Roundup: Media's Take

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

... I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart. These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know

George F. Will: Running-Mate Math

Were it not for the 12th Amendment, ratified on June 15, 1804, presidential nominees could, and probably would prefer to, run alone, without being saddled with pesky vice presidential running mates, who can be embarrassments. Unfortunately, the presidential election of 1800 happened. It was "a magnificent catastrophe" (that is the title of a splendid new book on it, by Edward J. Larson of Pepperdine University). As the two-party system, unanticipated by the Constitution's

Richard Cohen: Dems are working hard to give McCain a fighting chance

In a 2007 column, I compared this current presidential campaign to that of 1972, when George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon. The parallels are in some ways obvious - the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq, above all. What I could not have foreseen a year ago was how much more obvious the parallels would become. Back in '72, the Democratic Party was split between doves and hawks, reformers and stogie smokers - even men and women. The result was a national convention that was boisterous, un

Sherry F. Colb: Client 9 and President 42 ... Drawing Parallels Between Spitzer and Clinton

[Sherry F. Colb is a Professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark. Colb has taught courses in Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Mental Health Law, and Feminist Legal Studies.] On March 11, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace topped the news. Federal investigators had caught Spitzer -known to them as "Client 9" -- arranging for a prostitute named "Kristen" to meet him for an assignation at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Ten years ago, in 19

Josh Patashnik: Obama's evolution on education issues

[Josh Patashnik is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.] ... [Barack] Obama is not the most liberal member of the Senate--the widely reported National Journal rankings released in January, which say that he is, are essentially meaningless when it comes to grading presidential candidates, who inevitably miss significant numbers of votes--but nor is he a centrist. National Journal's rankings from last year, which have more validity, scored him as the tenth most liberal senator.

Andrew Leonard: So long, John -- gas is $4 a gallon

On March 7, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached $3.17. Four dollars a gallon by summertime is well within the realm of possibility -- even if that comes as a surprise to the current occupant of the White House. Record gas prices? During an election year? What could it mean? Let's review the historical record. When Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president in January 1977, the average price of a gallon of regular leaded gasoline was 60 cen

Bret Stephens: A President, Not a Symbol

Sometime before Barack Obama's middle name slipped into the realm of the unmentionable, it was supposed to be a selling point of his candidacy. "Well, I think if you've got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that's a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush," Mr. Obama told PBS's Tavis Smiley on October 18, 2007. "If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am the messenger who can deliver

Noel Malcolm: Is America the new Rome?

[Review of The New Rome: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy.] The American edition of this book, which came out a few months ago, bore the title Are We Rome? Apparently that was the sort of question for which ancient Romans would have used the word 'nonne', expecting the answer 'yes'; for the British edition is baldly entitled The New Rome. Sidney and Beatrice Webb did something similar when they dropped the question mark from their Soviet Co

Steven Hill: A Way Out Of the Nader Dilemma

[Steven Hill is Director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation, which seeks to identify and develop the best opportunities for political and electoral reform, educate opinion leaders and the public about electoral alternatives, and encourage the formation of a broad-based coalition for reform.] With Ralph Nader in the race, Democrats are fuming and no doubt preparing to use the same legal tricks they used in 2004 to keep Nader off the ballot in many states. Republ

Paul Finkelman: What the voters want is an optimistic candidate

[Paul Finkelman is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy and Senior Fellow in the Government Law Center at Albany Law School.] A year ago everyone assumed that by the early winter of 2008 Hillary Clinton would have locked up the Democratic nomination for president. She had money, name recognition, and a seemingly well-oiled machine. Now she is on the ropes, fighting to stay in the race. What happened? Senator Clinton lacked one

Evan R. Goldstein: What happened to the pragmatism that marked early Israeli leaders?

[Evan Goldstein is a staff editor at The Chronicle Review, the magazine of ideas published by The Chronicle of Higher Education. ] Immediately following the Six-Day War, in June 1967, a contingent of Mossad agents fanned out across the West Bank to meet with members of the Palestinian elite. A few days earlier, the Israeli army had entered the area and occupied villages and towns. The agents were charged with taking the temperature of the Palestinian body politic and recommending wh

Dean Starkman: Why does the press use “populist” to refer to policies that are simply liberal?

[Dean Starkman writes and edits The Audit. He is CJR's Kingsford Capital Fellow.] Before this gets out of hand, big media needs to stop using the word “populist” to describe Democrats’ economic programs and their appeals to voters. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal keep making the same mistake, both calling appeals that are simply left-of-center—liberal—“populist.” This week, one Times headline said: "Democrats Make Populist A

Mark D. Tooley: Bush Library for Southern Methodist University

[Mark D. Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.] Leftist faculty and clergy have waged a long, sometimes nasty battle to keep Southern Methodist (SMU) University in Dallas from hosting the Bush Library. They have insisted that the library will tie SMU to the Bush Administration’s supposedly sinister policies of preemptive war, “torture,” uncontrolled Global Warming, and puritanical repression. But SMU’s board of trustees has finally

Stephen Schlesinger: Obama and The Myth of Pledged Delegates

[Stephen Schlesinger is the former Director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York City (1997-2006). Mr. Schlesinger received his BA from Harvard University and his JD from Harvard Law School.] There is no rule in the politics of Democratic Party conventions that says that the contender with the largest number of pledged delegates short of the total required for nomination should automatically, by dint of that achievement, be handed the party's design

Kelly Nuxoll: Barack Obama on the Path to Sainthood

[I'm a freelance writer, adopting as my beat for "Off the Bus" not any of the candidates, but the public conversation around the presidential campaigns....I've taught writing for about ten years, including Logic and Rhetoric at Columbia, and I've written for newspapers, magazines, nonprofits, online pubs, and Howard Dean's presidential campaign.] On the cusp of the Texas and Ohio elections, Barack Obama is dangerously close to becoming a bona fide charismatic leader

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Obama 2008 = Reagan 1980

Barack Obama's critics bear a remarkable resemblance to the liberals who labored mightily to dismiss Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan's foes wrote him off as a right-wing former actor who amiably spouted conservative bromides and must have been engaged in some sort of Hollywood flimflam. Like Reagan's enemies, Obama's opponents concede that this Democrat gives a great speech. Indeed, both Obama and Reagan came to wide attention because of a single oration that offered hope

Stephen F. Hayes: Obama as Carter

[Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.] IN A VERY SMART piece in today's New York Observer on Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, Steve Kornacki writes: In the '76 primaries, Carter's Democratic foes at first ignored his trust theme and then--when it was too late--brayed against it, warning that he'd been maddeningly vague about what he'd actually do as president. Hillary Clin

John Judis: Obama and the cult of the new

[John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.] ... Obama is the candidate of the new--a "new generation," a "new leadership," a "new kind of politics," to borrow phrases he has used. But, in emphasizing newness, Obama is actually voicing a very old theme. When he speaks of change, hope, and choosing the future over the past, when he pledges to end racial divisions or attac

Spengler: Obama's women reveal his secret

"Cherchez la femme," advised Alexander Dumas in: "When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman." In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America. ... Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama's campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from b

Frances Trix: Kosova ... Stories the Press Missed

[Frances Trix is an associate professor of linguistics and anthropology at Indiana University. She speaks Albanian and spent the summer of 2007 in Kosova doing research on Kosova under the UN administration.] Since Kosova declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, there has been media coverage of Serbia's negative response and the fragility of the "new state." The press has been fascinated by the sight of Serbs demonstrating in Belgrade and burning embassie