As the McCain campaign concentrates on holding the red states, Rupert Murdoch’s house organ for the super-rich sounds the alarm on what could happen if Barack Obama’s coattails are long enough to give Democrats filibuster-proof majorities in Congress. “Though we doubt most Americans realize it,” a WSJ editorial warns, “this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t...

It took a heart of stone to watch PBS’ News Hour last night without breaking into tears over America in ruins– a collapsing economy with no end in sight, the falling-apart of charity and culture in Seattle, poor people without medical care in New Mexico and, to cap it off, a critique of how helpless the presidential candidates are to do anything meaningful about it. How did we get to be living in Haiti? Political explanations are not enough. As careless and clueless as Washington leaders...

After giving up Joe Lieberman as a running mate in favor of Mrs. Joe Sixpack, John McCain brought out Joe the Plumber for tonight’s debate–to no avail. The networks’ instant polling shows a third straight loss for the Republican’s attempt to sell himself as the champion of the average Joe. The candidates squared off after a day of dismal economic news–another stock-market plunge, retail sales down, factory orders at historic lows–and the best John McCain could...

Yesterday’s stock-market surge was at least a temporary all-clear for millions of Americans to emerge from the shock and awe that has devastated their financial lives. As they look around at the rubble of savings, 401ks and home values, what are they thinking and feeling? Across the country, there are reports of victims. “In some places,” CNN reports, “mental-health hot lines are jammed, counseling services are in high demand and domestic-violence shelters are full.” In...

To restore America in a time of economic crisis and partisan hatred, a hairline victory will not be enough. True, George W. Bush turned a deficit of popular votes and a 5-4 Supreme Court decision into a mandate to start the wrong war and try to dismantle the Constitution, but that won’t be enough for the first African-American president. Democrats need an all-out effort in the final three weeks, and it’s encouraging to see both Clintons out on the campaign trail with Joe Biden in Pennsylvania...

Barack Obama was endorsed today in an especially cogent editorial by the newspaper that is a monument to Joseph Pulitzer, who funded the prizes for excellence in American culture and established the Columbia School of Journalism. Obama, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch declares, “is right on the issues. He was right on the war in Iraq. He is right that all Americans deserve access to health care and right in his pragmatic approach to meeting that goal. He is right on tax policy, infrastructure investment,...

After seven-plus years of stubborn certainty, the Decider suddenly reversed himself today on two major issues–the $700 financial bailout and relations with North Korea. In a deathbed conversion to consensus, the Administration stepped back from the Paulson Plan to buy toxic mortgage-backed securities and moved toward injecting capital directly into the nation’s banks, a position it opposed during two turbulent weeks of persuading Congress to pass the original bill. Since then, the meltdown...

We have been here before, and we can learn from the past. On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office and told Americans, “(T)he only thing we have to fear is fear itself…nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance… “Values have shrunken to fantastic levels, taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen, government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income, the means of exchange...

By all measures, Barack Obama won by a wide margin tonight’s debate, which was focused on issues, with no mention of Sarah Palin or the smears she has been spreading out on the McCain campaign’s low road. For the first hour, the Republican candidate’s demeanor consisted of an odd Uriah Heep cringe with a cajoling, almost imploring tone suggesting that McCain was trying very hard to project sincerity in his prescriptions for the economy. Only in the final thirty minutes, in the segment...

Barack Obama and John McCain will be debating tonight as the inertia that has always given American society stability, albeit at the price of slow social change, is endangered by a sudden plunge into economic turmoil and uncertainty. Ironically, neither of the voters’ possible choices is designed to calm them. Not since 1932 has the electorate been so roiled by fear of the future and so hungry for change. Yet, in Obama, they face someone relatively new and unfamiliar and, in McCain, an all-too-familiar...

In the porkathon to pass the bailout bill, Congress balked at two measures–to extend jobless benefits for the unemployed and allow bankruptcy judges to reduce penniless homeowners’ mortgages. So much for Main Street, where signs of a 1930s Depression are cropping up everywhere: *New figures show 760,000 lost jobs this year. Of the 9.5 million Americans out of work, two million have been for more than six months. Nearly 6.1 million people are working part-time because worsening business...

O.J. Simpson is going to prison and Barack Obama seems to be headed for the White House after a brief to-do this week about Gwen Ifill’s role as moderator for the VP debate because of her upcoming book about the arc of black politics from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to the present. Unlike Sarah Palin, who has been invisible on the Sunday morning talk shows, Ifill was on Meet the Press today with Tom Brokaw, who is old enough to remember the times she is writing about. Simpson’s...

Thursday night was, Sarah Palin says, like most first dates, a bit awkward at first. “There was a lot of eye contact,” she recalls, “and it was pleasant. It was, hey, you know, we’re both in this together. We both understand what each other would be going through at this time. Kind of wondering, what’s coming next…So, that connection, it was some good chemistry. And again, at least I had a ball. It was fun.” Right off, she tried to put Joe Biden at ease with...

Congress is facing a Butch-and-Sundance moment today in the debate over hurtling into the unknown as relentless mercenary forces close in. The Senate has thrown them some goodies to slow down the stampede but essentially left the $700 billion cost unchanged–in fact, adding $150 billion in reduced taxes to the ransom. In the House showdown, it will still be an odd coalition of liberals and conservatives controlling the swing votes. “The bailout legislation that the Senate is sending back to...

Simply put, he knows too much for snappy hockey-mom images and I-put-it-on-eBay sound bites as answers to serious questions. Three decades of real experience will weigh him down in what viewers expect to be a mud-wrestling match. What to do? Joe Biden is caught between the devil (looking mean by showing up Sarah Palin’s ignorance) and the deep blue sea (appearing to be an elitist know-it-all by ignoring her and giving serious responses on policy issues). In a political moment when America...

On Monday morning, when the future of the American Dream was teetering under the Capitol dome, George W. Bush was in the East Room of the White House presenting the National Medal of Science and Technology and Innovation to men and women “whose discoveries have changed America and the world.” Their names ranged from Willson to Lefkowitz to El-Sayed to O’Malley, a mosaic of the ethnic and cultural diversity that reflects the strength of a country where everyone, if you go back far...

A 390-page report by the Inspector General is only a small step for mankind in bringing Karl Rove to justice for what he did to the Justice Department in the firing of the nine US attorneys, but it’s a start. The internal investigation finds political pressure drove the 2006 dismissals but that refusal of major players at the White House and the department to cooperate in the year-long inquiry has left significant “gaps” in understanding what happened. Investigators’ doubts have led...

Most provocative quotes of the day: “It’s time to let Palin be Palin–and let it all hang out.” –Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, in the Wall Street Journal. “McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her–aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House.” –William Kristol, New York Times. In what conjures up visions of...

After pulling an all-nighter, the low-approval gang in Washington is ready to give us their new, improved version of the $700 billion gamble nobody understands but practically all are sure is needed to keep the sky from falling. The 1980s Tom Hanks movie, “The Money Pit,” comes to mind as Congress and the Administration enthuse over the financial structure we’re buying with a $250 million down payment that may or may not stand up until their successors move in next January. House...

He was as American as you can get. The actor who died today was an icon, but the man was even more–someone who loved his country, not in an abstract or flag-waving way, but as a patriot who opposed bad wars and gave millions to people in pain. In 1968, our paths crossed as we both stepped out of our working lives to try to stop the war in Vietnam. When I invited him to lunch with a dozen magazine editors, he told me the prospect of talking about himself was so unnerving he had stayed too long...