Barack Obama

Drew Westen is right: Obama would do well to name the villains in the economic story he tells the American people. But the villains aren't individuals; they're powers and principalities.

The debt-ceiling fight has been the dominant story out of
Washington for weeks, and for the most part the White House hasn't looked too
good. But in the last few days, the administration has taken some serious steps
forward on other fronts.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 54 percent of New York State voters agree "that because of American freedom of religion, Muslims have the right to build the mosque near Ground Zero." That strikes me as a shockingly small majority—almost half don’t feel that “religious freedom” by definition applies to all religions, even when the question’s put that way?—but hey, glad to hear of majority support for basic American principles, right?

When I opened this bio­graphy, I was as curious about how David Remnick would pull off a biography of a sitting president—after only one year in office—as I was about Obama himself.

John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's book about the 2008 presidential campaign has people talking about the private lives of the politicians and all the scenes we didn't see during the campaign.