Civility in Modern Political Life

The civility of our political discourse was not helped the other night when South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson called President Obama a liar on the floor of the Congress. Fortunately, his outburst was followed by his rapid apology and the President’s quick acceptance of that apology. I would like to think that the follow-up may Read More

The Impact of Technology on Political Communication

Watching the mass impulse toward democracy in Iran over the past week has been alternately inspiring and terrifying. The power and clumsiness of the state never fails to scare me and the courage and intensity of the public in the street continues to inspire.  Something is different about political participation in these early years of Read More

Obama Risks Turning From J.F.K. Into L.B.J.

Speaking as the 100th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s birth approached last summer, biographer Robert Caro spoke of how Johnson’s presidency managed to be both triumphant and disastrous at the same time.

“You listen to the [people] who were concerned with what Lyndon Johnson did on the domestic side, and you say, ‘There Read More

Public Service and Private Greed

On Election Day in 1960, my family placed a hand lettered sign in our living room window on East 59th street in Brooklyn that read “Kennedy for President”. A few months later, as a seven year old boy, I remember watching President Kennedy on our black and white television Read More

The Unsolved Mystery

What can we hope to gain from a new book about the J.F.K. assassination? Surely not that it reveal some definitive truth about the events in Dallas, since with every passing year, with each frustrating release of declassified information, it becomes clear that no such revelation will ever be forthcoming. Rather, the best such a Read More

DSCC Chief to Meet With Caroline Kennedy

Senator Robert Menendez, who now heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has reached out to Caroline Kennedy to gauge her interest in filling the empty seat Hillary Clinton will leave when she joins the Obama administration as secretary of state, according to one Democrat familiar with the negotiations.

According to the source, Menendez and Kennedy Read More

The Pageant of Democracy

Tuesday morning the pageant of democracy began in earnest.  At 6:15am on West 120th street off Morningside Drive, I stood with my neighbors in the longest polling line I have seen in more than two decades of voting on the Upper West Side. Reading about the death of Barak Obama’s grandmother as I waited in Read More