To understand just how hard it is for the Obama Administration or anyone else to predict what the death of Kim Jong Il will bring to North Korea, it helps to understand just what a backward, out-of-touch place that country is. Having raided my mid-’90s notes to flesh out Jim Jackson’s excellent obituary of Vaclav Havel for TIME yesterday, I reviewed this morning my October 2000 notes from Secretary Madeleine Albright’s exploratory visit to Pyongyang, during which I was a pool reporter. The visit was the first, and only, by a U.S. Secretary of State, and was intended to test signs of diplomatic outreach by Kim as President Bill Clinton prepared to leave office.
Bill Clinton’s impeachment may have riveted the country for more than a year, but today it feels like ancient political history. And yet the prospect of Newt Gingrich as the Republican presidential nominee has some people wondering whether we’re in store for another long and ferocious argument about the wisdom–or extreme idiocy–of impeaching the President over his affair with a White House intern.
Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, spoke with TIME’s Rick Stengel about his new book, Back to Work, and how to fix the economy. Excerpts from that conversation follow.
Barack Obama is still all about message discipline these days. What was once “Win The Future” is now “Pass The Bill.” And when it comes to deficit reduction, the catch phrase is “Fair Share,” to be repeated at rallies, in formal addresses and in background comments from senior aides. Ain’t nothin’ new, of course, about [...]
This is an exciting day–I can’t remember ever feeling jubilant about someone’s death before–and it’s probably lame to start dissecting the politics. Especially since the basic politics are no-duh obvious: This is a really great day for President Obama. But since this is supposed to be a blog about politics, and the dissections have already [...]
Marc Ambinder has written an amazing piece about the operations of the U.S. Secret Service. You should take the time to read it all, and not just because he highlights two under-documented moments from recent presidential history: Apparent attempted assassinations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush on foreign soil. During a speech Bush gave [...]
Michael Grunwald and I teamed up to write this week’s cover story, a profile of the speaker-in-waiting, John Boehner. It was striking in trying to coax Boehner into speaking to us – he never did – how much he wanted to avoid the limelight. The victory, his staff said, was not about him, but about [...]
A guest post from TIME’s Miami bureau chief Tim Padgett So how desperate are the Democrats to keep control of the U.S. Senate? The answer is fairly clear in a story that appeared Thursday evening on Politico.com that quotes spokesmen for former President Bill Clinton claiming he tried to convince Democratic Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek [...]
The rap on the California Democrats’ great gubernatorial hope, Jerry Brown, is that he is refreshingly his own guy. He says what he thinks, when he thinks it. And this may be one of his top selling points against his Republican rival, Meg Whitman, who campaigns like a corporate robot, always on message, always bland, [...]
