Roundup: Media's Take

Jon Meacham: A Lion, But No Lionization (Re: Ted Kennedy)

[Jon Meacham is the Editor of Newsweek. Meacham’s latest book, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for biography or autobiography...He has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The Washington Post Book World...Meacham graduated from The McCallie School and from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with a degree summa cum laude in English Literature.] It was an u

Michael J. Petrilli: Sarah Palin, anti-intellectualism, and the plight of the liberal arts

[Mr. Petrilli is vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy think tank in Washington, DC.] "She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and

David Rogers: A generational shift

On July 20, 1965, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara warned President Lyndon Johnson that U.S. deaths in Vietnam could soon come at the rate of 500 a month, the equivalent of 6,000 a year. Ten days later, Johnson — still pursuing his Great Society dreams — signed a landmark Medicare-Medicaid bill to provide health care for the nation’s elderly and poor. It’s all ancient history in today’s Washington, which has leapt ahead to the first president of the post-Vietnam gene

Daniel Henninger: Talking his way onto Mount Rushmore?

... Mr. Obama is not the nation's Speaker in Chief. He's not a senator, and he's no longer a candidate. He's the president. A president's major speeches are different than those of anyone else. That high office imposes demands beyond the power of a podium. Inspiration matters, but the office also requires acts of leadership. A U.S. president's words must be connected to something beyond sentiment and eloquence. Too much of the time, Barack Obama's big speeches don't seem to be connected to anyth

John Yoo: Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps

[Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03 and is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda's inner workings, could not detect its operatives' entry into the country, nor predict where it might strike next. Suppose an al Qaeda cell in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles was p

Robert Creamer: If Congress Fails to Pass the Obama Health Care Plan

[Robert Creamer is a longtime political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.] In the current health care debate, Democratic Members of Congress representing swing districts have often (though not always) been among the most cautious when it comes to supporting President Obama's proposals for health care reform. In many ways that is understandable. They often come from districts th

Steve Padilla: Sotomayor hearings: Looking back in court history -- to when the first Jewish nominee was considered by the Judiciary Committee

[Steve Padilla is an Assistant National Editor for the LA Times.] Periodically during this week’s Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the Ticket will pause to share some history on the court and the committee. In his opening remarks Monday,  committee Chairman Patrick Leahy alluded to that history, recounting the key role the committee has played in the nation’s affairs. He spoke of the committee’s role in shepherding the Civi

Clifford D. May: Iraq ... An American victory

[Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.] The news is not that American combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities. The news is that American combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities in victory -- rather than in defeat. Two years ago at this time, few in the foreign-policy establishment considered that outcome possible. Some did not even see it as desirable. There were those who believed the con

Thomas L. Friedman: Goodbye Iraq, and Good Luck

[Thomas L. Friedman became the paper's foreign-affairs columnist in 1995.] I’m in the provincial headquarters building in downtown Kirkuk — the oil-rich district of northern Iraq that is the most disputed corner of this country. The provincial leaders — Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians — have come to meet America’s top military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with whom I am tagging along. All 11 Iraqi leaders are seated on one side of a con

Michael Lind: History shows that piecemeal reform is better than a Big Bang

In its push to solve the long-term problems of U.S. healthcare and energy in only a few months by means of comprehensive reform legislation, the Obama administration and the Democratic majority could be inspired by the story of Henry Clay's success in framing the Compromise of 1850. In the greatest feat of his long career in American politics, the great Kentucky senator put together a comprehensive package of reforms that won bipartisan support, resolved outstanding issues about slavery and the

Michiko Kakutani: The Choices That Closed a Window Into Afghanistan

Among the many lasting consequences of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the collateral damage it inflicted on Afghanistan and the war there against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Money, troops and expertise were diverted to Iraq, and as the RAND Corporation political scientist Seth G. Jones observes in his useful new book, the initial success of the military operation in Afghanistan was squandered. The slender window for securing a stable democracy in Afghani

Gideon Rachman: China is now an empire in denial

[Gideon Rachman is the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist.] When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it suddenly became obvious that the USSR had never been a proper country. It was a multinational empire held together by force. Might we one day say the same of China? Of course, any such suggestion is greeted with rage in Beijing. Chinese politicians are modern-minded pragmatists when it comes to economic management. But they revert to Maoist language when questions

Jonathan Lyons: Spectre of Khomeini as religious radical

[Jonathan Lyons, Reuters Tehran bureau chief from 1998-2001, is the co-author of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in 21st-Century Iran. His latest book, The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, was published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Press.] The Western world knows the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a political radical, the militant revolutionary who overthrew the U.S.-backed shah in 1979 and established an Islamic state shortly thereaf

Eleanor Clift: Obama's LBJ Moment

[Eleanor Clift is a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine. She reports on the White House, presidential politics, and a variety of national issues. ]http://premierespeakers.com/eleanor_clift/bio The president still has plenty of political capital. He just needs to be willing to spend it. His poll numbers may be sinking, but six months into his presidency, Barack Obama retains the admiration and the trust of

Tim Collins: Afghanistan remains a worthy cause

[Colonel Tim Collins served in Iraq and elsewhere and is now chief executive of New Century Consulting.] With 184 men dead as a result of our involvement in the campaign in Afghanistan, many will now be asking: is it worth the effort? The bland riposte is always: "If we don't win the fight there we will have to fight it here." Unlike most spin that flows like a mighty river from the Government, this bit is actually true. Critics will also point out that we hav

Jonathan Martin: Bashing George W. Bush still politically potent

[Jonathan Martin writes for Politico.] Vice-President Joe Biden was standing by Jon Corzine's side when the New Jersey governor kicked off his re-election campaign last month, but it was hard to tell from Corzine's remarks that there was a new administration in Washington. "America doesn't need to be Bushwhacked again," Corzine declared, jabbing his index finger and drawing loud cheers. "New Jersey cannot afford to be Bushwhacked again."

Eleanor Clift: Obama's LBJ Moment

[Eleanor Clift became a contributing editor of Newsweek in September 1994.] His poll numbers may be sinking, but six months into his presidency, Barack Obama retains the admiration and the trust of voters. To be sure, they're not as admiring of his policies. The attacks from critics about unsustainable debt and big government have taken their toll. Voters question whether his policies will work, and the legions of progressives who backed him wonder whether he has what it takes to wo

Marc A. Thiessen: Obama’s Inheritance ... Al-Qaeda in Retreat

[Mr. Thiessen was one of President Bush's speechwriters.] In a widely noted speech at the National Archives in May, President Barack Obama said of George W. Bush’s national security policies: “We are cleaning up something that is quite simply a mess.” The president is wrong. Far from a mess, when it comes to national security, President Obama actually inherited a very strong hand from his predecessor. When Bush left office in January, America had marked 2,688 days without suffering

Marc Ambinder: Robert McNamara, Voltaire's Bastards And Barack Obama

Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara will be best known by those whose who participated in the Vietnam War as the intellectual architect of a conflict whose beginnings are still murky and whose endings provides us with endless metaphors, and lessons, for today.  What did McNamara fundamentally believe he got wrong? Nothing more, he wrote in 1995, than a misunderstanding about what America's history and traditions implied for the course of Vietnam. He had plenty of time to think

Michael Schwartz: Colonizing Iraq ... The Obama Doctrine?

[A professor of sociology at Stony Brook State University, Michael Schwartz is the author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Haymarket Books), which explains how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the U.S. to dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while fueling a sectarian civil war. Schwartz's work on Iraq has appeared in numerous academic and popular outlets. He is a regular at TomDispatch.com. (An