The New Republic

  READ MORE >>

David Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton from 1992-1994. He is the author of Love the Work, Hate the Job: Why America’s Best Workers Are Unhappier than Ever.   Last night, John McCain gave the last speech of his presidential campaign, Barack Obama gave the first speech of his presidency, and each rose to the occasion. READ MORE >>

Barack Obama is a liberal. Hillary Clinton wants you to know this now; if Obama gets the nomination, John McCain assuredly will, too. “Liberal” has had bad connotations ever since the Vietnam era, when conservatives successfully branded their opponents with the “amnesty, abortion, and acid” label. Now, the word “liberal”--or librul, in its nastiest form--has been cast to the bottom of the linguistic heap, to be avoided at all costs. READ MORE >>

With Barack Obama winning 11 contests since Super Tuesday, and appearing well on his way to winning a clear majority of elected delegates, it looks unlikely that Hillary Clinton could win the Democratic nomination without depending on the unelected party stalwarts (“superdelegates”) to push her over the top. History provides us with a test case of this scenario, in which a major party faced a choice between the managerial (but perhaps less than visionary) heir to a successful previous administration, and an inspiring, popular speaker. READ MORE >>

If the mixed results in the early Republican primaries--a Huckabee here, a McCain or Romney there--portends a split between the GOP’s religious, fiscally conservative, and security-state wings, it won't be the first time a national American political coalition has failed. But it will be the third time in a hundred years an apparently strong Republican majority cracked up due to the party's inability to govern. By contrast, Democratic coalitions have failed mostly because the party has overreached after governing successes. READ MORE >>

READ MORE >>

I have liked John McCain ever since I met him almost a decade ago. At the time, I was writing a profile of then-Senator Fred Thompson, who was rumored to be considering a run for the presidency. I had been playing phone tag with the press secretaries of senators friendly with Thompson and was getting nowhere. I decided that, instead of calling McCain's office, I would drop by. I spoke to one of his aides, who asked me whether I had time to see the senator then. To my amazement, I was ushered into McCain's office, where, without staffers present, he answered my questions about Thompson. READ MORE >>

by Eric Rauchway READ MORE >>

One of the regular features of life on board the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is the "Bully Big Stick Show"--so titled in honor of the ship's namesake--a weekly call-in program broadcast from the ship's onboard TV studio featuring the commanding officer, Captain Richard O'Hanlon, and his deputy, Executive Officer Terry Kraft. Sometime in the coming days, I am told, the show will boast a new wartime feature: declassified imagery, taken by the ship's fighter jets, of targets they have struck in Iraq. READ MORE >>

Liberals are no strangers to foreign intervention. Democratic presidents took the United States into two world wars, as well as Korea and Vietnam; Bill Clinton himself sent American forces to Haiti, the Balkans, and Iraq. But, if there was a connection between liberalism at home and intervention abroad, it generally ran from the former to the latter. Liberals believed that by intervening abroad they were spreading or defending liberal values. The Clinton administration's 1996 National Security Strategy, for instance, was based on "enlarging ... the community of democratic nations." READ MORE >>