In politicians’ philandering, from JFK to Bill Clinton and beyond, “love means never having to say you’re sorry” (to quote the soupy 1970s movie) until your enablers run out of ways to keep you from getting caught. Few have gone as far as Andrew Young, who tried to take a bullet for John Edwards by claiming he was the father of Rielle Hunter’s baby, but greater love hath no man than…you know the rest. In her coming-out interview in GQ, Hunter says casually, “Andrew...

If he signs a health care bill into law this month, in his heart of hearts, the President will be haunted by the ancient plaint of King Pyrrhus, “Another such victory, and I am undone.” How did 21st century America fall into Greek tragedy while fighting to spread the benefits of civilization to its people? How did rational debate deteriorate into the ancient ritual of a blood feud? Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s designated voice of reason, writes in an OpEd today, “Should the Democrats’...

Forty years ago, a line of actors and actresses came out on a Manhattan stage and dropped their robes to face the audience naked. My reaction then was “That’s interesting, now what else have you got?” As it turned out, very little. Despite sketches by Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and other literati, “Oh Calcutta” was deemed “sophomoric and soporific” by a New York Times critic and remains memorable only for crossing a cultural threshold of public nudity. It...

The media hall of mirrors is manufacturing a “terrorism-case trend” out of an iffy indictment of a clearly disturbed Pennsylvania woman’s e-mails, YouTube postings and MySpace page. Interviewing a Washington Post reporter on the PBS News Hour, Gwen Ifill wonders if “she could have easily just been someone noodling around on the Internet” but is assured that Colleen LaRose, arrested last October for stealing her boyfriend’s passport and taking it overseas, was a...

“Ask not,” JFK urged at his inaugural, “what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.” Half a century later, making sacrifices, large or small, has vanished from most Americans’ vocabularies, replaced by a raging sense of disappointed entitlement that leads them to blame everyone but themselves for what’s wrong with their country. In bipartisan disgust, only 22 percent now approve of Congress, a 10 percent decline in two months and,...

Relentlessly pursuing health care reform, the President is looking like a modern Ahab, wounded by but determined to nail the killer whale of the American economy at all costs. Yet, as he keeps harpooning health insurers, even Obama admirers are warning that he risks capsizing the ship of state by, as Bob Herbert puts it, not concentrating on job creation that would ease “the frightening economic insecurity that has put a chokehold on millions of American families” rather than “an...

James Cameron was not king of the world this time as his former wife took custody of all the Oscars for an explosive low-budget howl of pain in this time of American rage. Symbolically, millions of metropolitan New Yorkers were blinded to it all by a clash between two Goliaths of greed, ABC and Cablevision, acting out for the night in their living rooms what Wall Street has been doing to them everywhere for years. What they missed was the usual Hollywood display of self-congratulatory pseudo-sensitivity...

The blogger who wrote under the name Jon Swift with a wit worthy of his namesake has died at the age of 46, leaving an ache in those of us who not only enjoyed his high style but benefited from his uncommon warmth and generosity. In a world of so much me-me-me with links, the man whose real name was Al Weisel presided over Blog Amnesty Day to call attention to the work of those who were, as I was three-plus years ago, just getting started and had few readers beyond their friends and relatives. His...

Age and ego conspire on an 86th birthday to see my life as a metaphor for America over the past century. In 1921, “The Americanization of Edward Bok” appeared. Bok was, as I am, the child of immigrants who became, as I would, editor of a large magazine and took part, as I did, in public life. His book won a Pulitzer Prize and is still read, an artifact of those Horatio Alger days when a poor kid could pursue material success without introspection or doubt about its desirability above all else. My...

Jim Bunning and Charles Rangel, with nothing in common but well-styled silver hair, took over the Congressional spotlight this week by refusing to “go gentle into that night.” The 79-year-old Bunning, called one of America’s Five Worst Senators by Time Magazine and described by Bill Clinton as “so mean-spirited he repulsed even fellow know-nothings,” made his last hurrah by single-handedly holding up for five days a bipartisan temporary extension of funding for unemployment...

Unlike JFK, Barack Obama’s defining moment has arrived, not in the clarity of going eyeball-to-eyeball with a foreign power over nuclear weapons but head to head with Congress in a muddled confrontation he failed to anticipate sufficiently or control. No matter how incredibly unfair it may be to compare the Cuban Missile Crisis to today’s impasse over health care, presidents don’t get to choose what will test them. The nature of their response is what counts. Both Kennedy and Obama...

Beverage metaphors abound as liberal Coffee Party activists rise up to counter the Tea Party Movement while Nancy Pelosi suggests that some House Democrats may have to drink hemlock to pass health care reform. “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said yesterday, pointing out Congressional opposition to Social Security and Medicare decades ago. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.” Pelosi’s followers face possible...

