The American Prospect articles from March 2009

The American Prospect archives from March 2009

Breaking the grip of the past.(PROSPECTS)(Barack Obama on conservatism)
March 1, 2009... THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM, WITH ITS "STATUS quo bias" (as political scientists call it), is not set up for moments like this when the economy is sinking fast and the country requires strong action that breaks with previous policy. After the...

No new deal niceties.(NOTED)(globalization)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] University of Minnesota economics professor HARLAN SMITH digested, applauded, and then rebutted parts of HAROLD MEYERSON'S cover story, "A Global New Deal": "I was initially impressed by Meyerson's logical argument...

Thinking bigger.(NOTED)(sustainable economy)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... JIM CARPENTER, an economics instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College, wrote in to tack on four more ideas to ROBERT KUTTNER'S piece, "Obama's Economic Opportunity." He wrote, "Taxing the wealthy could actually stimulate the economy if the...

Kudos.(NOTED)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2009... Reader DAVID BLATT e-mailed us to say "the magazine and the Web site are consistently excellent. In particular, MARK SCHMITT'S articles over the past year have, time after time, provided the most incisive analysis of the presidential campaign...

Correction.(NOTED)(Correction notice)
March 1, 2009... Our piece "How Bush Broke the Government" was written and reported by several contributors. We regret that Emily Douglas was left off of that list.

From the executive editor.(NOTED)(Editorial)
March 1, 2009... AT THIS WRITING, JUST A FEW WEEKS INTO OBAMA'S presidency, a truly progressive governing majority is getting to work. Amid profound crises at home and abroad, the new president and Congress can't do it alone--they need the support, criticism,...

Foodie politics: Alice Waters goes to Washington.(Up Front)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FOR ONE NIGHT IN D.C., politicians garnered less interest than pastry chefs. "That's Daniel Boulud!" squealed one gourmand standing 4 feet from a lonesome-looking Carl Bernstein. Nearby, CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin...

The question: On which world leader will the gap model its comeback?(Up Front)(Republican Party)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... "Elvis Presley, circa 1970; the sequined jumpsuits and photo ops with J. Edgar Hoover will at least help them hold onto their base." --Eric Alterman The Nation [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The Wizard of Oz, who can conjure up all...

Memo.(PARODY)(Brief article)
March 1, 2009... TO: House and Senate GOP Caucus FROM: Republican National Committee Strategy Group Senators and House members, we appreciate all your suggestions for talking points that GOP leaders ought to be promoting in response to upcoming...

Is the GOP making an effort at inclusiveness, or is the new RNC chair just a token?(DIALOGUE: REPUBLICANS AND RACE)(Republican Party and Republican National Committee's Michael Steele)
March 1, 2009... DANA GOLDSTEIN: On Jan. 30, Maryland's former lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, was elected the first African American chair of the Republican National Committee. The competition really brought out the crazy in the GOP. But it's great to see...

The dual mission.(WAYS AND MEANS)(Barack Obama's social policy)
March 1, 2009... TO CHANGE THE CULTURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS: THAT was the radical promise on which Barack Obama was elected president. Ever since his days as a Chicago organizer and state senator, his first mission has been to bring people back in as...

Broad rights.(COMMENT)(reproductive rights)
March 1, 2009... AFTER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA SIGNED HIS first piece of legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, he remarked that it was a victory for workers and for civil rights. He did not say it was a victory for women but that "making our economy...

The other black president: the NAACP confronts a new political--and racial--era.(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)(Biography)
March 1, 2009... Ben Jealous steps through the metal detector in the Hart Senate Office building on Capitol Hill. He removes his black baseball cap and jacket, hunching over as he affixes a gold NAACP pin to his lapel before entering a press conference in...

Department of change: five places to start remaking the government.
March 1, 2009... "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works," Barack Obama said during his Inaugural Address. A government that works seems like an obvious goal. But conservatives in the Bush...

You can handle the truth: how far will Obama take his professed commitment to transparency?(Barack Obama)
March 1, 2009... J. William Leonard, the former head of classification procedures for the government under President George W. Bush, was settling into his new life in St. Mary's County, Maryland, after his retirement in late 2007. He planned to teach political...

Where are the workers? Employees are losing their central place in union organizing, but card-check legislation could turn that around.
March 1, 2009... One sparkling day about 10 years ago, I drove from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara to deliver a talk at a nationwide staff retreat of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE). I can't recall exactly what I talked...

Anatomy of a netroots failure: liberal bloggers wanted Darcy Burner to win. That wasn't enough.
March 1, 2009... To understand how invested online activists were in the campaign of Darcy Burner--the bright, tech-savvy, and ultimately failed candidate for Congress in Washington state s 8th Congressional District--consider what happened in February of last...

Britain's great right hope: the Tories' long comeback is finally on the verge of success. Are Republicans paying attention?
March 1, 2009... The Two Chairmen is a cozy backstreet pub, nestled in the heart of the Westminster Village--the small corner of London that includes 10 Downing St., Parliament, and most of Britain's major government departments. On a warm summer day in May...

