Harold Meyerson

The Bush administration (n.) — The presidency (2001–2005) in which stubborn men were undaunted by stubborn facts. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any wider, the gap between the Bush White House and reality grew even larger last week as both the prez and veep took issue with the......

He began as a local embarrassment. Sometime between his first election as governor of California, in November of 1966, and his inauguration on January 1 of the following year, Ronald Reagan came to Palisades High in Pacific Palisades — where I was then a junior — to crown the school’s......

In Los Angeles in this month of May, the working poor and their families still constitute a majority of city residents. Gang violence continues to surge. Millions of Angelenos lack any medical coverage. And 13 years after the Rodney King beating, the LAPD has still not managed to put in......

The phone would ring, and at the other end would be that distinctive voice: high-pitched, deliberate in delivery so I wouldn’t miss any words, and more often than not mightily pissed. “This is Lu Haas,” he’d begin. “Can you believe this crap?” — followed by an explanation of which crap,......

Against all odds, L.A. is going to have itself a bang-up mayoral election next year. It’s not supposed to be this way. Once the city enacted term limits, restricting mayors to two four-year terms in office, the accepted wisdom was that there would be donnybrooks every eight years when the......

One after another, they keep tumbling out: insider accounts of the Bush administration, from a high-ranking official (former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill) and a key national security aide (former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke) and now, from America’s semi-official and best-selling court reporter, Bob Woodward. All three illuminate administration policy, but......

WASHINGTON — The conversation has changed. After two weeks during which Bush administration henchmen have pounded John Kerry for his purported fecklessness in matters of national security, the White House is now on the receiving end of accusations of real fecklessness in the face of the al Qaeda threat in......

I. A Happy Ending for Act 1 So it’s a wrap for the presidential-primary season, and a fine season it was. In John Kerry, the Democrats chose their strongest candidate, who, I suspect, is almost an oxymoron in national politics: an electable liberal. (Let’s keep that between us, okay?) And......

The way Ralph Nader talks about himself, you’d think he was one of Werner Heisenberg’s elusive subatomic particles. When it comes to affecting public policy, Nader contends he has mass, heft, effect. What he says matters; he can move the debate. When it comes to affecting presidential election outcomes, though,......

What lessons should John Kerry draw from his surprisingly close victory over John Edwards in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary? Move further left on trade? Lose more adverbs? Lose some hair? Things would be simpler were there a clear proletarian story line coming out of Wisconsin: John Edwards, a dedicated proponent of......