Today isn’t just the start of the long, cold denouement of 2009 — it is the launch date for National Affairs, which Pete Wehner has plugged on The Corner. Most of you know Yuval Levin, the editor of National Affairs, as one of the country’s brightest lights on domestic policy. I’ve now known Yuval for a few years, and I’m still humbled by his formidable brainpower and also his sharp political instincts. Meghan Clyne, the magazine’s managing editor, is a name you’ll be hearing more of; a veteran of National Review and the White House. Clyne is a brilliant writer, who writes a fantastic, pugnacious column for The New York Post, and a gifted editor. I’m happy to report that I’m serving as a contributing editor along with my friends Matt Continetti of the Weekly Standard and Adam Keiper of The New Atlantis.

The debate around the future of the American economy so far has been arid and dominated by narrowly-focused technocrats who share a number of unexamined assumptions. National Affairs intends to change that.

David Brooks strongly recommends essays by James Capretta and Ron Haskins, and so do I. Read them both at the new National Affairs website, which will feature original writing. (I’ll have an essay there later this week.)