The New Republic

It was, perhaps, appropriate that Democrats held their convention this summer in Boston--a charming old city of declining population and fewer and fewer families. The Democrats, after all, may like to think of themselves as the party of working families; but in reality, the exit polls and demographic trends suggest that they are increasingly the party of family dysfunction. To date, analysts have mostly blamed Kerry's loss on a failure to connect with religious voters or to reassure Americans that… more

No sooner had the red and blue ink dried on the maps of election commentators than triumphant Republicans began talking about their clear mandate for an ambitious domestic agenda. The people have spoken, Republicans proclaimed, and what they have said is that they favor the conservative agenda on taxes, Social Security, health care, gay marriage, and abortion. The administration, their humble servant, has a solemn duty to execute their wishes. And so President Bush has promised to move forward with… more

The days leading up to Afghanistan's October 9 presidential elections had an eerie feel to them. Foreigners working for the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations withdrew to their homes. U.N. agencies issued body armor to their employees and ordered them not to venture outside. All conversations in Kabul centered on whether something dire would happen during the elections. Nobody knew what to expect. By October 8, most streets in Kabul were deserted. Mullah Omar, the former leader of the… more

In 1994, Republicans in California distributed a voter education pamphlet titled "The Welfare Mess." On its cover was a vivid montage of ghetto pathology: food stamps intermixed with hundred-dollar bills, drug paraphernalia alongside a snub-nosed pistol. Inside, the pamphlet catalogued welfare's pernicious effects. Teen pregnancy, runaway crime, moral decay, even falling SAT scores--all were blamed on a welfare system run amok. The pamphlet closed with a dire warning: "If You Don't Vote, THEY WIN."

Today the Republican Party… more

As election day approaches, the Bush campaign seems baffled by the continued reluctance of voters to credit the president for the past year's generally positive economic numbers. On the campaign trail in Ohio last week, President Bush insisted, "The economy is strong, and it's getting stronger." But, according to recent polls, most Americans believe the economy is getting worse or just holding steady, and the number who approve of Bush's economic stewardship has dropped significantly from the beginning of the… more

Last week, when Senate leaders announced they had agreed upon a bipartisan compromise for Medicare reform, Majority Leader Bill Frist insisted that the new proposal "meets all of the president's principles that have been laid out to date." Nothing could be further from the truth. When George W. Bush unveiled his vision for Medicare reform during January's State of the Union address, he was intent upon transforming it from a government-run insurance program into a system of competing private insurance… more

To anybody who has followed the course of biomedical science over the last two decades, the progress being made in understanding severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) appears nothing short of miraculous. SARS emerged as a global health threat in March, and now, just two months later, scientists have isolated the virus causing the disease and published a complete map of the pathogen's genes. By comparison, the sequencing of the human genome, an admittedly larger task, has taken more than a… more

Federal health officials have been doing a lot of bioterrorism planning lately. Last month they released a 100-page manual telling states in exacting detail how to vaccinate the entire country in six days in the event of a smallpox outbreak -- right down to instructions for providing enough bathroom facilities for waiting vaccinees. This month they've added a new plan for vaccinating citizens before a smallpox outbreak. The president's top bioterrorism advisers told reporters earlier this month that they want… more

The pharmaceutical industry has suffered some serious blues in the past 18 months: HIV-positive Africans and old ladies in wheelchairs have cursed it; newspapers have challenged its accounting; stocks have plummeted. The recession, war in Afghanistan, and terrorism around the world may have caused Americans plenty of stress and headaches, but investors, at least, are reaching for the bottles without the childproof caps. In the past year, shares in the Dow Jones breweries-and-distilleries index are up 25 percent; shares in… more

Thinking of Carol Gilligan's work as social science has always been a bit of a stretch, but that is how it has generally been received by critics and adepts alike: as a body of psychological research supporting certain controversial hypotheses about the differences between men and women, probably the most influential such hypotheses of the last twenty-five years. Gilligan's famous contention is that girls and women are possessed of a distinctive morality more attuned to maintaining relationships and caring for… more