Twilight of the autocrats: will the financial crisis bring down Russia and China?
March 1, 2009... Gansu is one of interior China's most forlorn provinces, one that has gone largely unnoticed by the outside world. When I worked in rural Gansu two years ago, I met few people who had ever left their hometown. In one tiny village, ethnic...

Green building blues: is "well-designed green architecture" an oxymoron.(ARCHITECTURE)
March 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE OLYMPIC VILLAGE IN VANcouver will be a marvel of the 21st century once it is complete. Currently under construction for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the 1.4-millionsquare-foot, 16-building Village will be outfitted...

Agonies of the Twitterati.(Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, Blackberry Moms, and Economic Anxiety)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... ELSEWHERE, U.S.A.: HOW WE GOT FROM THE COMPANY MAN, FAMILY DINNERS, AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY TO THE HOME OFFICE, BLACKBERRY MOMS, AND ECONOMIC ANXIETY BY DALTON CONLEY, Pantheon, 221 pages, $24.00 THE CRITICS OF MODERNITY, GOING back at...

A little liberal persuasion.(Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... ANGELS AND AGES: A SHORT BOOK ABOUT DARWIN, LINCOLN, AND MODERN LIFE BY ADAM GOPNIK, Alfred A. Knopf, 211 pages, $24.95 THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF Abraham Lincoln's birth is upon us, and the flood of Lincoln books has begun to crest. At least...

Why they fought.(Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... HEROES AND COWARDS: THE SOCIAL FACE OF WAR BY DORA L. COSTA AND MATTHEW E. KAHN, Princeton University Press, 315 pages, $27.95 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR HAS long been a staple of the publishing industry. Hundreds of books come out each year,...

Practical liberalism redux.(MY BACK PAGES)(Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... LAST OCTOBER, AFTER THE ECONOMY'S DOWNWARD spiral became obvious, I closed an e-mail to a friend with the words: "I never thought my obsession with the 1930s would ever be relevant to my life." That obsession had many roots, not the least being...

Not by accident: building a sustainable New Orleans.(Essay)
March 1, 2009... New Orleans was built in a place that is both insane and inevitable. The culture of the City and the region is both parochial and cosmopolitan. The swamps and marshes that define the regions landscape seem timeless--even primordial--yet are...

The new normal: governments at all levels responded slowly to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The people of the Gulf Coast took up the slack but haven't absolved government of its responsibilities.(AFTER KATRINA)
March 1, 2009... Walking along the Algiers levees facing downtown New Orleans, Malik Rahim stops at a huge dent in the pavement that he thinks came from a crashed barge during Hurricane Katrina. "See there," points out Rahim, a Black Panther with grayed...

The color of toxic debris: the racial injustice in the flow of poison that followed the flood.(AFTER KATRINA)
March 1, 2009... Well before Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005, New Orleans was already struggling with a wide range of environmental-justice challenges. People of color tended to be most vulnerable to a range of environmental assaults, from flood...

New leadership, new hopes: how much difference will the Obama Administration make to the recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?(AFTER KATRINA)(Barack Obama)
March 1, 2009... When Barack Obama arrived in Washington four years ago as a freshman senator, his first goal was a low profile. Hoping to dampen the high expectations he earned during his address at the Democratic National Convention, Obama cultivated...

Gulf Coast notebook: communities rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ike.(AFTER KATRINA)(Mary Queen of Vietnam, Market Umbrella, Central City Renaissance Alliance, and People Before Ports)(Organization overview)
March 1, 2009... THE MARY QUEEN OF VIETNAM CHURCH The recent election of U.S. Congressman Anh Cao, a first for Vietnamese Americans, stunned many observers but not those in the pews at Mary Queen of Vietnam, a Catholic parish in New Orleans East where Cao has...

The Houma Nation digs out: how a resilient traditional people is recovering from the latest assaults of nature and bad policy.(AFTER KATRINA)
March 1, 2009... Last Sept. 1, as Hurricane Gustav blasted the coastal Louisiana homeland of the United Houma Nation, tribal chief Brenda Dardar Robichaux hunkered down with friends and family members around a television with foil-wrapped bunny ears. They...

Translating disaster: in the crisis, the Gulf's Hispanic communities dealt with linguistic and political isolation. But Katrina produced a boost to new organizing efforts.(AFTER KATRINA)
March 1, 2009... In New Orleans, "there is a white power structure and a black power structure but not really any in between," explains Latino community activist Jessica Venegas. Latinos hold little political power compared to their population size, which has...

Housing New Orleans: still a work in progress: far too many people ore still without decent affordable homes, and hidden vulnerable groups like the mentally ill have been hit hardest of all.(AFTER KATRINA)
March 1, 2009... Some three and a half years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the city known as "The Big Easy," it has been anything but easy for thousands of displaced New Orleans-area residents to find housing. Many have been forced onto the streets or...

Justice polluted: an environmental-justice attorney explains how the civil rights of Gulf Coast residents were violated.(AFTER KATRINA)(Monique Harden)(Interview)
March 1, 2009... The images of suffering from Hurricane Katrina are seared into America's collective memory: the flooded streets, the abandoned corpses, the residents crying for help that took days to arrive. Yet the months and years following the hurricane may...