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Recent Articles
- February and Its Discontents - February 7, 2010
- Pay attention carefully, but above all, pay attention quickly. This month we're finally talking economics. Maybe that's because this is the shortest month of the year....
- It's a New Game in Washington - January 31, 2010
- How will we remember this month, with the recriminations over the failed Christmas bomber, the Massachusetts miracle wrought by Scott Brown, the frightening mid-month...
- The Former Presidents Club - January 24, 2010
- In their 1976 presidential debate Jimmy Carter criticized President Gerald R. Ford for his choice of running mate, for his energy and environmental policies and for what...
- Vulpes Cineroargenteus - January 17, 2010
- As the anniversary of Barack Obama's historic inauguration approaches, he struggles with the classic questions that surround the American presidency: Too much? Or too...
- The Mathematics of Division - January 10, 2010
- Reel the tape back one full year (and forgive the antiquated metaphor, please). The Democrats are euphoric, excited as they haven't been since 1960, full of resolve as...
- History's Take on 2009 - December 28, 2009
- We know what 1914 means. It means the beginning of World War I. We know what 1938 means. It means appeasement at Munich in the run-up to World War II. We know what 1968...
- Press Bias is About Change & Controversy, Not Left/Right - December 20, 2009
- Last evening I watched on C-SPAN a panel discussion on partisanship in our political system and how to reduce the "poison" in public discourse. One speaker said that as...
- Down So Long It Looks Like Up - December 13, 2009
- Here comes a statement of the obvious: The president is struggling. The surge in Afghanistan, the economic stimulus, the financial bailout and the overhaul of the health...
- Brains and Guts - December 6, 2009
- Less than a week before he died, McGeorge Bundy, the brilliant Harvard dean who was an architect of John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam strategy, met with...
- Obama is Unique - November 29, 2009
- SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- For someone who looks and sounds far different from any previous American president, Barack Obama sure invites a lot of comparisons with his...
- Learning Old Lessons - November 22, 2009
- Barack Obama is back from Asia and his bow to the Japanese, his handshake with the tyrant from Myanmar and his difficult sessions with the Chinese. There sure has been a...
- Abortion Makes a Comeback - November 15, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Is it possible to hear the sound of hands wringing? Or of souls agonizing? Or of ironies clanging? I think you can. I think that if you listen carefully...
- Why We Celebrate - November 8, 2009
- We thought it meant the end of international contention. We thought it meant the nuclear menace was no more. We thought it meant Russia and America, the two powers of...
- Agonizing Over Afghanistan - October 31, 2009
- It may be that a swift resolution to the Afghanistan debate is essential. It may be that political pressures make delay unappealing or even impossible. It may be that...
- Miss Waterman - October 25, 2009
- SWAMPSCOTT, Mass. -- Let me tell you about my fifth-grade classroom. It was upstairs in the 80-year-old wing of the Stanley School, right under a classic New England...
- The President's Frank Capra Moment - October 18, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Maybe it happened on an afternoon when no one was looking. Maybe it occurred when everyone was focused on something else, or preoccupied with other...
- The Morphing Metaphor of Vietnam - October 11, 2009
- Washington has turned into one big book club, and everybody seems to be reading the same two books. They are not Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows' wonderful "The...
- The Hardest Job There Is - October 4, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- The president sits at ease in a blue suit, blue shirt and blue patterned tie. Over one shoulder is a bronze bust of Martin Luther King, the civil rights...
- They've Taken the Moon Away - September 27, 2009
- PITTSBURGH -- Party's over. The visiting police and protesters are gone; the fences and barbed wire are coming down. Someone's making a fortune moving concrete barriers...
- High Stakes in Pittsburgh - September 20, 2009
- PITTSBURGH -- In less than a week 20 world leaders will convene here for a global summit to take the measure of the international economy and examine what they can do to...
- History, Again - September 13, 2009
- Most of the world goes to war about geography. Europe goes to war about history. And while the war that broke out late last week in Europe wasn't a shooting war, it was...
- The Battle of 70 Summers - September 6, 2009
- Across oceans and continents it raged, drawing 100 million people into combat, leaving tens of millions dead, transforming millions more into refugees, costing hundreds...
- No Ignoring Protests - August 23, 2009
- President Obama will return from his island idyll to a political landscape completely remade. He still will be greeted by swooning crowds and enthusiastic cheers. But...
- Of Promise and Promises - August 16, 2009
- In about a week the president will go to Martha's Vineyard for his summer vacation. There he'll have time to stroll the beach, maybe take a nap, almost surely look back...
- The (Blue) Dog Days of Summer - August 9, 2009
- The last time we looked -- wasn't it just about five minutes ago? -- the Democrats were in as commanding a position as they have been in a generation. A popular...
- Political Calculus - August 2, 2009
- Here are some numbers that you need to remember as you watch President Barack Obama and Congress wrangle over a blizzard of figures at the heart of a proposed dramatic...
- Things Not Done, Roads Not Taken - July 26, 2009
- FRANCONIA, N.H. -- We were going to climb Mount Pemigewasset, which juts out from the cliffs that form Indian Head and has a remarkable panorama of White Mountain...
- Swimming Upward Toward a Dream - July 19, 2009
- Archibald MacLeish called the mission "a wonder to us, unattainable, a longing past the reach of longing," saying that "(t)hree days and three nights we journeyed,...
- Fishing, Hiking, Running for President - July 12, 2009
- NORTH CONWAY, N.H. -- There isn't a presidential yard sign in sight up here. Nobody at the gas station that sells maybe the best doughnuts in the world is talking about...
- All Men and Women - July 5, 2009
- SENECA FALLS, N.Y. -- We mark this weekend the signing in Philadelphia of the Declaration of Independence, which was conceived in 1776 as a list of particulars but...
- Taxing Inheritance - June 28, 2009
- Iraq and the economy are hard problems. President Barack Obama seems to be handling them gracefully. Iran and health care are hard problems. The president is having more...
- 50 Years Later - June 21, 2009
- PITTSBURGH -- This September the leaders of the 19 most influential nations and a representative of the European Union will gather on the banks of the Allegheny River to...
- Assigned Reading - June 14, 2009
- The auto industry is on life support, banks are almost nationalized, investment houses are gasping for breath, retailers are struggling. So it may not surprise you to...
- Roosevelt and the Jews - June 7, 2009
- Seventy years ago there raged in Washington one of the most portentous, and least known, debates in Western history. World War II had not yet begun. The full extent of...
- Is It Too Soon to Be Naming Schools After Obama? - May 31, 2009
- The Webster School on Holly Avenue in St. Paul, Minn., has a tradition going back almost 130 years. It has a rousing song ("Webster School is great as can be / Teachers,...
- Getting the Small Things Right - May 24, 2009
- The call came late at night and the tone of the voice was ominous. We had to meet. Immediately. It could not wait. It had to be the next day. So I flew to Boston and met...
- After the Wall - May 17, 2009
- It was built in darkness -- and destroyed in sunlight. It separated Berlin -- and united much of Europe. It provided the backdrop for perhaps the most stirring speech...
- Jack Kemp: Ideas Into Action - May 10, 2009
- He was always in motion. As a quarterback wearing No. 15 for the Buffalo Bills, as a young congressman afire with passion about supply-side economics, as a presidential...
- Presidents Don't Prosecute Their Predecessors - May 3, 2009
- When Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams, a contest that put America on such a different footing that it is remembered today as the Revolution of 1800, he did not seek...
- The Truman Show - April 28, 2009
- There are scores of ways to evaluate the beginning of a presidency. One of the most facile is to look at a president's first 100 days, which in the case of President...