Author Archive

Articles by Walter Shapiro | Email the Author

 

1. Swing States Project

   Why can’t the press let politicians have principles?

   June 14, 2012 03:09 PM

   No one—not even the love child of Horatio Alger and Ayn Rand—rivals campaign reporters when it comes to worshipping ambition. In the eyes of the press pack, all behavior in the political realm is motivated by a lean and hungry... Continue reading

2. Swing States Project

   Romney’s Religion

   June 8, 2012 10:48 AM

   “Surely, secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square.” That 2006 quote comes from Barack Obama’s politically self-conscious second book, The Audacity of Hope, whose title was taken... Continue reading

3. Swing States Project

   Things that go Trump in the night

   May 31, 2012 12:02 PM

   On February 9, 1950, a back-bench Wisconsin senator named Joseph McCarthy delivered an unheralded political speech to a Republican women’s club in West Virginia. McCarthy’s Wheeling remarks included the brief and completely fabricated claim that he had in his hand... Continue reading

4. Swing States Project

   Out of the living room, onto the trail

   May 17, 2012 03:14 PM

   The Living Room War was launched this week—the ferocious bombardment of attack ads that will make turning on a television in an up-for-grabs state like Ohio a high-risk, wear-a-metal-helmet venture for the next 25 weeks until Election Day. But... Continue reading

5. Swing States Project

   Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map…

   May 10, 2012 12:07 PM

   For a newspaper that believes that a decent fraction of its readers know that Kurt Weill wrote the music for The Threepenny Opera (51 Down in Wednesday’s Crossword), The New York Times curiously assumes complete amnesia when it comes to... Continue reading

6. Swing States Project

   In an age of walled-off candidates, longing for LBJ

   May 3, 2012 10:13 AM

   The pivotal chapter on the 1960 Democratic Convention in The Passage of Power, the just-published and justly heralded fourth volume of Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson saga, is entitled “The Back Stairs.” The little-used staircase in question was in... Continue reading

7. Swing States Project

   From Etch a Sketch to Hilary Rosen

   April 26, 2012 06:00 AM

   Unless you are voraciously waiting for the final tabulation of the write-in votes from the Delaware primary, these are the rare slow-down-you-move-too-fast days on the political calendar. With languor in the air, this is the ideal time to work out... Continue reading

8. Swing States Project

   The Campaign-Finance Stories That Don’t Get Written

   April 18, 2012 10:19 AM

   There was something comically self-evident about the headline on the story that led the April 13 print edition of The New York Times: “Campaigns Plan Maximum Push to Raise Money.” Unless the political world is struck by a wave of... Continue reading

9. Swing States Project

   The Heartbeat-Away Derby is Under Way

   April 11, 2012 06:00 AM

   Now that Mitt Romney is the de facto Republican nominee, the political press corps can indulge in a compulsion as addictive as OxyContin and as frivolous as Angry Birds. The rules of the Pundits Guild stipulate that as soon as... Continue reading

10. Swing States Project

    Who Got The Fox News Vote?

    April 3, 2012 03:35 PM

    Judging from the lopsided tenor of most of the coverage during the broadcast day on Fox News on the Monday before the Wisconsin and Maryland primaries, Mitt Romney already had been anointed as the GOP nominee. In contrast, Rick Santorum... Continue reading

11. Swing States Project

    Why is the Press So Ready to Count Santorum Out?

    March 28, 2012 11:13 AM

    The front-page story in the March 18th New York Times seemed a case of political life imitating art. A revival of The Best Man—Gore Vidal’s 1960 ode to the drama of a brokered convention—was in previews on Broadway.... Continue reading

12. Reports

    Newt and the Age Gap

    March 1, 2012 08:30 AM

    In this topsy-turvy political year, Newt Gingrich has exhausted every resurrection metaphor from the world’s great religions and undoubtedly, at times, has felt akin to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn attending their own funerals. This has... Continue reading

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