Articles and Op-Eds: 2006

Articles and op-eds by New America fellows and staff are available below. To jump to another year's archives, please use the links at right.

Good Man, Minor President, Fodder for Politicking

  • By
  • James Pinkerton,
  • New America Foundation
December 29, 2006 |

Let’s divide this column on the late Gerald Ford into three parts: First, Ford the man. Second, Ford as an historical memory. Third, Ford as a subject of manipulation in the media.

First, I always liked Ford -- who didn’t? He served his country in wartime, was married to the same woman for 58 years, raised four children. And amid all the obituary-ing, it’s hard to find anyone who has any criticism of him as a person. That’s rare enough for anybody, let alone someone who rose to the pinnacle of American politics.

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The End of the West As We Know It?

  • By
  • Anatol Lieven,
  • New America Foundation
December 28, 2006 |

Every political, social and economic system ever created has sooner or later encountered a challenge that its very nature has made it incapable of meeting. The Confucian ruling system of imperial China, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, has some claim still to be the most successful in history, but because it was founded on values of stability and continuity, rather than dynamism and inventiveness, it eventually proved unable to survive in the face of Western imperial capitalism.

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Christmas Lives, Thanks to Atheism, Islam

  • By
  • James Pinkerton,
  • New America Foundation
December 27, 2006 |

So Christmas has survived yet another year.

Yes, there has been a war on Christmas, fought by a few lefty lawyers who managed to buffalo some multiculturalist bureaucrats and politicians. But it’s been a losing war:

First, and most obviously, there’s the steadfast religiosity of the American people; polls routinely show that 90 percent of Americans believe in God. Secular progressives have done their best to knock the faith out of people, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

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Enter Center

  • By
  • Jacob Hacker,
  • New America Foundation
  • and Paul Pierson, professor of political science, University of California at Berkeley
December 25, 2006 |

Last year, we published a book called Off Center, in which we argued that Republicans were governing well to the right of the U.S. electorate -- and getting away with it. Americans, we wrote, remained resolutely centrist and, if anything, had moved slightly leftward in recent years.

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Sweet Relief: The Life and Death of an Idealist in Iraq

  • By
  • Peter Bergen,
  • New America Foundation
December 24, 2006 |

An American aid worker named Marla Ruzicka and her Iraqi colleague, Faiz Ali Salim, were killed by a suicide bomber on April 16, 2005, as they drove along the road connecting Baghdad and its airport. It says much about the U.S. occupation of Iraq that this road is probably the most dangerous one in the world, but it says far more about Ruzicka and Salim that, despite the risks, they were driving along it to visit an injured Iraqi girl.

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The Rise of the Office-Park Populist

  • By
  • Jacob Hacker,
  • New America Foundation
December 24, 2006 |

On Election Day last month, Democratic candidates did something they haven't done for a while: they decisively won the middle class. Middle-income voters -- including white, middle-income voters who have abandoned the party in droves in recent years -- preferred Democratic candidates by wide margins. Indeed, only voters with family incomes in excess of $100,000 a year were more likely to support Republicans than Democrats in House races in November.

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Life's Mysteries at 100 and Counting

  • By
  • Gregory Rodriguez,
  • New America Foundation
December 24, 2006 |

Guadalupe Guillen went to Griffith Park in the late 1920s to look at model airplanes but wound up finding a husband. Or rather, he found her.

That’s one of the interesting things I learned when I finally met my Great Aunt Lupe, who turned 100 years old this month on the feast day of her namesake, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

My father took me to Cerritos to meet his favorite aunt, who has survived seven siblings, a husband and 18 presidential administrations. I thought that maybe she’d have some advice on how to live a long, happy life.

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What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran

  • By
  • Flynt Leverett,
  • New America Foundation
  • and Hillary Mann
December 22, 2006 |

Here is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency's Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

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Get Out of the Way, Drivers

  • By
  • Steven Hill,
  • New America Foundation
  • and Dmitri Iglitzin, lecturer, University of Washington School of Law
December 21, 2006 |

You might think that holiday shoppers driving on the nation’s highways would have enough to worry about with bad weather and high gas prices. But unless there is a sudden about-face on the part of the Federal Highway Administration, Americans are about to receive an unwelcome gift that, unlike a wrong-color necktie or bad-fitting socks, could literally kill them.

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Read My Lips: Taxes (again) Doom Bush

  • By
  • James Pinkerton,
  • New America Foundation
December 21, 2006 |

President Bush is willing to raise taxes. That reality was a big surprise to me 16 years ago, in 1990, when I was working in the White House. It’s less of a surprise to me in 2006, when I am on the outside -- because, after a while, you learn to identify the warning signs.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush broke his word on taxes, and he broke his own presidency. In 2006, his son, President George W. Bush, seems poised to destroy what little remains of his presidency.

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