Tom Wolfe's 1987 masterpiece Bonfire of the Vanities captured the greed, class, ambition, and politics of Reagan era New York City. So, too, does Mark Leibovich's This Town capture early 21st century Washington, D.C. Bonfire, however, is fiction and This Town is for real. Leibovich, who is the New York Times magazine national political reporter, …
Tag: Obama
Obama and the politics of gay marriage
It would have been easier for Barack Obama to wait until after the election to announce that he thinks gays should have the right to marry. He could have let people assume that V.P. Joe Biden’s and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s comments to that effect were a hint that such was the thinking inside the …
Health Insurance Reform: The End of the Beginning
The course leading to the House vote on health insurance reform was clearly a case of winning ugly. We’ve all had an overdose of exposure to legislative sausage-making. But, in the end, the 219-to-212 vote was a huge step forward, an historic moment in the history of this country. More than 30 million uninsured people …
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Winners and Losers from Health Reform Summit — (posted late due to 2-day Comcast outage)
Seven hours of discussion at Thursday’s health summit did produce some winners and losers on both sides of the table. The Republicans were winners because they were able to present themselves as having ideas, rather than just being naysayers. They had a wider audience for their versions of tort reform, expanding health savings accounts (nothing …
War in Afghanistan is a pact with the devil
News today that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has decided to handpick members of the election oversight commission, jettisoning participation by United Nations monitors, signals that, whenever the United States extricates itself from that war, the situation will go right back to the feudal mess it has been.And it’s not just a question of controlling voting …
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Talking the Talk
If Congress tries to ram the Senate health bill through the House to avoid another Senate vote, there will be blood that will stain the rest of the Obama agenda and spill over into the congressional elections. President Obama said that the people of Massachusetts have spoken, and about-to-be Senator Scott Brown should be heard …
Blue Massachusetts Sees Red?
The final polling results from Public Policy Polling in the U.S. Senate race show Scott Brown ahead of Martha Coakley by 51 percent to 46 percent, more comfortable than last week but still, it says, within its margin of error. Independents are running two to one in favor of Brown. Remember, it was Independents that …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 