The Nation

In case you haven't heard, Barack Obama is a pragmatist. Everybody agrees on this. Joe Biden, accepting Obama's nod as VP at his unveiling event in Springfield, Illinois, called him a "clear-eyed pragmatist." Describing Obama's rise through Chicago politics, the New York Times stressed his "pragmatic politics," while the Washington Post's David Ignatius refers to "The Pragmatic Obama," and one of Obama's most trusted confidantes, Valerie Jarrett, told USA Today, soon after

Steve Clemons, at the New America Foundation, has a clever idea which, he says, came from Brzezinski: why not name Ross to be US ambassador to Israel? ...

With all the talk of a new "Great Depression," Herbert Hoover has enjoyed an ignominious revival. On the day when Lehman Brothers winked out of existence and the simmering financial crisis boiled over, John McCain infamously pronounced that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong," a phrase that uncomfortably echoed Hoover's 1929 pronouncement that "the fundamental business of the country...is on a sound and prosperous basis."

Hoover's inaction in the face of the mounting crisis has made him an enduring symbol of economic mismanagement, but as bad he… more

What a long, strange week in Washington.

Early on, you could tell things were not proceeding along their usual track. At the Senate Banking and Finance Committee, right-wing Republican Jim Bunning laid into the bailout plan as "socialism" that was "un-American," and was met by cheers and acclamations from ACORN and Code Pink members in attendance. (So much, in fact, that Bunning crankily told them to pipe down. "I've been doing this long enough," he said. "I don't need any help.") The next day at the joint… more

The Iraq War is a testament to the great damage a foreign policy based on myths, lies and distortions can do to our nation’s security and well-being. As the election draws near, a new set of myths and fallacies as misleading as those that led the Senate to support George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq have become embedded in our foreign policy discourse. Many of them are being perpetuated by the very same political forces that peddled the myth of mushroom clouds coming from Saddam Hussein’s… more

Five years to the day after American forces began their campaign of "shock and awe" in Iraq, opponents of the war gathered in Washington. While some came with bullhorns and drums and flag-draped coffins, danced down K Street and confronted legislators on Capitol Hill, others formed a quiet vigil in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Here there were no bullhorns or drums. Instead, there were a few news cameras, a banner that read Invest in America, Not Endless War in Iraq and a clutch of… more

In late March, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig came to DC to draw back the curtain on the second act of his career. Lessig, with his placid mien and quiet voice, does not exude the aura of a star, but over the past decade he's become one of the most influential public intellectuals of the Internet age. Along with a small group of activists, legal academics and computer geeks, Lessig has built from scratch a global grassroots movement to reform… more

Below is a longer version of the article published in The Nation. For the version appearing in The Nation, please click here.

Historical analogies are never exact. Yet many of the choices we have before us today are similar to ones that an earlier generation of progressives faced as the 1932 election approached. As we do today, the progressives of the 20th century confronted a society beset by a huge gap between classes and an economy laid flat by… more

The most damaging part of the Bush foreign policy legacy is not the precipitous decline in American power and influence brought about by the disastrous Iraq occupation. It is the way the Administration’s "war on terror" and its neoimperial project in the Middle East have distorted our vision of the world.

They magnify out of all proportion what should at worst be minor threats to our national security and ignore much larger developments, such as the extraordinary economic rise of China… more

"My issue is cooking oil," Dya Alawa, a 37-year-old Turkish woman said on the day of Turkey's historic July election, which saw the Justice and Development Party (AKP) emerge with a resounding victory. "That's why I'm voting AKP," she told the Washington Post. For her, the election was simple: the economy has improved under AKP stewardship since 2002, her husband has less fear of layoffs at his textile factory and she can buy cooking oil at reasonable prices.

Indeed, Alawa is not alone. While… more