Does the federal government have too free a hand? In 1792, the United States faced a financial crisis as the price of government bonds plummeted nearly 25% in a two-week span. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton acted quickly, buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of government bonds and asking banks to accept bonds as collateral for their loans. As a result ... Read More
Oliver Stone sets his eyes on Bush
Barack Obama’s election to the presidency should not come as a shock. His political operation was more disciplined, more organized, and more effective than that of his opponents. The wisdom of his policy objectives compared to those of his rivals can be debated ad nauseam, but, it is not my intention to do so; I will leave all normative judgments ... Read More
Lately, I’ve become more accustomed to seeing Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey as Governor Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin as herself. And apparently I’m not alone: The New York Times’ television blog, “TV Decoder,” noted on September 16 that the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler sketch, presenting the mock joint television appearance of Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton, had been viewed ... Read More
On April 29, 1972, the Barristers Union at Yale Law School held its annual Prize Trial, in which four top lawyers, two to a side, competed. Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham formed the prosecution team on a fictional case about police brutality in Kentucky. The case was presided over by Abe Fortas, who had recently been forced to resign from ... Read More
“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” Caroline Kennedy wrote in January in her endorsement of Barack Obama. From the start of his campaign, Barack Obama has wrapped himself in the mantle, and the myth, of the Kennedy family. But by turning down public financing for the fall ... Read More
Just one week after endorsing the candidacy of Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico and himself a former candidate for president, visited the Institute of Politics at Harvard to speak with students. Richardson is a study in contrasts: There is the glad-handing chief executive who meets with constituents one day every month in three-minute increments and holds the ... Read More
Last night, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius gave the Democratic response to President Bush’s State of the Union Address. It was a sober, confident message, looking past the end of the Bush presidency and arguing for an Obama-style politics of national unity. The tonal similarity to Obama was no accident: Sebelius endorsed the Illinois senator today and will campaign for him ... Read More
