-handedly spreading the alarm about the redcoats to […]
Politics
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
How Money Votes: An Oklahoma Story
Bill Brewster, junior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, works hard on behalf of the money that elected him. Unfortunately, he is emblematic of a system that skews politics away from the people.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Voting Rites: Why We Need a New Concept of Citizenship
In the primal act of citizenship, we face the ballot alone, face to face with our own ignorance.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Whose Confirmation Mess?
Who really politicized the Supreme Court? All it took to end the bloody confirmation battles were a few middle-of-the-road nominees.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
The Undertow
As the 1990s began, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. argued that America was due for a new era of affirmative government in keeping with the cycle of liberal and conservative periods that runs through our history. Uncannily, Bill Clinton’s election came right on schedule, roughly 90 years after Theodore Roosevelt became president, 60 years after Franklin Roosevelt, […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Pork and the Public Interest
How conservatives read their own cynicism into public life.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
What’s Trust Got to Do With It?
Everything. Cynicism is crippling our capacity to deal with public problems.
Posted inEnergy and the Environment
Seductions of Sim: Policy as a Simulation Game
For those who always thought public policy was a game anyone could play, it finally is. But beware of what the game assumes.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Friend or Faux?
Jeff Faux’s “The Myth of the New Democrats” (TAP, Fall 1993) is illuminating–but in unintentional ways. It highlights the unresolved tension in The American Prospect‘s editorial persona: though dedicated to rethinking old liberal assumptions, the magazine often shies from conclusions that defy liberal orthodoxy. TAP thus oscillates between earnest stabs at policy innovation and purse-lipped […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
The Evasion of Politics
Jeff Faux’s “The Myth of the New Democrats” (TAP, Fall 1993) is illuminating–but in unintentional ways. It highlights the unresolved tension in The American Prospect‘s editorial persona: though dedicated to rethinking old liberal assumptions, the magazine often shies from conclusions that defy liberal orthodoxy. TAP thus oscillates between earnest stabs at policy innovation and purse-lipped […]