Rick Perlstein
The Nation
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Past articles by Rick:
Was Jimmy Carter an Outlier?
Politicians say things to get elected and then, once in office, do otherwise; that’s politics. But Carter demanded that we grade him on a curve. → Read More
The convention shows Democrats don’t care about young voters
The way to lure these voters into a Democratic coalition is to include people who genuinely appeal to younger generations, wherever they might hail from. → Read More
The Long Roots of Corporate Irresponsibility
Nicholas Lemann’s history of 20th century corporations, Transaction Man, shows how an unrelenting faith in the market and profit doomed the American economy. → Read More
Five myths about Watergate
Actually, it was far worse than politics as usual. → Read More
Roger Ailes Broke America, Then Died
The FOX news founder who died Thursday taught America how to get angry about politics on TV—and helped make Donald Trump president. → Read More
Why My Student Voted for Trump
This past October, I taught a weeklong seminar on the history of conservatism to honors students from around the state of Oklahoma. In five long days, my nine very engaged students and I got to know each other fairly well. Six were African American women. Then there was a middle-aged white single mother, a white kid who looked like any other corn-fed Oklahoma boy and identified himself as… → Read More
Bad Journalism and the Downfall of America
The hustlers, hucksters, hacks and cowards who helped elect Donald Trump. → Read More
Sanders, Clinton and the Democrats’ Dilemma
The grumpy old man with the disheveled hair has revealed himself a veritable political juggernaut. In Iowa, Bernie Sanders fought Hillary Clinton to a near tie. In New Hampshire, he rolled to a 22-point victory. It is an extraordinary vindication of an argument liberal Democrats like me have been making since the 1980s, when the Democratic Leadership Council leveraged a truism —candidates win by… → Read More
What Ronald Reagan Teaches Us About Donald Trump
Demagogues are only a joke until they win. → Read More
Hear! Hear! George Scialabba
A gathering of luminaries and friends—including artist Joseph Ciardiello, with this drawing—celebrated the essayist and critic on the day of his retirement. → Read More
When Leftists Become Conservatives
For many paladins of the American right, their back pages were in our back pages. → Read More
There Are No More Honest Conservatives, So Stop Looking For One
The mainstream and liberal press’ quixotic search for a ‘good’ conservative merely reinforces the soft bigotry of low expectations. → Read More
From & Friends
Failing upward at the Democratic Leadership Council with Al From. → Read More
NSA Reform, Then and Now
The main difference between the Church Committee's investigations of 1975-76 and the discussion of NSA spying now is that back then, the spooks stopped the abuses themselves. → Read More
Chicago School: Bill de Blasio's Shock Doctrine Consultants
Bill de Blasio was swept to the New York mayoralty on the promise of getting Gracie Mansion out from under the thumb of corporate elites. So how worried should you be that he listened to Chicago's Rahm Emanuel and is now getting advice on his transition from Emanuel's corporate consultants. → Read More
Did The New Republic Take Money From a Drone Manufacturer that Wanted It To Run Defenses of Drones?
On Friday I posted a short piece in which I said that (1) Benjamin Wittes, co-director of the Harvard Law School-Brookings Project on Law and Security, has been blogging at his website Lawfare "on the report on the abuses of the National Security Agency just out from the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technolo → Read More
Why Is The New Republic Taking Money from an NSA Contractor to Run Defenses of the NSA?
The National Security Agency has a friend at the Harvard Law School. And at the Brookings Institution. And at The New Republic. And the Washington Post. → Read More
The Municipal-Industrial Complex Around the World
The serial failures of Chicago’s new “smart card” public transportation fare collection system isn’t really a Chicago story—any more than the dark, satanic mills of nineteenth-century England were a Manchester story, or impoverished temp workers risking life and limb packaging iPads is a story about California’s → Read More
Chicago and the Municipal-Industrial Complex
On Tuesday I quoted Chicago anti-privatization activist Tom Tresser about why corporate America is falling in love with cities: "We have a massive global movement of capital which, because they've burned their own fucking houses down through their own greed, don't have the gilt returns that they're used to receiving.... → Read More
The Perils of Privatization (Part One): Not-so-smart-cards in Chicago
Riding the buses in Chicago has been awfully fun this busy Christmas Season. Half the time, it's been free. → Read More