Roundup: Media's Take

Robert Shrum: Obama's history channel

[Robert M. Shrum has been a senior adviser to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the British Labour Party.] The transition drama unfolding before us casts Barack Obama as Abraham Lincoln and Hillary Clinton as William Seward, the defeated rival for the Republican presidential nomination who was enlisted by Lincoln to serve as his Secretary of State. Some may regard this re-enactment as hubris, but maybe it's the kind of statecraft f

Drew Westen: Lessons Learned from the Election of 2008 ... Looking Back and Looking Forward

[Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of"The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."] As the dust settles from the remarkable election of 2008 and the Obama transition is in full tilt, it is worth taking stock of lessons learned so they can inform not only campaigns that follow but

Walter Shapiro: Bill Ayers talks back (Interview)

Proving yet again that there are indeed second and even third acts in American lives, Bill Ayers had transformed himself over a quarter of a century from an on-the-run-from-the-law member of the Weather Underground to a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But because of a single event -- a 1995 coffee that he and his wife gave for fledgling state Senate candidate Barack Obama -- Ayers again found himself in the cross hairs of history. John

Tim Reid: Barack Obama will follow Lincoln's lead in choosing bipartisan Cabinet

[Tim Reid is Washington correspondent for The Times.] Barack Obama said today he would appoint at least one Republican to his cabinet as he praised the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln – a president who gave top posts to several of his bitterest political enemies. Mr Obama, who meets John McCain in Chicago tomorrow to discuss ways they can work together after he becomes president, said he would be announcing Cabinet appointments soon, days after he discussed with Hillary Clin

Nick Cohen: Darwin's no help on the origins of greed

[Nick Cohen is a columnist for the Observer and New Statesman.] The posters outside the Natural History museum's Darwin exhibition have a wary feel. They show the old boy shushing at the passers-by with a forefinger over his lips and a worried look in his eyes. Inside, the curators explain how he sat on his theory of evolution for fear of its social consequences with the help of a letter he wrote to his friend, Joseph Hooker. In 1844, 15 years before he found the courage to publish

James Forsyth: The Republicans are where the Tories were in 1997

[James Forsyth is the web editor of The Spectator.] A week into the Obama honeymoon it is debatable who has the bigger headache, the Democrats, who have been celebrating every day like it’s election day, or the Republicans, who have to work out how to rebuild their party. How and how quickly the GOP rebuilds at both the state and federal level will have a profound impact on British politics as the Tories have, to an underappreciated extent, taken to leaning on the Republicans for po

Lee Siegel: Obama's literary and political inspiration, the career of Abraham Lincoln, has a double edge

You would be hard-pressed to think of another president who identified as emphatically and relentlessly with one of his predecessors as President-elect Barack Obama does with Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Obama's publicly declared kinship with Lincoln is long-lived and meticulously fashioned. At his first press conference last week, in response to a question about what books he was reading "to get ready for the job," Mr. Obama cited only one author: "I have reread some of Linc

Daniel W. Drezner: Public Intellectual 2.0

[Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The paperback edition of his book, All Politics Is Global (Princeton University Press), was published in September.] Disquisitions about public intellectuals usually conclude that they ain't what they used to be. Subtitles from recent books on the topic include A Study of Decline andAn Endangered Species? Indeed, the major point of debate is dating the precise

Karl Rove: The 2008 election numbers are not as stark as the results

Political races are about candidates and issues. But election results, in the end, are about numbers. So now that the dust is settling on the 2008 presidential race, what do the numbers tell us? First, the predicted huge turnout surge didn't happen. The final tally is likely to show that fewer than 128.5 million people voted. That's up marginally from 122 million in 2004. But 17 million more people voted in 2004 than in 2000 (three times the change from 2004 to 2008). S

Jonathan Freedland: What the GOP can learn from the UK

[Jonathan Freedland is an editorial page columnist for The Guardian of London.] REPUBLICANS looking for a friendly shoulder to cry on in the coming months could do worse than look up their ideological cousins across the Atlantic. For the Conservative Party in Britain knows what it feels like to be wiped out in a watershed election by a charismatic opponent whose victory brings jubilant scenes on the streets and heady talk of a new dawn. For the Tories, the cataclysm cam

