Just imagine what's to come as we near January 2009. I shudder to think of it.

Posted at March 13, 2008 9:54 AM in response to EPA Overrules Scientists, Lowers Smog Standard Only Slightly

I've got to take one major exception with your comments. I can see how people might question Edwards integrity because they saw an inconsistency between his campaign rhetoric and his record as a senator, but to claim he's pampered like Mitt Romney is absurd. One was born to economic and political privilege, the other to a poor, rural mill worker.

Posted at February 19, 2008 11:47 AM in response to Report: Edwards Thinks Hillary Has Courted Him More Effectively

With Iraq and the "war on terror," the conservative movement has defined American power as unilateral military force. Progressives have not yet offered a counter-argument and story about American greatness that is capable of challenging the (neo)conservative one.

A new story of American Power begins by acknowledging what our country is great at: imagining, experimenting, and inventing the future. First we dream -- and then we invent.

While I agree that Americans tend to respond more to bold vision and emotionality than reason, the conservatives were able to dominate the public discourse for so long because of a calamitous event: September 11th. The nation united to make truly heroic efforts towards conservation and innovation during WWII less because of the call to "freedom" and more because of the threat of a flesh-and-blood enemy. Same is true for the race to the moon: This was about beating the Soviets, less about the feat.

I fear that our opportunity passed when in the days following 9/11, Bush called on the country to sacrifice by.... going shopping. The country was primed to rally around a vision of energy independence in the wake of that horrific and viscerally impactful event. If anything, the slow realization that the broad stroked picture of American military strength offered by the conservative moment has led us to darkness makes it all the more difficult for any leader to paint a truly compelling vision. No matter how articulately expressed, no matter how logical or practical, no matter how real the threat of climate change is to our future... this call may fall on deaf ears until the day that calamity is here on our shores again.

Posted at October 8, 2007 10:57 AM in response to American Power: The Case for an Energetic New Progressive Politics