The recent flap over President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren this week is a disheartening reflection of political discourse in today’s America, replete with the artificiality, paranoia and coarseness that have become all-too-familiar staples of our national, televised, on-line, roundthe-clock “yeller-ama.” The September 8 speech, scheduled to air on the White House web site and C-SPAN …
It was 1998, and President Clinton and Vice President Gore were working with Senate and House Democratic leaders to stage party “unity” events around the country, hoping to build the grassroots enthusiasm that would help elect as many Democrats to Congress that year as possible. At an event in Boston, Clinton and Gore were joined …
Continue reading “Remembering Kennedy, and Cooling the Rhetoric”
Upon hearing George H.W. Bush utter his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge at the 1988 Republican National Convention, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee phoned Bush’s campaign manager. “What are you doing?” an exasperated Dan Rostenkowski, the burly tax writer, asked campaign manager James A. Baker III. For years, Rostenkowski …
Whoever first said that “no good deed goes unpunished” must have been thinking of the Middle East. I’m doing exactly what I promised during the campaign. I’m pressing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel and the Arab states. I’m trying to convince the Iranians to scrap their nuclear programs in exchange for …
Continue reading “Reading Obama’s Mind (Optimistically): Middle East Game Plans”
A half-year into their tenure, leaders of our all-Democratic federal government should take a moment to reflect on the nation they seek to change and the lessons to learn from recent U.S. political history. President Obama and the Democrat-led Congress have reached a defining moment. As lawmakers prepare to begin their month-long summer recess, the …
Continue reading “For Democrats, Raging Incrementalism May Be the Answer”
It was 40 years ago to the day as I write these words. On the evening of July 20, 1969, my parents, older sister and I gathered around our lone TV in our small one-story house to watch history. The screen was momentarily blank, but the image would soon appear from some 240,000 miles away. …
Continue reading “America’s Cycles: The Moon, ‘Malaise’ and Free Berlin!”
“I am not scared,” said a young woman, her clothes drenched in blood, during last week’s protest in Tehran to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1999 student uprising against Iran’s brutal regime, “because we are in this together.” Hundreds of miles away in the Italian town of L’Aguila, leaders of the Group of Eight …