The American Prospect articles from December 2008

The American Prospect archives from December 2008

The realignment opportunity.(PROSPECTS)(presidential elections, 2009)
December 1, 2008... IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH OF THE ELECTION, two interpretations began circulating about its implications. The first came from conservatives who insisted that America remains a "center right" country and that the voters gave Barack Obama and the...

Great electorate challenge.(NOTED)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Taking associate editor EZRA KLEIN'S feature essay 'Against the Great-Man Theory of the Presidency" one step further, S.M. MILLER of Brookline, Massachusetts, writes: "The competitor to the Great Man/Men syndrome...

No easy answers.(NOTED)(on economy)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... In his column "The Hardest Lesson," ROBERT REICH declares that politicians and journalists missed the biggest red flag signaling the collapse of the banking system: inequality. Reader JAN SMITH of Delaware, Ohio, writes that Reich's argument...

The kids are alright.(NOTED)(youth on election)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... On Election Day, TAP Online contributing writer COURTNEY E. MARTIN told us "Why American Youth Will Vote." And the youth agreed with her. Wrote one reader, "My name is JASON DUONG, and I am a first-generation American. I'm voting to see someone...

Partisan papers.(NOTED)(on Barack Obama)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... In the weeks before the election, the Republican Party of Wisconsin circulated an anti-Obama mailer that quoted TAP'S own EZRA KLEIN--from an op-ed published in the LOS ANGELES TIMES back in 2006: "Obama is that oddest of all creatures: a...

From the executive editor.(NOTED)
December 1, 2008... President-elect Barack Obama made his first appearance on this magazine's cover in February 2006, after one year in the U.S. Senate. "Obama wants nothing less than to redefine progressive values, make them more universal, and unite the country...

Lost opportunities.(Up Front)(on John McCain and Sarah Palin)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NOW THAT JOHN McCAIN HAS BEEN DISPATCHED to sedona, we're already starting to miss all those things that a McCain-Palin administration promised and portended. Joe the Plumber will not be our do-it-yourself...

Obama makes amends.(Up Front)(Barack Obama's political appointments)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Over the course of the election, conservatives warned that Obama was "palling around with terrorists" and other un-American types like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and '60s activist Bill Ayers. Obama vehemently denied it, of course. But now that...

Obama's Halliburton.(Up Front)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... It's not just personal debts he'll have to repay. Now that Barack Obama is the president-elect, he's going to need a shadowy organization on which to shower financial favors--a Halliburton of his own. If ACORN'S fanciful right-wing critics (OK,...

The question: what will be the first thing Obama does to disappoint us?(Up front)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... "Declines to make freestyling over the 'A Milli' beat mandatory for taxpayers earning over $250,000."--Spencer Ackerman reporter, Washington Independent [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Fails to immediately socialize the oil industry Land...

Facts on the ground.(Up front)(Barack Obama)(Brief biography)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... OK--for the record, our president-elect is not now nor has he ever been a fundamentalist Muslim terrorist, black-nationalist radical, or member of the Communist Party. Nor, high-ranking sources tell us, is he the Antichrist. But just to...

Bush White House Yearbook: Staff Superlatives 2000 to 2008.(PARODY)(Brief article)(List)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Most athletic: George W. Bush [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Best tailored: Hank Paulson (Goldman provides.) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Most resented by Cabinet colleagues for not being a complete failure:...

Mind the map.(THE OUT YEARS)(political campaigns)
December 1, 2008... ON ELECTION NIGHT, OUR EYES WERE GLUED TO THE "battleground states" that would decide the presidential election--not just the traditional swing states of Ohio and Florida but Virginia and Indiana as well, on this new electoral map where all...

Don't call it a culture war.(COMMENT)(civil-rights struggles)
December 1, 2008... AS THE ELECTION-NIGHT RESULTS ROLLED IN--and even before that, as the polling leaned heavily toward Barack Obama--some liberals gleefully declared the end of the so-called culture war. This war's two most reliable weapons, demonizing same-sex...