Marc Ambinder: Why 2010 Won't Be Like 1994

As president-elect Barack Obama begins to hash out their agenda, Republicans are predicting Democratic overreach and pointing back to the example of 1994. But 2010 isn't 1994. Consider: Bill Clinton had no experience working with the House and Senate; he had to learn on the job and made some early mistakes in this regard. Obama, on the other hand, has a working knowledge of the legislative process, and has a whole host of allies within the Democratic caucus. In 1

Richard C. Leone: The Third Most Challenging Presidency

[Following is commentary by Richard C. Leone, president of The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy research institution.] It's hard to argue against the proposition that Abraham Lincoln took office at the most dangerous time in the history of the republic and faced the most challenging conditions confronting a new president. The Union was literally coming apart over his election. Although no one could foresee the length or pain of the civil war to come, Lincoln's inau

Kathy G: Why I hate the term "un-American"

[Kathy G. is a shrill feminist, bleeding heart liberal, hardcore policy wonk, political junkie, ardent cinephile, and lover of 19th century novels. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two loveable mutts, where she is attempting, amidst numerous diverting distractions, to complete a Ph.D. in the social sciences.] Okay, there's one more piece of Wieseltier-bashing I've got to get out of my system, and it concerns this pompous pronouncement he made about Obama's victory:"Ameri

Dick Morris: Sarah Palin saved GOP from disaster

As Richard Nixon wrote, "history is written by liberals," but the story of the 2008 campaign is too important to cede to them the analysis of what happened. A close analysis of the returns indicates several key realities: a) Sarah Palin made a vast difference in McCain's favor. Compared to 2004, McCain lost 11 points among white men, according to the Fox News exit poll, but only four points among white women. Obama's underperformance among white women, evident throughout t

Sam Tanenhaus: Should we look to the president as savior?

As Americans prepare to choose a new president, it may seem a curious exercise to rehearse the manifest failures of the current one. But either Barack Obama or John McCain is going to be stuck with the burdensome legacy of the Bush years, and the rest of us will be too--possibly for a long time. The war in Iraq is still with us. So are Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. The Wall Street cataclysm will ramify, locally and globally, for many months, perhaps years. An overwhelming majority of the publ

Jennifer Marsico: This Election Has Not 'Realigned' the Country

[Ms. Marsico is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute and a researcher/writer for the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.] With Barack Obama's victory and Democratic gains in Congress, more than a few commentators are talking about that "r" word so important in presidential politics -- "realignment." Was 2008 a realigning election? I don't think so. The academic discussion of realignment began with V.O. Key's seminal 1955 essay

Thomas Frank: A cheap cynicism has brought us to disaster. Let's try a little audacity.

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I and the beginning of our own time. The world remembers the Great War for the supreme pointlessness with which it slaughtered an entire generation of British, French, German and other combatants. We remember its static, unmoving Western Front, a stationary death-mill into which brave men were fed for years without making any appreciable difference. We remember the poison gas, the moonscape of shattered trees and churned-up

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: Obama's Car Puzzle

You have in GM's Volt a perfect car of the Age of Obama -- or at least the Honeymoon of Obama, before the reality principle kicks in. Even as GM teeters toward bankruptcy and wheedles for billions in public aid, its forthcoming plug-in hybrid continues to absorb a big chunk of the company's product development budget. This is a car that, by GM's own admission, won't make money. It's a car that can't possibly provide a buyer with value commensurate with the resources and labor needed

Steve Coll: Getting in touch with our inner FDR

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins, his Secretary of Labor, to draft a plan that might help Americans escape poverty in old age. “Keep it simple,” he told her. “So simple that everybody will understand it.” On August 14, 1935, after bargaining in Congress, Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act at a White House ceremony. The law “represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete,” the President said. He continued:

Genworth Financial Wealth Management: When will the markets recover?

There is an old expression, “May you be cursed to live in interesting times.” With massive Federal bailouts and the collapse of some of the most prominent names in the financial industry, these are certainly interesting times. In consideration, we have departed from our traditional economic statistics review in favor of a discussion about what has happened in the markets and what to potentially expect going forward.There is no denying that, while the recent financial turmoil h