Books

Live from the Campaign Trail

Communications — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
07/09/2008 - 12:15pm

As the campaign season begins to heat up this summer, please join us for a lively discussion about the role of speechwriting and oratory on the campaign trail with three former speechwriters: New America Senior Research Fellow Michael A. Cohen, New America Fellow James Pinkerton (Campaign Officer for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush), and Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Executive Vice President Jeremy Rosner (Speechwriter for President Bill Clinton).

The panelists will be discussing a range of issues, from the history of campaign oratory to a closer look at the speeches and rhetoric of Barack Obama and John McCain as they battle it out on the campaign trail to be the next President of the United States.

The point of departure for our discussion will be Michael A. Cohen's new book, Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Speeches of the Twentieth Century and How they Shaped Modern America.

Live From the Campaign Trail

Ron Tang — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:44:00 -0400

In this collection of 27 of the most influential presidential campaign speeches of the twentieth century, Michael A. Cohen brings to life the words that have shaped American politics over the last century. From the legendary, like William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" and Ronald Reagan's call for a "national crusade to make America great again"; to the infamous, including Richard Nixon's maudlin "Checkers" speech and Bill Clinton's rhetorical broadside against the rapper Sister Souljah; to the poignant, such as FDR's evocation of America's "rendezvous with destiny," Hubert Humphrey's call for America to walk "into the bright sunshine of human… more

Ark of the Liberties

Ron Tang — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:18:00 -0400

The United States stands at a historic crossroads; essential to the world yet unappreciated. America’s decline in popularity over the last eight years has been nothing short of astonishing. With wit, brilliance, and deep affection, Ted Widmer, a scholar and a former presidential speechwriter, reminds everyone why this great nation had so far to fall. In a sweeping history of centuries, Ark of the Liberties recounts America’s ambition to be the world’s guarantor of liberty. It is a success story that America, and the world, forgets at its peril.

From the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address… more

Grand New Party

Ron Tang — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:18:00 -0400

* This article was excerpted from "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam.

The Old Consensus

When Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential election by 16 million votes, carrying only six states and faring worse than any major-party candidate since Alf Landon in 1936, nobody seriously entertained the possibility that conservatism would rise from his defeat, let alone that the race might mark the beginning of a decades-long realignment in American politics. The Goldwater debacle was greeted instead as a welcome affirmation of a political and cultural… more

Reorienting Japan

Ron Tang — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:25:00 -0400

Of all the countries to emerge from the wreckage of the Second World War, perhaps none overcame post-war adversity quite as successfully as Japan. By the time the country surrendered in 1945, it was in dire straits. It had lost some 2.8 million people during the war, 3.8% of its 1939 population. Thousands more were so severely maimed or ill that they would never resume productive lives. The once-prosperous Japanese economy was in ruins, and virtually everything the country needed to recover traversed long, vulnerable sea… more

NY Event: Lessons from Iraq

Communications — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:30:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/17/2008 - 6:30pm

Is there an upside to the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history? Maybe. The current war in Iraq should definitively, permanently settle a handful of critical questions about American conduct in the world. Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War provides a list of those questions and even ventures some answers in the form of key lessons from Iraq.

Join us for a lively discussion of these lessons with noted contributors. The panel will be followed by a wine and cheese reception and copies of the book will be available for sale.

This event is co-sponsored by the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU, The Nation Institute, and The Century Foundation.

Steve Coll in the Sydney Morning Herald | Book Review

Communications — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:26:00 -0400

New America in the News:
...Steve Coll's outstanding new book not only shatters various myths about Osama bin Laden - notably the extent of his personal fortune - it inculpates the most Westernised branches of his family in Arabia's vulgar modernisation that the terrorist is so murderously exercised by...LINK

Tapped Out

Ron Tang — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:51:00 -0400

To paraphrase an old axiom: You don’t buy water, you only rent it. So why did Americans spend nearly $11 billion on bottled water in 2006, when we could have guzzled tap water at up to about one ten-thousandth the cost? The facile answer is marketing, marketing and more marketing, but Elizabeth Royte goes much deeper into the drink in “Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It,” streaming trends cultural, economic, political and hydrological into an engaging investigation of an unexpectedly murky substance. Partway through her undoctrinaire book, Royte, a lifelong fan of tap water, refills… more

The Rising Tide of Economic Anxiety

Communications — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/27/2008 - 12:15pm

On June 27, 2008, Peter Gosselin, L.A. Times National Economics Correspondent, offered an atypical view of the economy that faces the average American family. Rather than the usual top-down macroeconomic perspective, he talked about how the economy looks “out the front door”. He was accompanied by comments from Ellen Seidman, Director of New America’s Financial Services and Education Project, to discuss Gosselin's new book, “High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families.”

In his prepared remarks Gosselin established the general thesis of his book - that the Reagan policies of the 1980s produced a shift of economic risk from employers to employees - a phenomenon that Gosselin believes occurred generally unbeknownst to the working population. The crisis we find ourselves in today is a consequence of the greater burden of risk facing individuals and the availability of tools with which to mitigate that risk. Americans, Gosselin argues, have been presented with higher levels of economic risk and have less protection. Everyone but the super-rich is vulnerable to devastating financial setbacks.

Gosselin presented three cases to back up his thesis. The first, quantitative, case revolved around his use of a new “beta measure” of income volatility modeled off of the existing beta measure of stock volatility. His analysis found that income volatility has doubled across a large swath of the population – from working-class earners up to the college educated. His second case focused on the erosion of structural supports – including employer-provided benefits like health care and pensions - that individuals and families typically rely on to mitigate economic risk. Finally, he presented a narrative case, moving down to the micro-level to examine the anecdotal evidence of a greater risk burden.

During the exchange between Gosselin and Seidman, Gosselin further attacked what he viewed as a flawed system of risk distribution. He refuted the notion that individuals would simply, over time, get better at managing the benefits historically provided by employers. He also attacked the assumption that families are just like any other economic unit, arguing that households, unlike corporations, can not endlessly diversify in order to mitigate risk. The discussion touched on the nation’s current economic woes as well as clear prescriptions for reorganizing the distribution of economic risk between employer and employee, capital and labor, and individual and state.

-Nick Calluzzo, Research Intern for the American Strategy Program

The Insiders

Ron Tang — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:05:00 -0400

Pennsylvania Avenue started out as a mere spoke on one of L’Enfant’s radial sketches of the new federal city, connecting the would-be Capitol with the would-be White House. Today it is among the country’s most celebrated thoroughfares, right up there with Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Route 66. It is not much of an exaggeration to call it, as this book does, “America’s Main Street.”

But it is also a street that has radically changed over the last generation, not only because of the face-lifts it has received but also because the ancient ways of doing business in the capital were… more