The audacity of patience: Obama's savvy coalition-building broke all the rules about how to run for president. If he can take the same approach in the White House, he will be a towering success.(Barack Obama)
December 1, 2008... A single tactical choice early in Barack Obama's quest for the presidency set the course for all the events that followed--Obama s securing of the Democratic nomination and surprisingly smooth path to resounding victory in the general election....

The paper chase: dozens of progressive institutions are clamoring to put their agendas on Obama's desk. Will the incoming president actually read them?(Barack Obama)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... The last time Democrats took the White House, they managed, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, a "heckuva job." During the Clinton administration's famously rocky transition, one White House alumna saw signs of trouble early. "The day...

Street fighter: since mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion-pricing plan failed in New York City, his transportation commissioner has taken a piecemeal approach to reclaiming streets from cars.(GREEN ISSUES)
December 1, 2008... On Sept. 17, Colin Beavan was riding his folding bicycle down Broadway in Lower Manhattan, near City Hall. Beavan, a writer known as "No Impact Man" for his attempt to reduce his carbon footprint to zero, did not use toilet paper for a year....

Are cows worse than cars? Everyone knows driving an SUV or leaving the lights on is bad for the earth. But when it comes to your environmental impact, what's on your plate is just as important.
December 1, 2008... These days almost any proposal to reduce global warming gets taken seriously, even by conservatives. Solar panels are proposed for powering everything except submarines. Oilman T. Boone Pickens wants to put windmills on every empty patch of...

Getting real on climate change: we'll never succeed in making dirty energy too expensive. Let's make clean energy cheap.
December 1, 2008... The wave of optimism that American environmentalists rode into 2008 reached its zenith sometime around April 22--Earth Day. Green was everywhere, from the pages of Sports Illustrated to NBC's Green Week to a new cable channel, Planet Green....

Damaged heroes: four recent films reveal how America sees its Iraq War veterans.(MOVIES)(The Lucky Ones, In the Valley of Elah, Gran Torino, Red)(Movie review)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN THE 2007 FILM IN THE VALLEY OF Elah, Vietnam veteran Hank Deerfield is driving to an Army post in New Mexico to look for his son. When he passes a school and notices its American flag is flying upside down, he...

A fine mess.('Financial Shock: A 360 (degrees) Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avoid the Next Financial Crisis', 'Banking on Basel: The Future of International Financial Regulation', and 'The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means')(Book review)
December 1, 2008... FINANCIAL SHOCK: A 360[degrees] LOOK AT THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE IMPLOSION, AND HOW TO AVOID THE NEXT FINANCIAL CRISIS BY MARK ZANDI, FT Press, 270 pages, $24.99 BANKING ON BASEL: THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REGULATION BY DANIEL K....

College for the few.(Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality)(Book review)
December 1, 2008... REAL EDUCATION: FOUR SIMPLE TRUTHS FOR BRINGING AMERICA'S SCHOOLS BACK TO REALITY BY CHARLES MURRAY, Crown Forum, 219 pages, $24.95 A QUARTER-CENTURY AGO, A then-obscure social scientist named Charles Murray hit upon a surefire formula for...

After the market mania.(The Private Abuse of the Public Interest: Market Myths and Policy Muddles)(The Case for Big Government)(Book review)
December 1, 2008... THE PRIVATE ABUSE OF THE PUBLIC INTEREST: MARKET MYTHS AND POLICY MUDDLES BY LAWRENCE D. BROWN AND LAWRENCE R. JACOBS University of Chicago Press, 151 pages, $15.00 THE CASE FOR BIG GOVERNMENT, BY JEFF MADRICK Princeton University Press,...

Blaming history.(MY BACK PAGES)(Milan Kundera's The Joke)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... SO THE ASSIGNMENT IS "A BOOK THAT CHANGED MY view of politics." Harder than it sounds. I will confess that when I was a younger man, I was far more likely to think of records, as we used to call them, as life-changing, and if pressed, I could...

