The American Prospect articles from April 2008

The American Prospect archives from April 2008

New President, new crisis.(PROSPECTS)
April 1, 2008... WHETHER THE NEXT PRESIDENT IS NAMED CLINTON, Obama, or McCain, the new chief executive will face an economic challenge unlike any since 1933. The new president will need to reject an entire failed paradigm of how the economy works and of...

High stakes.(CORRESPONDENCE)
April 1, 2008... BARBARA DREYFUSS' article "Politicians Bet the Farm" [March 2008] hits the important points on the problems with the rise in gambling. Managing a regional economy is like filling a bathtub with the drain open. To grow, more dollars have to...

A useful crisis.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY with Robert Kuttner's discussion of the nation's economy and the politics that should guide Democrats in dealing with it ["Can the Democrats Think Big?" March 2008]. On the other hand, a bit of a crisis might be...

From the executive editor.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... IT'S NOT ONLY BARACK OBAMA WHO OPPOSED THE IRAQ War from the start, Spencer Ackerman reports in our cover story this month. It's his entire foreign-policy team, whose members also share their candidate's belief that the Democrats' perennial...

The bad old days.(Up Front)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NOSTALGIA HAS ITS PURPOSES, BUT WHAT ON EARTH were the organizers of demonstrations being planned for this summer--s national political conventions thinking when they named their group "Re-Create '68?" Bemoaning the...

Parody.(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... "North Korean officials have invited the guitarist Eric Clapton to perform there, according to a representative for the North Korean Embassy in London." --The New York Times, Feb. 27, 2008 Dear Esteemed Singing Friend Clapton: The...

Obama-ism without Obama.(THE OUT YEARS)
April 1, 2008... WHETHER HE BECOMES PRESIDENT THIS YEAR, sometime in the future, or never, Barack Obama will surely stand as a distinctive and surprising figure in our political history. Yet as the lens pulls back, individuals who at first seem uniquely...

A headache for workers.(COMMENT)
April 1, 2008... AS A LIFELONG MIGRAINE SUFFERER, I'M USED TO hearing comments denigrating the seriousness of the condition, as if the debilitating, chronic headaches endured by 28 million Americans (most of us women) were merely the result of hypochondria, or...

The Obama doctrine: Barack Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. But will voters buy it?
April 1, 2008... When Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama met in California for the Jan. 31 debate, their back-and-forth resembled their many previous encounters, with the Democratic presidential hopefuls scrambling for the small policy yardage...

The next president and the Middle East: some policy pointers: Get out of Iraq. Work with (some) Islamists. Create the Palestinian state. Thereby, undercut al-Qaeda.
April 1, 2008... Listen carefully when a new president is inaugurated next January for the sigh of relief coming from most of those Middle Easterners whom President Bush embraced as allies. Conversely, Bush's rivals in the region are likely to tune in to the...

Populism rising: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may be neophyte class warriors, but their populism is more than just rhetorical--and must be, if the Democrats are to win the election and govern successfully.
April 1, 2008... "The oil companies, the predatory student loan companies, the insurance companies, and the drug companies have had seven years of a president who stands up for them. I intend to be a president who stands up for all of you." The last ad of...

The Republican war on voting: inside the GOP's vote-suppression playbook, 2001-2008.
April 1, 2008... One week before the close of voter registration in Kentucky last fall, in an election that culminated with the victory of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear, Johanna Sharrard, a fresh-faced 26-year-old national organizer for the...

No art for oil: it's sadly ironic that a work of art designed to critique the commercialization of art and nature is threatened by oil exploration in the Great Salt Lake.(ART)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN 1970, ARTIST ROBERT SMITHSON rejected the gleaming white gallery spaces and"canonieal" minimalism of the New York art scene in search of an entirely different setting for his sculpture. After several exploratory...

The manufacture of uncertainty.(Book review)
April 1, 2008... DOUBT IS THEIR PRODUCT: HOW INDUSTRY'S ASSAULT ON SCIENCE THREATENS YOUR HEALTH BY DAVID MICHAELS Oxford University Press, 359 pages, $27.95 THE SABOTAGE OF SCIENCE IS NOW a routine part of American politics. The same corporate strategy of...

The simplification dodge.(Book review)
April 1, 2008... 100 MILLION UNNECESSARY RETURNS: A SIMPLE, FAIR, AND COMPETITIVE TAX PLAN FOR THE UNITED STATES BY MICHAEL J. GRAETZ Yale University Press, 261 pages, $30.00 FREE LUNCH: HOW THE WEALTHIEST AMERICANS ENRICH THEMSELVES AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE...

From fantasy to fiasco.(Book review)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DAYDREAM BELIEVERS: HOW A FEW GRAND IDEAS WRECKED AMERICAN POWER BY FRED KAPLAN, John Wiley & Sons, 246 pages, $25.95 DARTH VADER MAKES A BETTER villain than Mr. Magoo. A sinister mastermind is not only more...

Farewell to arms.(Book review)
April 1, 2008... WHERE HAVE ALL THE SOLDIERS GONE? THE TRANSFORMATION OF MODERN EUROPE BY JAMES J. SHEEHAN, Houghton Mifflin, 284 pages, $26.00 TRY DRIVING FROM PARIS TO BERLIN and you will understand that in Europe today the only frightening extremes are...

Is the game about to stop?(THE LAST WORD)
April 1, 2008... THE PROBABILITY OF ANOTHER GREAT DEPRESSION is no higher than 20 percent, but that's too high for comfort. American consumers don't have the buying power they need to absorb the goods and services the U.S. economy is capable of producing. This...