Reihan Salam
Reihan Salam is an associate editor at the Atlantic.
Recently by Reihan Salam
Mar 19 2009, 10:02AM
Rethinking The JournoList List
Mar 17 2009, 10:54AM
Robert D. Kaplan on the New Geopolitics
In a wide-ranging essay for Foreign Affairs, Atlantic national correspondent Robert D. Kaplan argues that the Indian Ocean rim will take "center stage for the 21st century" as a site of commercial and military rivalries.
Mar 13 2009, 12:15PM
The Mark Sanford Revolution?
The American Conservative, founded by Patrick Buchanan to serve as a voice for anti-war, anti-immigration conservative nationalists, plays an interesting role in conservative politics. Though not as widely read as National Review, which aims to set the tone for the movement conservative mainstream, TAC has gained a devoted following as a sharp critic of the conservative mainstream, a stance reflected in its ardent embrace of Ron Paul's quixotic yet very impressive presidential campaign.
And so Michael Brendan Dougherty's mostly admiring profile of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford in TAC is worthy of note.
Mar 11 2009, 2:41PM
The Changing Politics of Incarceration?
Florida Governor Charlie Crist, once known as "Chain Gang Charlie" for his tough-on-crime stance, surprised many when he embraced the cause of restoring voting rights for ex-convicts, not least because this was a move that in theory cut against the political interests of Crist's Republican allies. Yet this was of a piece with Crist's broader shift to the political center, which has proven politically advantageous given rising anti-GOP sentiment in Florida and nationwide. Other Republicans, most of them evangelical conservatives, have also called for a less punitive approach to incarceration. Meanwhile, New York Governor David Paterson is pressing for a reform of the state's controversial Rockefeller drug laws, a step that would have been considered politically suicidal for a liberal Democrat in years past. So what comes next?
Mar 11 2009, 2:26PM
An EFCA Compromise?
In describing the Employee Free Choice Act, Chris writes:
The bill would eliminate employer-mandated secret-ballot elections in the union organizing process, allowing workers to potentially form unions via petition.
And that's absolutely right. But as T.A. Frank has argued in The Washington Monthly, this is not necessarily the most essential part of the bill from the perspective of organized labor or, for that matter, those who hope to limit labor's influence.
Mar 10 2009, 9:33AM
The GOP in 2012
Given the staggering sums it now takes to run a serious campaign for a major party's presidential nomination, it's hard to imagine any candidate waiting until late December of 2011 to decide whether or not for president in 2012. Barack Obama announced his candidacy 21 months before election day, and he began gearing up his campaign organization months before. Other contenders, like Hillary Clinton, started even earlier.
With the essential caveat that it is still very, very early, and the added wrinkle that fundraising in the Internet era could give late entrants a better shot at running for the presidency, it's worth noting how gun-shy various Republican heavies have been about their plans for 2012. After stinging defeats in 2006 and 2008, Republicans face a serious enthusiasm gap, and the Democratic advantage in party identification is, according to Gallup, the largest it has been since 1983. That number actually underestimates the extent of the Democratic advantage, as there are far fewer Reagan-voting conservative Democrats in the ranks.
Mar 9 2009, 4:58PM
Republicans and the Obama Foreign Policy
Congressional Republicans are all but united in their opposition to President Obama's domestic program. But on foreign policy, where the Obama White House has taken a number of dramatic steps, Republicans have said virtually nothing, as Spencer Ackerman reports in The Washington Independent.
Mar 4 2009, 7:29PM
Empire Falls?
Though Hillary Clinton never made it to the White House, this should be a good moment for Democrats in the Empire State. The Democrats appear to have a lock on Congress, thanks in no small part to Chuck Schumer, the state's senior senator. President Obama's cabinet is full of New Yorkers, and his first budget promises to be much friendlier to New York than any we've seen during the long era of Republican dominance. So why is it that New York Democrats seem to be in such terrible shape?
Mar 4 2009, 4:00PM
Starving the Beast, or Feeding the Beast?
In an excellent post on Barack Obama's fiscal policy, one that builds on arguments recently made by Matt Yglesias and Clive Crook, The Atlantic's Ross Douthat suggests that Barack Obama is offering his own version of "starve-the-beast."
What you see in [Obama's] budgeting proposals, I think, is the liberal equivalent of the conservative attempt to "starve the beast." In both the Reagan and Bush eras, Republicans passed tax cuts and ran up large deficits while hoping that by starving the federal government of revenue they would curb its long-run growth. Obama's spending proposals would effectively reverse that dynamic -- they would create new spending commitments and run up large deficits, in the hopes that the dollars poured into health care and education will create a new baseline for government's obligations, which in turn will create the political space for tax increases on the middle class.
Mar 2 2009, 10:39AM
The Santelli Conspiracy?*
Was Rick Santelli's "Chicago Tea Party" a spontaneous expression of populist outrage? Or was it a carefully orchestrated media campaign that was planned long before Santelli's now-famous socialist-bashing CNBC rant? Mark Ames and Yasha Levine suggest that Santelli's mini-movement was in fact bought and paid for by a network of right-of-center moguls led by the Koch family, best known for their outsized backing of libertarian causes.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.