Okay, work with me here. It’s January 2012, and we’re in the midst of the full presidential campaign following the self-inflicted, nearly unprecedented financial collapse of 2008. We’ve talked a little about what happened and how the government reacted, but the candidates have only just begun to talk about destructive business practices. Now, maybe I’m …
Writing in the Washington Post last week, Robert Kagan argues that for all the emphasis we’re placing on new challenges in the year, much of our work will involve well-established ideas. Among them: “Military force matters: At a time when all we hear about is “soft” and “smart” power, it is ironic that some of …
AND IT’S ONE, TWO, THREE, WHAT ARE WE SPENDING FOR? Read More »
“You know, you never want to say, ‘It’s all them,’” President Obama told Barbara Walters last week, “But I do think that right now at least, in the Republican Party there are a couple of notions. Number one is that compromise is a dirty word. Number two, anything that Obama’s for, we’re against.” Come on, …
In Slate, Will Oremus reports the very good news that non-partisan citizen efforts in California and Arizona have attracted lawsuits from aggrieved professional politicians. Excellent news! The cure seems to be working! “Often,” explains Oremus, “congressional gerrymanders are the result of bipartisan compromise—an agreement that allows the majority party to solidify its hold on the …
In New York magazine, the cleverDan Amira captures the essence of Newt Gingrich‘s windbaggery–the self-promoting adverb that makes the speaker look like an intellectual. Profoundly, deeply, frankly are frequently padders of Newt’s rhetoric, but by far Newt’s favorite word–the crutch without which he cannot walk a thought past his lips–is fundamentally. Examining Gingrich’s speeches since …
. . .is Trump Tower, right next door to Tiffany’s, where Customer of the Year Newt Gingrich met with TV Star-self-promoter Donald Trump to discuss how they might mutualy enrich one another.
In honor of Newt Gingrich’s ascension to front-running status in the Republican presidential contest, I am going into the vaults and resurrecting a nugget from the archives, a solid gold Jamie Malanowski rarity. Here, from early 1996, is the never-before-been-published The Short Happy Life of the Republican Revolution: A Libretto of a Musical in Search …
A RARITY: THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF THE REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION Read More »
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863,” wrote William Faulkner in Intruder in the Dust, speaking of the moment just before Pickett’s charge, when “this time, maybe this time” the Confederate …
Writing in The Atlantic last week, James Kwak had the best analysis of the failure of the ludicrously-named Supercommittee: the committee may have failed, but the Republicans won. Indeed, as Kwak says, they had already won. “In 1994, Newt Gingrich — the man who is now the frontrunner in the Anyone-But-Mitt race — led the …