Great articles on American politics

NOTE: The articles linked to below may not be accessible via these links. These are access points for general readers and may require subscriptions. However, NOVA students should have electronic access to the articles via the NOVA Library. Click HERE to access the NOVA Library.

Two recent articles are particularly fascinating. Joshua Green wrote an interesting piece in the Atlantic Monthly on Karl Rove's failure to transform the American party system, or to even succeed at getting most of his and President Bush's initiatives passed into law. Useful is his overview of the various realignments in American political party systems. Here is a particularly interesting quote on the pettiness that is often politics:

Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader when Bush took office ..., told me a story that captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them. “For all the years he was president,” Armey told me, “Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we’d do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn’t like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president’s autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it.” Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. “Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, ‘It would probably wind up on eBay,’” Armey continued. “Do I give a damn? No. But can you imagine refusing a simple request like that with an insult? It’s stupid. From the point of view of your own self-interest, it’s stupid. I was from Texas, and I was the majority leader. If my expectations of civility and collegiality were disappointed, what do you think it was like for the rest of the congressmen they dealt with? The Bush White House was tone-deaf to the normal courtesies of the office.”

An article well worth reading to understand current American politics and some American political history.

Here's a fantastic article about Rudy Giuliani. By Peter Boyer of the New Yorker.