People, real people by the thousands every year, are dying for lack of medical treatment in the world’s richest nation, and after a week of politicians posturing over piles of paper, policy wonks are stunning us with this truth. A new study shows 68 Americans under age 65 die every day because they don’t have health care, a number that will rise to 84 by 2019–a total of 275,000 needless deaths in a decade. The numbers from an advocacy group, Families USA, comport with earlier estimates...

Not very, although John Boehner left the Summit looking like he had been in the dentist’s chair all day. Nancy Pelosi zinged as “not factual” his remarks about abortion in the House bill after the President had politely brushed off his robotalk with the observation, “Every time we get somewhere, we go back to the standard talking points.” Mitch McConnell was reduced to harping on the obvious, that Republican opposition had muddled enough Americans to turn them against the Democrats’...

Bipartisan breakthrough: The table for the health summit has been changed from U-shaped to O, allowing more Republican face time for TV cameras. Such symbolism typifies an encounter in which the White House will try to put back together a bill that was blown apart by hand grenades from monolithically opposed Republicans and nakedly greedy Democratic swing Senators. In the rubble of public disgust and Tea Party rage, the effort to start over is being dismissed as “political theater” by...

“All Toyota vehicles bear my name,” the president and grandson of the founder writes. “When cars are damaged, it is as though I am as well…I, more than anyone, want Toyota’s cars to be safe.” A heartfelt OpEd, written by the best hired gun money can buy, and in testimony before Congress, Akio Toyoda amplifies his regret and sincerity. Yet a criminal investigation of the car maker’s problems is showing “too cozy a relationship” between the company...

Today brings a sharp contrast in political philosophies and economic reality. As Paul Krugman discourses on three decades of Republican attempts to shrink government and “drown it in the bathtub,” President Obama discloses his intention to stop feeding the free-market monster that has devoured American health care. In advance of Thursday’s summit, the White House leaks a proposal to oversee and limit double-digit health insurance rate increases such as those the President denounced...

Democrats are rediscovering the old saying, “just as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” as they edge toward passing health care by a simple majority in the face of Republican roadblocks that have aroused public outrage. “I’ve had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday. “And we’re really trying to move forward on this.” Such an effort would call the...

People in Washington this week are wrapping the flag around themselves as protection from most Americans who have sweated and bled for our country in good times and bad. At the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee, the defining document is “The Mount Vernon Statement,” an ode of the Constitution by a list of right-wing elders headed by Edwin Meese, who helped subvert it in the Iran-Contra Affair and resigned in disgrace as Reagan’s Attorney General after...

On the first anniversary of the stimulus bill, the Washington of absolutes is on display–Obama’s “Yes We Can” vs. the GOP’s “No You Don’t” with little space for the reality of mixed results and mixed feelings about a huge enterprise to save a crashing economy. “Anniversary of Stimulus Met with Praise and Scorn” is the headline of ProPublica, noting that, in judging whether the stimulus has worked, “where you stand depends on where...

In the brouhaha over a forthcoming movie by a conservative filmmaker, we are once again on the dark side of free speech, which the Supreme Court visited last month in its decision that validated “Hillary: the Movie,” an election-year smear of Mrs. Clinton A dramatization of John F. Kennedy’s flaws for the History Channel is evoking high emotion even before it has been filmed as defenders of the Kennedy faith denounce the script as “political character assassination…sexist...

With the Capitol Hill horror show on hiatus, the President has an opening to power up and start moving Washington toward some semblance of being functional again. His strength is in a sizable approval advantage over the Congressional clowns who are back home to placate voters for whom incumbent is now a dirty word. With his numbers over 50 percent, he is well ahead of Republicans in hiding who have gained only a few points against the Democratic Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. As Evan Bayh...

Presidents Weekend brings reminders of how history’s most productive economy of goods and services was brought to its knees by glorified paper pushers, crafty clerks who make nothing but money. On CNN, Obama adviser Paul Volcker complains, “We’ve got to produce something that somebody else wants to buy.” According to the former Fed chairman, “we spent 20 years inducing some of our brightest people, our most energetic people to go to Wall Street. And nobody wants to be...

A new poll confirms what we know: Two out of three Americans are “dissatisfied with or angry about the way the government works.” We are in a reprise of “Network,” in which a demented anchorman gets millions to yell their outrage. In the 1976 movie, Howard Beale rants: “Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job, the dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust… “We know...

Things could be worse. If the millions who wanted John Edwards as President in the past decade had had their way, the nation would now be involved in a scandal to make Bill Clinton look like Mr. Monogamy. The prospect of an X-rated video starring a Commander-in-Chief surfaces in the current court battle over possession of tapes showing Edwards in carnal congress with Rielle Hunter, who bore his illegitimate child. As legal maneuvering over possession goes on in North Carolina, if history is any guide,...