Magazine October 29, 2012, Issue

The Week

By NR Staff

About NR Staff

October 11, 2012 4:00 AM

(Darren Gygi)

‐ We don’t know why everyone is being so hard on Obama’s debate performance. He did fine. Carry on, Mr. President!

‐ Every famous political debate is coated with myth. Reagan did not in fact trounce Carter in 1980, nor Kennedy Nixon in 1960. But the myths are right too, for a debate — especially when the result is a surprise — can nudge the tectonic plates. The first Obama–Romney debate produced two surprises. Obama, considered by his admirers (including himself) the modern Moses, was listless and dispirited. (Al Gore thought he’d had trouble adjusting to Denver’s elevation, though the U.S. …

In This Issue

Articles

Politics & Policy

The European Campaign

By John O'Sullivan

Chris Matthews and Andrew Sullivan were not the only people to be scared witless by Obama’s disappointing performance, and Romney’s incisive one, in the first presidential debate. Over in Western ...

Politics & Policy

Open Your Heart, Mitt

By Henry Olsen

After the first debate, Mitt Romney pulled even with or slightly ahead of President Obama in the polls. The question now is whether he can close the deal. He can, ...

Politics & Policy

Truth UnPrompTed

By Rob Long

TelePrompTers, like many of the folks who rely on them, are deceptively simple. Two thin panes of grey glass are clipped into place in front of the promptee, and ...

Politics & Policy

The New Tax Myth

By George Gilder

Just in time for the 2012 election, a Congressional Research Service study has concluded, amid the usual waffles and syrup of caveats, that tax cuts retard economic growth — but ...

Politics & Policy

The Unions’ Last Stand?

By John Fund

Los Angeles — After the presidential election, the most consequential political contest in America this year is that over Proposition 32, a California ballot initiative that would curb union political ...

Politics & Policy

Block the Vote

By Kevin D. Williamson

Just a few days before Florida’s October deadline for registering to vote in the 2012 presidential election, authorities in Tallahassee confirmed that the state’s Democratic party and two of its ...

Politics & Policy

The Tyrants’ Historian

By David Pryce-Jones

People in all walks of life, but especially intellectuals, used to believe that the Soviet Union was a place of wonders. Eric Hobsbawm was an outstanding example of the type. ...

Politics & Policy

‘He Lies!’ They Commanded

By Ramesh Ponnuru

An incumbent president is facing a tough challenge from a Massachusetts politician who is even richer than he is, just as in 2004. For most of the year, pollsters have ...

Features

Politics & Policy

Republics of Conscience

By Bradley C. S. Watson

In an appearance on Egyptian television in early 2012, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lamented the fact that she operated “under a rather old constitution.” She told Egyptians that ...

Politics & Policy

That Obama Movie

By Jay Nordlinger

2016: Obama’s America opened on one screen in Houston. Then it went to four screens. There were lines outside the doors. Then the movie opened in Nashville, Anchorage, Kalispell (a town ...

Books, Arts & Manners

Politics & Policy

Living for the City

By Samuel Staley

If anyone wondered whether community organizing can be taken out of a man when he goes to Washington, Stanley Kurtz answers the question with a definitive “no” in this eminently ...

Politics & Policy

Under the Influence

By Ronald Radosh

In the 2008 campaign, the media, generally speaking, showed a remarkable lack of interest in some of the background of the man who ended up winning the presidency. In this ...

Politics & Policy

Grievance Class

By Robert VerBruggen

How does one critique an entire academic discipline? For many conservative writers, it’s as simple as listing the names and topics of typical courses or papers and then counting on the ...

Politics & Policy

Flawed Genius

By Ross Douthat

If Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master was awaited with breathless anticipation by legions of film critics — here, finally, was a new film from the auteur behind 2007’s near-masterpiece There ...

Politics & Policy

Ambiguous Hero

By Kyle Smith

There is something irresistibly conservative about Lawrence of Arabia. The film is almost Biblical in its morality and, as played by Peter O’Toole, T. E. Lawrence is very nearly the ...

