Books & Audio
A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford
President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination
President Nixon: Alone in the White House
What the People Know: Freedom and the Press
Do the Media Govern? Politicians, Voters, and Reporters in America
Family Travels: Around the World in 30 (or So) Days
Character Above All: Richard Reeves on John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Vol. 4
Running in Place: How Bill Clinton Disappointed America
President Kennedy: Profile of Power
Reagan Detour: Conservative Revolutionary
Passage to Peshawar: Pakistan, between the Hindu Kush and the Arabian Sea
American Journey: Traveling with Tocqueville in Search of Democracy in America
Jet Lag: The Travels of a Bicoastal Reporter
Convention
Old Faces of 1976
A Ford, not a Lincoln: Or Why There are no Leaders in Washington
Latest Column
The Tea Is Getting Weaker
LOS ANGELES — Uh, oh! Some people are looking over the right shoulders of the Republicans who rode into the House of Representatives on the tea party wave of 2010. And they don't like what they're seeing.
Column Archive
The Republican Civil War
NEW YORK — After Richard Mourdock defeated Sen. Richard Lugar by 20 points in last Tuesday's Indiana Republican Senate primary, he called, more or less, for one-party government. Asked by CNN's Soledad O'Brien his definition of "compromise," he answered:
Bright Immigrants Promise Bright Future For America
GRANADA HILLS, Calif. — In 1921, Lincoln Steffens, among the greatest of American journalists, visited the new Soviet Union and came back to the United States to say, "I have seen the future and it works."
The Next Republican Party
LOS ANGELES — Once upon a time there was a political tribe called "liberal Republicans," led by chieftains named Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Mac Mathias and others. They were generally liberal on social issues and relatively conservative on fiscal issues.
The Quiet Campaign: Voter Suppression
LOS ANGELES — The 2012 presidential election is not only about who votes for Barack Obama and who votes for Mitt Romney. It is also about who votes.
Romney And Lose-lose Politics
LOS ANGELES — If Mitt Romney had walked by a room called The Forum at the University of Southern California last Wednesday, he would quit his presidential race right now.
Health Care: We're All In This Together
LOS ANGELES — I went into teaching not because I enjoy it — though I do — but because I needed a health plan. I was a lucky man to have skills, particularly writing, that were in demand at universities.
Ode To The Road
LOS ANGELES — Doyle, how could you?
The Fracking Of American Politics
LOS ANGELES — In the 1980s, I lectured on American politics at Sciences Po (l'Institute d'Etudes Politique) in Paris, the elite French school of political science. When the time came for questions, the first one from students was always the same: "How can you tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans in the United States?"
Sex And The Sixties
LOS ANGELES — Odds are that Mitt Romney will still be the Republican nominee for president, but you have to feel sorry for him because he clearly has no idea what his party stands for and is running against. His principal opponent, Rick Santorum, does understand and has been able, so far, to hang in there against all of Romney's money, breeding and accomplishment.
The Gop In 2012: Strange Party, Strange Year
LOS ANGELES — "You pays your money and you takes your choice." Mark Twain used the phrase in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," but it probably has its origin in Cockney English.
Romney And Santorum: The Warmongers!
LOS ANGELES — If this was the last Republican debate, or the last important one, it was as entertaining and revealing as most of the previous 19. And scary.
Comes The Revolution
LOS ANGELES — Andrew Breitbart, the publisher of Breitbart.com and a couple of other popular websites, set the tone for a program at the University of Southern California last Wednesday by calling George Stephanopoulus of ABC News, a little rat with a runny nose.
Romney The Winner? Not Yet!
LOS ANGELES — Now that Mitt Romney has about wrapped up the Republican nomination for president ... What? He hasn't? They changed the rules?
Politics As Entertainment
LOS ANGELES —- In 1976, to my regret, I wrote what amounted to an obituary of the Republican Party. Writing about the Democratic Convention in New York that year, I said:
America's Five Political Parties
LOS ANGELES — It would seem that the United States has a five-party system right now. What was done in Iowa last Tuesday could unravel in New Hampshire, but whatever happens next, the United States is more politically fractured than it has been in decades.
Why Americans Aren't Trusted
DALLAS — One of the darker pages of American history was illustrated by film of South Vietnamese, many of whom had worked for the American military or diplomatic corps for years, desperately trying to get into the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and being pushed and batted away by Marines as the last Americans climbed to the roof to escape the advancing North Vietnamese troops by helicopter.
Goodnight, Moon! Goodnight, America!
LOS ANGELES — Scanning the latest national polls, it seems that only 17 percent of Americans — fewer than one in five — say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. Only 11 percent have confidence in the U.S. Congress, and the same percentage believe that old one about the country being headed in the right direction. Two out of three respondents think the economy is going in the wrong direction. This in the land of hope and glory.
The New Newt
WASHINGTON — Mention the name of the man of the hour around here and people all seem to have the same reaction. They shake their heads. Some seem amused, some angry, some frightened. Despite living most of his adult life here, Newt Gingrich does not have many friends among his neighbors.
The Sayings Of Chairman Barney
WASHINGTON — I first met Barney Frank in 1979, when he was a state legislator in Massachusetts. We spoke the same language, Jersey cynical, because we grew up a couple of miles from each other. He was from Bayonne and I was from Jersey City, the jewel of Hudson County.
Whack-a-Newt Is The New Game In Town
WASHINGTON — Like most reporters here in the 1980s, I liked Newt Gingrich and spent time listening to his office lectures every few weeks. He was smart, he was candid about most things, wrong about others — and funny in his hypercharged way. He was young and irreverent — like us — and he was on his way to taking over the Republicans in Congress and then Congress itself. His ambition was boundless, but he was changing the rules in Washington for better or worse.