Published March 8, 2009
Not 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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Published March 1, 2009
The 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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Published February 1, 2009
The New York Times Magazine
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Published January 18, 2009
New 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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Published November 16, 2008
New York Times Magazine
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Published November 2, 2008
New 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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Published October 19, 2008
New 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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Published September 14, 2008
The 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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Published August 25, 2008
The New York Times Op-Ed Page
LIKE so much in his presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s search for a running mate was shadowed by the specter of race.
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Published August 22, 2008
The New York Times Magazine
Of course Barack Obama couldn’t have been content simply to show up and make history this week in Denver, accepting the nomination of his party just four years after he first introduced himself to Democrats in a keynote address that changed the course of American politics.
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