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How will American foreign policy evolve during Obama’s second term? Tonight, David Remnick is hosting a conversation about international relations with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, and New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch.
Watch a live video of the discussion above, and click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/W1GSSv
Here, see full videos of the previous installments of The Big Story.
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Political Scene: Hugo Chávez’s Legacy and the Future of Venezuela→
On this week’s Political Scene podcast, Jon Lee Anderson and John Cassidy talk with host Amelia Lester about the late Hugo Chávez’s ambitions as a leader, what he was able to accomplish in his time as the President of Venezuela, and the legacy he leaves behind. Listen now: http://nyr.kr/15AMpkD
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"…if you compromise on principle, on the assumption that the world will never catch up with your ideals, you will likely come to regret it. Marriage equality was not some completely far-off vision; it was something that could be achieved. Clinton never believed that the federal government had the right to discriminate. The harder question is this: When is winning the most important thing? Would a veto, in retrospect, have been worth the risk?"
—Richard Socarides, Bill Clinton’s former adviser on gay-rights, explains why Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996: http://nyr.kr/ZwC2KH
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Playlist: Is Talk Cheap?→
This week, Rand Paul and his Republican colleagues staged a thirteen-hour filibuster against John Brennan’s nomination as C.I.A. director. It involved a tremendous amount of talking, some of which was also reading. Here are some songs about talking: http://nyr.kr/12xxlXa
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"Was that so hard?"
— Amy Davidson on Attorney General Eric Holder’s letter to Rand Paul, answering Paul’s question about the President’s authority to to use weaponized drones to kill Americans not engaged in combat on U.S. soil: http://nyr.kr/XVEH2i(Source: newyorker.com)
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The results of the last Italian election are baffling, if not incomprehensible, to most foreign observers: as one American friend put it, a majority of Italians voted either for a comedian (Beppe Grillo) or a clown (Silvio Berlusconi). A center-left coalition won a narrow plurality in the lower house of parliament with about 29.6 per cent of the vote, barely edging Berlusconi’s center-right coalition, with Grillo’s Five Star Movement, a loose collection of citizens organizing over the Internet, gaining an astonishing 25.6 per cent, more than any single party. In all likelihood, the three-sided split spells an ungovernable chaos. It would be a mistake, though, to see Italy as a crazy farce that is entirely different from America. Our two-party system has limited the success of more radical parties, but the Italian experience illuminates phenomena that are at work in the United States, too. Are we really sure that Congress is a saner institution than the Italian parliament?
Alexander Stille considers Italy’s rudderless state: http://nyr.kr/YM4SEB
Photograph by Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg/Getty
(Source: newyorker.com)
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"If you’re operating at Louie Gohmert’s level, try harder."
— Alex Koppelman on the White House’s need to step up their gamesmanship in the sequester fight: http://nyr.kr/YdBZ40(Source: newyorker.com)
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Tom Mueller talks to charismatic comedian Beppe Grillo about his serious goals for Italy: http://nyr.kr/XSBWOa
Photograph by Stefano De Luigi.
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A fundamental fact of modern political life is that the only way to advance a coherent agenda in Washington is through partisan dominance…
The boring fact of our system is that congressional math is the best predictor of a President’s success. This idea is not nearly as sexy as the notion that great Presidents are great because they twist arms in backrooms and inspire the American people to rise up and force Congress to bend to their will. But even the Presidents who are remembered for their relentless congressional lobbying and socializing were more often than not successful for more mundane reasons—like arithmetic.
In today’s Daily Comment, Ryan Lizza writes about the limits of President Obama’s power in the wake of the failed sequester deal: http://nyr.kr/XT5vgj
Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP.
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Audio: Eric Cantor, the Sequester, and the Death of the Grand Bargain→
The Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain proposal was not necessarily an ideal compromise (plenty of people on both the right and the left disliked it), but at least it would have given us a single, comprehensive solution to our fiscal issues rather than the serial brinksmanship and dysfunction that we have now.
Listen to the full recording of Ryan Lizza interviewing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor about his leading role in the death of the 2011 Grand Bargain deal: http://nyr.kr/Y2ONKB
