History
In 1971, The New Republic noted an aspect of George McGovern's personality that I see as the biggest difference between him and Howard Dean: Next to his "radical" image, McGovern's biggest liability is the feeling he doesn't project strength, that he'
History
The controversy over whether Howard Dean is another George McGovern and the endorsement of Joe Lieberman by The New Republic has inspired me to dig up some of what The New Republic wrote in 1971 and 1972 about George McGovern's presidential campaign. Looking at contemporary writings can be
Media
Dylan Wilbanks takes a look at the current state of American political discourse, and says one thing I strongly agree with (though I would quibble with "impossible"): I believe political discourse is now impossible in this country, thanks to the media, the bevy of talk-show moruns [sic] out
History
Josh Marshall excerpts an interview with Peter Drucker, who argues that India will be a greater economic power in the future than China. I've long believed that India rather than China would be the nation to eventually supplant the United States as the world's leading superpower,
Politics
The signal-to-noise ratio of political blogs and Usenet political newsgroups would soar if their participants would remember this simple point: The world is full to the gills with stupid people who say awful things on the Internet. Pointing this out doesn’t constitute a political argument. One of the downsides
Politics
Dear Mr. Ornstein, Continuity of Government Commissionthe June 2003 issue of The AtlanticyouAmerican Enterprise Institute /s/ Steve Casburn
Politics
From an article in Foreign Affairs: The Afghanistan crisis has dramatized and intensified antecedent changes and strains in the Western alliance. There was unanimous, if separate, condemnation [...], but there were also divergent, and often acrimoniously different, assessments of the causes of aggression and the nature of the challenge. The difficulties
Politics
An e-mail to Fox News: your story last week about Wesley Clarka request from The Weekly Standard Have you requested that the White House check its logs for calls to and from Robert Novak during the month of June? If they'll do a log check for a bunch
Politics
Brad DeLong asks the question I have asked many times since 1995: Where are the grownups in the Republican Party? I recently read Henry Fairlie's 1978 book, The parties: Republicans and Democrats in this century, and Fairlie agrees with Hubert Humphrey that [pgs. 215-16] (Again, that was in
Politics
Kevin Drum says it better than I could. Remember: [the Plame affair] is not just some run of the mill political dirty trick. It's perilously close to treason. No truly principled conservative administration would do a thing like this, and the fact that they've been trying
Education
A middle school teacher in Nebraska, on mandatory standardized testing: Politicians (and business people/capitalists) are competitive. They have a challenge, they try harder, and succeed. They see this as the solution to education: raise the bar, tougher standards, more competition. They don't see the reality, that not
Politics
An e-mail to Fox News: Al Franken's upcoming bookthe lawsuit that Fox News has filed against its release I'm amazed that a news network seems so unaware of the concept of "free publicity". /s/ Steve Casburn