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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the Mad City Machiavelli
Tweet Share on Facebook March 1, 2011 Comment (36)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker never graduated from college, though the University of Wisconsin is one of the finest public universities in the land. (Thanks, President Lincoln!)
Walker fancies himself a second coming of President Ronald Reagan--okay, without the charm, looks or political finesse--although he just took office in January as a Republican in a state soaked in progressive history and politics. (Thanks, Sens. Robert La Follette and Russ Feingold!)
Before he dropped out of college, Walker must have read Niccolo Machiavelli's classic Renaissance power tract, The Prince. Give the governor this: he's a formidable opponent, thanks to a grandiose sense of purpose. In a few winter weeks, Walker revealed himself to be a ruthless, calculating and mean-spirited man in a corner hideaway of Madison's state capitol, which has jammed with thousands of protestors inside the rotunda and out there on the square.
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Jonathan Franzen Goes to Jail (for a Book Talk)
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2011 Comment (4)The author of The Corrections and Freedom went to jail in Washington. He left impressed with the "seriousness" level of conversation, compared to meeting with young people on the other side of the tracks.
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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Unfairly Demonizes Teachers
Tweet Share on Facebook February 18, 2011 Comment (54)Madison, the state capital of Wisconsin, is also known as "Mad City"--not for nothing this week. My hometown's uprising on the shores of Lake Monona, in and around the state capitol, made the front page of the New York Times in the nation's most riveting political drama: a showdown between a new Republican governor and public union workers protesting the pain of big budget cuts at their expense. Wisconsin is first to yelp in protest, but may not be last.
Skating on thin ice, Gov. Scott Walker has evinced not a shred of human sympathy as he calmly goes about his business, which is to demonize and demoralize state workers. It's all part of a larger pattern. First it was public school teachers that got the broadsides, snide suggestions they aren't up to snuff. Now it's state public workers, with their pensions and healthcare as fair game. These people are public servants who should not be shrugged off so lightly and rudely. Attention must be paid to them, too, not just the military--which is the mighty whale (or sacred cow) of our federal budget woes, hands down.
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Abraham Lincoln's Farewell Address Revealed His 'Tragic Optimism'
Tweet Share on Facebook February 14, 2011 Comment (2)The tall man took off his hat to say a few words in the early morning rain. At the sound of his voice, tears started falling at the Springfield, Ill., train station. A thousand townspeople had gathered there to say good-bye to the man from Illinois, already on the passenger car platform of the train bound for Washington. Clouds were gathering for a grave civil war—not yet the Civil War indelibly etched in national memory. The date was February 11, 1861, and Abraham Lincoln was one day short of his 52nd birthday.
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Obama Should Show 'Exceptionalism' in Egypt Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook February 7, 2011 Comment (7)Just how "exceptional" is America in the global grand scheme of things?
If it is still so, that we are special on the world stage, now is the time to prove it by muscular diplomatic engagement with Egypt to further democracy and peace in the Middle East. We have a lot to make up for in that department, if you know what I mean. [See photos of the Egypt protests.]
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Michele Bachmann Rises as Sarah Palin Falls
Tweet Share on Facebook January 31, 2011 Comment (17)January brought—or wrought—a new narrative for the radical right: let's call it the Rise of Michele Bachmann and the Fall of Sarah Palin. And I'm not sayin' that's a bad or good thing—but a thing I feel in my winter bones.
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To Succeed, Obama's State of the Union Needs Optimism
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2011 Comment (5)To be magisterial, President Obama must speak from his head and his heart tonight in the Capitol as he addresses Congress and the nation in the annual State of the Union speech.
To give a great soaring speech, he must blend poetry into the prose.
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Joe Lieberman Is No Jack Kennedy
Tweet Share on Facebook January 24, 2011 Comment (8)On a wistful bleak wintry week when John F. Kennedy's inaugural 50 years ago was celebrated with ceremonies and concerts of remembrance and Sargent Shriver's death was greeted with a genuine outpouring of grief and love, a third man seemed to suggest he belonged in that august company.
No, Joe, I don't think so.
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Tucson Violence Too Reminiscent of The '60s
Tweet Share on Facebook January 18, 2011 Comment (5)Writing for the op-ed page of The Washington Post yesterday, Robert J. Samuelson quoted Charles Dickens and sought to capture the temper of the "wrenching" times in which we live. I met Samuelson, a distinguished denizen of this town, just the other day at a Wilson Quarterly party. If he had asked me then about growing up in the 1960s, I wouldn't be writing this now. He seemed like a fine fellow with gravitas, don't get me wrong, but he got something wrong in his op-ed essay in the Post, which is like the village crier. It is presumed our town's truth-teller.
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Right Wing Media Vitriol Haunts Us In Arizona Shooting
Tweet Share on Facebook January 11, 2011 Comment (33)We all had a finger on the trigger—I.F. Stone wrote those words about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the cruel fall of 1963.
Now we come to the bleak winter of 2011, and how much has changed? Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords lay near dying in her own blood after a shooting rampage in Arizona left six dead, from a federal judge to a girl of nine, and 14 others injured. It all happened in the most American of places: a strip mall parking lot on a Saturday morning. That's what the country's come to now. It's no coincidence it was a Democratic member of Congress who was gunned down—this is no random act of violence. The suspected assassin said so.
