The New Republic

The choice of John Edwards says many good things about John Kerry. And one worrying thing: He thinks he has the national security issue well in hand. In mid-June, The Washington Post reported that Kerry had told friends he needed a running mate who would help him overcome his image as a Massachusetts liberal, but not one who added foreign policy heft. On foreign policy, the friends claimed, Kerry believed he could handle things on his own. READ MORE >>

On February 27, 2001, George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress. When the president had last ventured to the Capitol for his inauguration 37 days earlier, he had delivered a homily urging the nation to move past the sting of the Florida recount. This time, he dispensed with the magnanimity and unveiled his agenda, delivering a speech filled with promises to cut taxes, pay down the national debt, study Social Security privatization, and deploy national missile defense.  READ MORE >>

WHEN FIVE SHIA members of the Iraqi Governing Council dramatically (if temporarily) refused to sign the provisional Iraqi constitution last week, a senior American official dutifully told The Washington Post they walkout was no big deal. After all, the objections raised by the five council members had nothing to do with the laboriously negotiated provisions for individual rights enshrined in the provisional constitution, technically known as the Transitional Administrative Law. READ MORE >>

It’s easy to poke fun at President Bush’s new reelection ads. Even by the standards of the genre, they’re vacuous. Amid the montages of hopeful-looking children, resolute-looking firemen, and responsible-looking parents, I had to search hard for a statement of fact. And, when I found one, it was false. The Bush ad titled “Safer, Stronger” declares, “January 2001. The challenge: an economy in recession.” But, as The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has noted, the National Bureau of Economic Research, which officially dates these things, says the economy wasn’t in recession in January 2001—the READ MORE >>

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IMAGINE THAT THE king has died. Now imagine that every day on television you see a procession of people chanting, “Long live the king!” Imagine it wasn’t always this way: Just a few years ago, if the king’s health became shaky, everyone discussed the problem openly. But no more. And now you have to choose. Either you go along and pretend that a dead man is alive—which isn’t all that difficult, since everyone is doing it—or you insist, unreasonably, that you see what you see, in which case you will be branded a kook. READ MORE >>

It's hard not to scoff at the president's call for a return to the moon, Mars, and "beyond" if for nothing other than its political transparency. The president's sudden dose of the vision thing immediately endeared him to the thousands of aerospace workers in Florida, while costing him almost nothing before he leaves office. But, despite its narrow opportunism, the president's plan is important, because it thrusts the prospect of a manned mission to Mars back into the public sphere. READ MORE >>

Known Threat The New Republic's December 1 & 8 cover article seeks to paint as "radical" the vice president's conclusion that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed a gathering threat ("The Radical," Spencer Ackerman and Franklin Foer). Far from radical, that conclusion had been widely held for years by the U.S. intelligence community, other departments in our federal government, and even the United Nations. For example: READ MORE >>

It's hard not to scoff at the president's call for a return to the moon, Mars, and "beyond" if for nothing other than its political transparency. The president's sudden dose of the vision thing immediately endeared him to the thousands of aerospace workers in Florida, while costing him almost nothing before he leaves office. But, despite its narrow opportunism, the president's plan is important, because it thrusts the prospect of a manned mission to Mars back into the public sphere. READ MORE >>

It's hard not to scoff at the president's call for a return to the moon, Mars, and "beyond" if for nothing other than its political transparency. The president's sudden dose of the vision thing immediately endeared him to the thousands of aerospace workers in Florida, while costing him almost nothing before he leaves office. But, despite its narrow opportunism, the president's plan is important, because it thrusts the prospect of a manned mission to Mars back into the public sphere. READ MORE >>