The Chatty Classes
Published April 26, 2009
New York Times Magazine
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Totaled?
Published March 29, 2009New York Times Magazine
Of all the various forms of corporate subsidy that the American taxpayer is now being asked to shoulder (bailouts for swaggering investment bankers and insurers, lifelines for overextended homeowners and the mortgage lenders who took advantage of them), perhaps none evoke such complicated emotions in Washington as the comparatively modest plea of General Motors. This is not simply because of its size, but also because G.M. is bound up with our collective identity, both national and personal.
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Yes, More Mr. Nice Guy
Published March 8, 2009Not quite seven weeks into Barack Obama’s presidency, the capital’s leading thinkers seem to agree that the era of postpartisanship is over. Obama’s team made little secret of their intention to win broad support for his stimulus plan — an effort that yielded three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. The president’s pick for the Commerce Department, Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, turned down the job, citing his personal opposition to the bill. According to E. J. Dionne Jr.
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Newt. Again.
Published March 1, 2009The New York Times Magazine
FOR CONSERVATIVES, who have traditionally valued their grand theorists more than their campaign consultants, the buildings that house Washington’s premier think tanks are like a second set of grand monuments, symbols of a movement built on brash ingenuity. The Cato Institute, headquarters of the nation’s libertarian academy, occupies a stunning steel-and-glass tower on Massachusetts Avenue, boasting the kind of light-filled, contemporary opulence you would expect to find in Silicon Valley.
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The Edge of the Mystery
Published January 18, 2009New York Times Magazine
Weeks before the election of 1960, Norman Mailer, already an accomplished novelist, sat down to write his first major work of political journalism, an essay for Esquire in which he argued that only John F. Kennedy could save America.
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House Divided?
Published November 2, 2008New York Times Magazine
“Elections have consequences,” John McCain said during the final presidential debate. It’s his way of saying that certain decisions are the prerogative of a president; if you want them to play out differently, win the White House yourself. Should McCain manage to pull out an improbable victory on Tuesday, however, he may well find out how inconsequential elections can actually be.
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Working for the Working-Class Vote
Published October 19, 2008New York Times Magazine
For a guy who just four years ago was running his first statewide campaign, Barack Obama has made startlingly few missteps as a presidential candidate.
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Retro Identity Politics
Published September 14, 2008The New York Times Magazine
The twin doctrines of identity politics and political correctness were at the peak of their influence when I arrived at college in 1986, part of the class born during that horrific year when Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in a span of nine weeks.
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