Think back to the spring of 1968. The U.S. is mired in Vietnam. The country is in turmoil. The sitting Democratic president abruptly pulls out of his campaign for reelection, and the leading conservative columnist of the day neither gloats nor does a victory dance.
It's nearly impossible to imagine this happening today.
Soon after my former roommate was killed in Iraq, Sen. Ted Kennedy
called me. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I wasn't pleased to get the
call. I was on the senator's staff at the time, and he sometimes called
on weekends with policy questions, usually about education funding. The
calls usually required some quick fact-checking at the least, and
sometimes a trip into the office.
Don't get too outraged, those of you who are looking down your noses at those
unreasonable, misinformed anti-healthcare-reform town hallers. No matter what
particular clan, tribe or party you belong to, you can't really disown them any
more than you can your own grandmother. You may not agree with them, but their
brand of hotheaded, self-righteous, obnoxious, stick-it-to-the-manism is as
American as apple pie.
"It's a great example for the nation," said Len Nichols, a healthcare economist at the centrist New America Foundation in Washington, DC, who co-wrote a ...
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The
United States hasn't prevailed in Mexico City since Ulysses S. Grant
and Robert E. Lee fought alongside each other to vanquish Santa Ana,
but the American soccer team will try again today as it takes on the
Mexican national team in a key World Cup qualifying match in Azteca
Stadium. Despite how fiercely competitive the U.S.-Mexico soccer
rivalry has become in the last two decades, the Americans have never
won in Mexico City.
Seidman, now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, said she created an award for the best bank examiner on consumer affairs and compliance issues ...
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President Obama's biergarten moment at the White House on
Thursday may have started out as a political stunt, but in the end it could
become a model for the future of race relations in America.
I'm not talking about the "teachable moment" nonsense. Nor am I
particularly impressed by the idea that people of different backgrounds should
get together to talk about their backgrounds. What's new here, and what I think
might just stick, is the idea that people in conflict should sit down… more
With the recession continuing to hurt city budgets, "these early
recalls could be the beginning of a deluge of local political battles,"
said Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at New America Foundation and former
Los Angeles Times reporter.
With the recession continuing to hurt city budgets, "these early recalls could be the beginning of a deluge of local political battles," said Joe Mathews, ...
About the only thing as disappointing as the frivolous
arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was the loud, almost gleeful
chorus of "I told you so's" coming from his defenders. You've heard
of schadenfreude -- taking pleasure in the suffering of others? Well, this was
the peculiar political version. It's not that commentators were happy that
Gates had allegedly been mistreated. But they seemed inordinately pleased that
some aggrieved yet righteous person had come along to help them prove a point
