The Spectator (U.K.)

Obama's America Will Be More Equal But Less Mighty

Articles — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:12:00 -0500

While walking to work on the morning of Election Day, I was struck by the number of times I encountered Barack Obama’s beaming countenance on posters and bumper stickers. To be sure, I live in a neighbourhood in the District of Columbia that is particularly thick with the politically obsessive, but I’ve also encountered striking portraits of America’s next president across the country. Will the Obama iconography fade away as voters grow disillusioned? Or will Obama directly appeal to his supporters to march in the streets when he faces down a recalcitrant Congress? Given the sanity and scepticism of most Americans, I tend to think that the manically high levels… more

Here's How McCain Can Beat Obama to the White House

Articles — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:06:00 -0400

In January, I met a friend of mine to discuss his impending departure from Washington DC. He was moving to Chicago to join Senator Barack Obama’s budding presidential campaign. At the time, it was hard not to have an instinctive sympathy for Obama, not least because the Clinton campaign had by that point attracted many of the most loathsome careerists in Democratic politics. Among other things, we discussed the general election landscape. My friend, confident even then that Obama would win the Democratic nomination, was convinced that New York mayor Rudy Giuliani would be Obama’s toughest opponent in a general election. Despite the many skeletons in Giuliani’s closet, he… more

The New Woodstock Generation

Ron Tang — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:35:00 -0400

In late May, New York magazine noted a highly unusual advertisement that appeared on Craigslist. A young Brooklyn couple had decided to sell virtually everything they owned, from electronics to furniture to designer shoes, for $8,500. As it turns out, the couple was planning on taking their two young children and setting out for the open road. Two weeks earlier, the New York Times profiled several other couples who had made a similar choice -- to surrender their accumulated possessions and, with toddlers in tow, to leave a dreary, consumption-driven urban existence behind for something nobler and more environmentally sound.… more

McCain Is In For a Terrible Shock If He Wins

Ron Tang — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:59:00 -0400

Britain’s Conservatives might be plotting a triumphant return to power but America’s Republicans are in a state of utter collapse. And it’s not just because the tide is turning after two terms of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, the Cameron Conservatives have adapted to a more culturally liberal, urban, diverse society. They have reconciled themselves to the welfare state in a way that Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher never did. Republicans, in contrast, are labouring under the illusion that America remains the yeoman democracy of yesteryear, full of plucky individualists. Slowly but surely, American politics is catching… more

Churchill for Dummies

Articles — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Soon after the installation by the Republican-majority Supreme Court of George the Second of the House of Bush, the American people learned that they had a new Founding Father: Winston Churchill. President George W. Bush let it be known that he had placed a bust of the British statesman in the White House Oval Office he had inherited from his dad. After the attack on the World Trade Center, the President's speeches became self-consciously Churchillian. Earlier this year, marking the opening of a Churchill exhibition at the Library of Congress, Bush observed that Churchill was not just