Latest Articles and Blog Posts

New DPC Head to Shape Policy 'Outside Legislative Channels'

January 10, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Cecilia Muñoz has been named White House domestic policy adviser, making the move from the White House's Intergovernmental Affairs shop. IGA is more of a liaison position, while the DPC job is one of the most important policy positions in government. Before serving in the Obama White House, Muñoz worked at the liberal pro-immigration group La Raza, and she also has won a MacArthur "genius" award back in 2000 for her role as a "civil-rights-policy analyst." I don't ever recall a MacArthur winner securing so senior a governmental post in the Bush administration, but it is apparently quite common in the Obama administration, as other Team Obama MacArthur winners include: Surgeon General Regina Benjamin; White House Science Adviser John Holdren; Commerce Under Secretary Jane Lubchenco; and Science Advisory Committee Co-Chair Eric Lander.

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Devaluing the Think Tank

Winter 2012  •  National Affairs

One of the most peculiar, and least understood, features of the Washington policy process is the extraordinary dependence of policymakers on the work of think tanks. Most Americans — even most of those who follow politics closely — would probably struggle to name a think tank or to explain precisely what a think tank does. Yet over the past half-century, think tanks have come to play a central role in policy development — and even in the surrounding political combat.

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Interview with Tim Groseclose, "Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind"

December 22, 2011  •  New Books In Public Policy

In his new book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind (St. Martin's Press, 2011), Tim Groseclose, Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA, discusses his quantitative measurements of political bias in the American news media. Based on years of in-depth studies, he concludes that nearly every mainstream media outlet is skewed to the left of the American electorate, and that this bias has helped push the American electorate to the left of where it would be otherwise. In our interview, we talked about different kinds of media bias, as well as bias in academia, and the effect it has had on Professor Groseclose's career. Read all about it, and more, in Groseclose's illuminating new book

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Condi's Mystery Men

December 2011  •  Washingtonian

With the publication of Condoleezza Rice's No Higher Honor, most of the George W. Bush administration staff's memoirs are now out, and there appears to be a unifying theme: the tendency to refuse to name certain players. Rice uses this device more than 20 times. For example, she often refers to conflicts with "the Vice President's staff," notes that "a speechwriter" inserted the words "axis of evil" into a speech, and says "one of my aides" informed her "that Israelis are among the most legalistic people on Earth."

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Confirmation Wars at CMS

November 29, 2011 at 5:05 pm

The New York Times has an editorial today called "A Vacancy That Needs to Be Filled," which blames Republicans for the departure of Don Berwick from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. According to the Times, "Senate Republicans need to put aside their rancor and obstructionism and confirm [Marilyn] Tavenner" to replace Berwick at CMS. This editorial is misguided on several fronts. While it is true that Republicans have criticized Berwick's past statements and at least 42 of them still oppose his nomination, the primary fault for not getting him confirmed lies with the Obama administration and not the Republicans.

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Tevi Troy's Book

Intellectuals and the American Presidency Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians? by Tevi Troy Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 280 pp. $27.95 May 25, 2002 Details and Reviews...