Todd S. Purdum
POLITICO
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Past articles by Todd:
Remembering Barbara Bush, the fierce defender of the Bush clan
The 92-year-old matriarch of the family dynasty is also recalled as a brutal truth-teller. → Read More
How conservatives learned to hate the FBI
The GOP has almost always supported the FBI, but Republicans have recently unleashed a furious firestorm of criticism against the bureau. → Read More
From hatchet man to dealmaker: Bob Dole's path to the Congressional Gold Medal
The Kansas Republican forsook compromise and comity for bare-knuckle politics in the 1990s, providing a glimpse into the current political environment. → Read More
Axis of harassment: Hollywood, Washington and the media confront their demons
The flood of recent allegations could spur a cultural shift in centers of power where men have long preyed on women in the workplace. → Read More
Manafort indictment marks end of the beginning of Mueller probe
The special counsel's path forward is hard to predict, but the sprawling investigation into Donald Trump's Russia ties will consume the White House for months to come. → Read More
‘Burned’ Trump finds comfort with Democrats
After failing to strike deals with Republicans, it should come as no surprise that the New York businessman is turning to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. → Read More
Why Priebus was destined to fail
The former RNC chairman was the low-key leader Trump thought he needed, but quickly viewed as too weak to serve him. → Read More
Comey’s devastating indictment of President Donald Trump
The fired FBI director’s aw-shucks demeanor did little to mask his barbed accusations. → Read More
Trump pulls from Nixon's playbook
The president is the first since Watergate to fire an official in the middle of investigating potential misconduct by his own campaign. → Read More
How the FBI tailing Trump could dog his presidency
The FBI's investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia could hamper his political agenda for months, if not years, to come. → Read More
Hillary's Double Game
She has a tricky dance with Sanders tonight, while really debating the Republicans who aren't there. → Read More
The GOP’s Organization Man
Like a nervous Broadway producer, Reince Priebus moved about as he watched last Thursday’s GOP presidential debate: He started in a seat near the front of the arena, but later on shifted to an area at the rear, where he could email or watch without fear of being caught on camera. Over the course of the night he—and 24 million other Americans—saw... → Read More
Barack Obama’s Long Game
Barack Obama is not a modest man, but when it comes to assessing his or any president’s place in the long American story, he has been heard to say, “We just try to get our paragraph right.” Yet the way a raft of recent events have broken sharply in his favor, Obama suddenly seems well on his way to writing a whole page—or at... → Read More
Barack Obama’s Long Game
Barack Obama is not a modest man, but when it comes to assessing his or any president’s place in the long American story, he has been heard to say, “We just try to get our paragraph right.” Yet the way a raft of recent events have broken sharply in his favor, Obama suddenly seems well on his way to writing a whole page—or at... → Read More
Obama's Hawaiian punch
If many Americans in the Continental 48 states and the District of Columbia suddenly perceive in President Barack Obama’s demeanor and fortunes a confident and eloquent figure they haven’t seen in a long time, some prominent citizens of the 50th state where he was born say they recognize a fellow they’ve known forever: a Hawaiian.... → Read More
America’s Unexpected Civil Rights Champion
Throughout the long fight to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Lyndon Johnson and his allies kept hoping they might find “a Southern Vandenberg,” that is, a segregationist Democrat who would switch sides and galvanize bipartisan support for the bill, in the way that Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg’s conversion from isolationism to... → Read More
Hastert charges cast new light on his speakership
When former House Speaker Dennis Hastert appears in a Chicago courtroom on Tuesday to answer charges that he paid more than $1 million in hush money, reportedly to cover up sex abuse, it will amount to more than a personal comedown: It will cast a harsh new light on the GOP-controlled Congress he led and his lax response to the disparate range of scandals... → Read More
For California drought, political answers are as scarce as water
LOS ANGELES — For much of the century since William Mulholland, the visionary or villainous engineer who brought water from the Eastern Sierra to Los Angeles, opened the floodgates of his aqueduct and declared, “There it is. Take it!” Californians have done just that — and most of the time their political leaders haven’t... → Read More
Hollywood bundlers are losing the spotlight
LOS ANGELES – In the wide-open, Wild West world of political fundraising spawned by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, a once-bright liberal star has dimmed a bit in the current presidential election cycle: The Hollywood bundler. In the 1990s, a donor who rounded up, say, $50,000 in hard-money contributions from like-minded friends,... → Read More
Do splashy campaign kickoffs matter?
There was a time in American politics when all that a candidate running for president was expected to do to reveal that intention was simply to say, as Theodore Roosevelt did in 1912, “My hat is in the ring.” That time is no more. Today, the mere act of announcing a candidacy amounts to a minor art form, with elaborate care and attention... → Read More