Restoring the battered commons: the degradation of coasts and oceans continues, but faint hopes for improvement are stirring.(OCEANS & COASTS)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... "Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest," writes Garrett Hardin in his famous 1968 essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." As a principal example, he continues, "maritime nations still respond...

Carbon dioxide: the curse of the deep: ocean warming, acidification, and corrosion wreak havoc on marine populations.(OCEANS & COASTS)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I was 8 years old, diving down in the waters off Cape Cod, when I first saw a strange shimmering within the sea. About 7 feet beneath the surface, I cautiously extended my hand to where the water appeared blurry, as...

Imagining the oceans in 2025: entire ecosystems teeter on the brink of extinction as slime and dead zones take over.(OCEANS & COASTS)
December 1, 2008... As recently as the 1950s, very smart people like Rachel Carson and Jacques Cousteau believed the oceans were so vast that fish stocks and the ocean's capacity to absorb human wastes were for all practical purposes unlimited. In reality, though,...

Saccage: learning the lessons of Jacques Cousteau.(OCEANS & COASTS)(destruction of coastlines)
December 1, 2008... One day in the late 1970s, the ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau joined me at a Paris cafe, pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, and pushed it across the table. On it, he'd listed two dozen words with tally marks beside each. "The...

Florida's sea turtles besieged.(OCEANS & COASTS)
December 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Seven species of sea turtles inhabit the world's oceans. These air-breathing reptiles have survived virtually unchanged for 200 million years. Sea turtles are unique among marine animals because they must return to...

The Arctic Ocean in the 21st century: with warming at a rate double the global average, the region's animal populations struggle to adapt.(OCEANS & COASTS)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... Observations of Earth's climate over the past half-century reveal a global trend in warming temperatures of land surfaces, the lower atmosphere, and the oceans. The Arctic region is warming at a rate that is at least twice that of the global...

Saving the fish banks: the U.S. has made improvements in managing its stocks but only compared to the rest of the world.(OCEANS & COASTS)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... For once it's a good day at the Portland Fish Exchange in Maine. Two dozen buyers representing fish processors, distributors, and retailers crowd in the auction room, consulting computer monitors and parrying one another's bids for the freshly...

View from the boat.(OCEANS & COASTS)(Alaska's salmon fisheries)
December 1, 2008... My family came to Alaska 40 years ago for a "visit," but, like so many others who now call this place home, we have never left. The state's natural charms wooed us into buying a commercial fishing business in southeast Alaska in Juneau. We...

Marine biodiversity in jeopardy: the attrition of the world's coral reefs signals far broader and graver problems.(OCEANS & COASTS)(Essay)
December 1, 2008... News about ocean ecosystems is almost without exception grim. Collapsing fisheries, expanding dead zones, and the prospect of ever warmer and more acidic seas makes optimism a tough sell. When sounding the alarm bells, marine conservation...

Ocean fish farms and public-resource privatization: industrial aquaculture poses new threats to U.S. waters and fishermen.(OCEANS & COASTS)
December 1, 2008... The U.S. government has a pattern of allowing big businesses exclusive use of common properties for individual profits. Frequently, this occurs regardless of whether such projects help or harm the general public. Public resources are...

A call for ocean-policy reform: the time is now for government to respond to long-standing demands for action.(OCEANS & COASTS)
December 1, 2008... Growing up in New York City, I enjoyed going to Jones Beach on a hot summer day with my family, spending the day swimming in the ocean, and then having dinner at Lundy's seafood restaurant on our way home. At that time, my parents didn't have...

Thinking big, valuing the priceless.(OCEANS & COASTS)(managing oceans better)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... What ails the oceans is not solely the consequence of the race to fish. Nor is it the catastrophic effects of oil spills and ocean dumping. Nor is it the habitat loss associated with coastal development and sprawl. It is all of these things and...

Toward a sea ethic: expanding our idea of community is a first step to restoring the seas around us.(OCEANS & COASTS)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... A couple of years ago I was participating as a writing coach in a Sea Education Association "seamester," sailing 1,000 miles from Hawaii to Palmyra Atoll, while students from Stanford University received lectures and closely supervised...