Politics & Policy

The Mormon Moses

By Jason Lee Steorts

If a magnetic, irritable, and occasionally horrifying Moses were the main character in a quite bloody western, watching it might be something like reading this new biography of Mormonism’s second ...

Sections

Politics & Policy

The Week

By NR Staff

‐ We don’t know why everyone is being so hard on Obama’s debate performance. He did fine. Carry on, Mr. President! ‐ Every famous political debate is coated with myth. Reagan ...

Excerpts from I Wish I Could Fly Away

By Rob Long

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Excerpts from I Wish I Could Fly Away: The Autobiography of Big Bird © HarperCollins 2012 From Chapter One: “Which Came First?” “ . . . and this,” the lawyer from the ...

Athwart

All the President’s Straw Men

By James Lileks

Reports say the new underground structure at the White House is finished, but no one knows what it’s for. A man-cave where the president can get away and have a ...

Politics & Policy

Poetry

By Len Krisak

THE BOOKS By now, the books have almost filled their shelves Like some slow love affair reaching its end, When little space is left for richer selves, And all have spent the last cent ...

The Volunteer Military

By Mark Steyn

If you seek an epitaph for America’s longest war, consider one bleak, pitiful sentence from an Associated Press report a few weeks ago: Kabul, Afghanistan (AP) – A newly recruited Afghan ...

Politics & Policy

Letters

By NR Staff

What Is Happening to the Middle Class? Scott Winship’s “What ‘Lost Decade’?” (October 1) opens by misstating one of the basic findings of “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class,” a ...

Recommended

Chauvin Defense Expert Destroyed on the Stand

Chauvin Defense Expert Destroyed on the Stand

The prosecution blew the witness’s testimony to bits.

Andrew C. McCarthy

Powerful Evidence That George Floyd Resisted Arrest

Powerful Evidence That George Floyd Resisted Arrest

The Derek Chauvin case is more complicated than prosecutors would have it.

Andrew C. McCarthy

CNN News Writer Denies the Biological Reality of Sex at Birth

To pretend that we as a society are incapable of knowing whether a child is a male or female at birth is lunacy.

Alexandra DeSanctis

Why Not Fewer Voters?

Why Not Fewer Voters?

The fact is that voters got us into this mess. Maybe the answer isn’t more voters.

Kevin D. Williamson

Never Ask a Question You Don’t Need to Ask: Chauvin Lawyer Gets Clobbered by Witness’s Gripping Testimony

Never Ask a Question You Don’t Need to Ask: Chauvin Lawyer Gets Clobbered by Witness’s Gripping Testimony

There’s rarely an upside in asking pointed questions to a young, nervous, highly sympathetic witness.

Andrew C. McCarthy

The Great California Exodus

The Great California Exodus

A look at why droves are leaving the state.

David L. Bahnsen

The Latest

DeSantis Hints at Political Consequences for Companies That 'Genuflect' to 'Wokeness'

DeSantis Hints at Political Consequences for Companies That 'Genuflect' to 'Wokeness'

DeSantis said politicians may ‘stick their beak into issues that may not concern them’ if corporations go woke.

Maxine Waters Tells Protesters to 'Stay in the Street,' Be 'More Confrontational' If Chauvin Acquitted

Maxine Waters Tells Protesters to 'Stay in the Street,' Be 'More Confrontational' If Chauvin Acquitted

‘We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business,’ Waters said.

Police Confiscated Indianapolis Shooter's Shotgun Months Before He Bought Rifles Used in Attack

Police Confiscated Indianapolis Shooter's Shotgun Months Before He Bought Rifles Used in Attack

The shooter's mother raised concerns about his gun ownership to the police.

No, Hank Azaria Doesn’t Have to Apologize to Indian Americans for Apu

No, Hank Azaria Doesn’t Have to Apologize to Indian Americans for Apu

That a white man voiced an Indian character on The Simpsons is not the cause of anti-Indian racism in the United States.

Pradheep J. Shanker

Socialism Loses, Again

Socialism Loses, Again

Scenes from an almost-debate.

Kevin D. Williamson

How Philanthropy Is Fueling American Division

How Philanthropy Is Fueling American Division

Many charitable foundations have been captured by the Left.