The New Republic

If you watched President Bush announce his opposition to the University of Michigan's affirmative action program last week, you probably came away with the impression that the president's position is a highly unpopular one. Bush's political body language was entirely defensive--from his speech, in which he urged greater minority enrollment on campus; to his legal reasoning, in which he failed to address the central question of whether diversity was a compelling government interest; to the calculated leak that African READ MORE >>

Perhaps the hardest part of criticizing the Bush administration's economic logic is simply keeping track of it from week to week. Consider President Bush's view of deficits. His initial position, while peddling his tax cut on the campaign trail and in the first months of his presidency, was that a return to deficits was inconceivable. "We can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens," he said in March 2001. "The projections for the surplus in my budget are cautious READ MORE >>

When President Bush appointed a successor to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill earlier this month, a handful of news outlets (this magazine included) pointed out that the identity of Bush's pick was essentially irrelevant to economic policy-making. The policies that new Treasury Secretary John Snow will be asked to sell to the public--tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts--have already been crafted without any need for his input, thank you very much. Indeed, the fact that policymakers in the Bush administration have READ MORE >>

One of the things that has fascinated me about The Wall Street Journal editorial page is its occasional capacity to rise above the routine moral callousness of hack conservative punditry and attain a level of exquisite depravity normally reserved for villains in James Bond movies. To wit, a recent lead editorial titled "THE NON-TAXPAYING CLASS." A reader unfamiliar with the Journal's editorial positions might read this headline and assume it refers to ultra-wealthy tax dodgers. But no--the Journal, of course, READ MORE >>

To be awash in recriminations seems to be the natural condition of the Democratic Party. The party has engaged in blame-assigning throughout the 1980s, much of the 1990s (remember health care, the 1994 elections, and impeachment?), the 2000 elections (not only after but during), and continuing without interruption though the George W. Bush presidency. The ritual is, in a way, deeply reassuring: It affirms for party loyalists that their misfortunes are contingent upon misjudgments that they can correct. It's indeed READ MORE >>

Republican candidates talking about Social Security privatization this year sound very much like Democratic candidates talking about Saddam Hussein: They avoid the topic at all costs. If, despite their best efforts, the issue does arise, they treat it as if it were a homicidal dictator--utterly abhorrent to their most cherished values. "I don't support privatizing Social Security," vowed Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Norm Coleman, who had previously supported the idea, "and I'll fight against anybody who READ MORE >>

It is perhaps telling that the case for war with Iraq was most clearly made not by Republican President George W. Bush but by Democratic President Bill Clinton. "Predators of the twenty-first century," Clinton warned, speaking four and a half years ago, "will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. ... There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq." And if the world were to allow Saddam READ MORE >>

Until one day several years ago, I, like most people, harbored no ill feelings toward the state of Delaware. I suppose in some vague sense I thought of it as harmless and even endearing, the way you tend to regard other small things, such as Girl Scouts or squirrels. But all that changed the summer day I moved to Washington, when, making my way down I-95 in a rental truck with all of my worldly belongings, I screeched to a halt in front of what turned out to be a two-hour backup in Delaware. READ MORE >>

A few of us at The New Republic have gotten into the habit of expressing our mundane daily conversations in the lingo of 30 second political attack ads. (Just the sort of behavior that made us so cool in high school.) Suppose a colleague wants to head to a familiar spot for lunch, and I prefer a new place. READ MORE >>

One day last month Democratic pollster Mark Penn unveiled the new swing voters whose allegiance will shape American politics this November and beyond: "office park dads." Immediately a demographic star was born. "Politically pampered `soccer moms' are being elbowed aside," began a story in USA Today. "Democrats are going after the votes of 'office park dads.'" How can the party win over this crucial swing vote? Easy, explains Penn: These voters "don't READ MORE >>