CHICAGO--As the season's first snow hit, Barack Obama on Monday took a shovel to the chilliest element of Bush administration national security policy: moral certitude. Rather than look to the heavens, a skillful president-elect seemed distinctly focused on the ground for inspiration.

With Sen. Hillary Clinton and six other...

Chicago -- If Sen. Hillary Clinton is unveiled Monday as the next Secretary of State, will she be allowed to speak or take questions? So far, the nominees of a properly cautious President-elect Barack Obama have stood behind him, statue-like, and then exited after he's answered a few queries.

If Barack Obama wants to debrief Michelle Rhee, even he may have to take a number. The intrepid chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools is on the Dec. 8 Time cover, star of the unequivocally-titled "How To Fix America's Schools." It's the latest in a series of profiles...

CHICAGO---When Barack Obama unveiled two more economic team members Wednesday, he suggested why he'll not be shocked, shocked, shocked with Wall Street realities after Jan. 20, as was a newbie President Clinton, who famously harrumphed, "You mean my entire fiscal plan depends on a bunch of f--bond traders?"

The...

CHICAGO---As Barack Obama unveiled his budget team here Tuesday, Emeril and Martha Stewart were mixing garlic, thyme, sage, butter and chicken broth in a vertical roaster as one local TV station declined to ape its competitors' live Obama coverage.

If only Obama's challenge was as simple as the iconic...

All that was missing Monday was a gilded sedan chair for Barack Obama and a rocking chair for George Bush.

The contrast in images amid the greatest economic crisis of our generation was stark. President Obama, ah, President-elect Obama, was surrounded by his quartet of top economic advisers and...

These opening words are surely triggered by our current economic mess
and the flailing of a certain industry based in a very somber Midwest
metropolis:

"It's not uncommon for companies, from time to time, to reposition a product. Occasionally, a company might even change direction, completely reorienting its...

Taylor, a strong...

Or so says the Global Electoral College, an online poll by the London-based Economist, the newsweekly whose U.S. edition's growth seems to run counter to American media's tactical penchant for...

What's really at stake in Tuesday's election? Many usual suspects are opining in the cable universe and fact-challenged blogosphere, so for a cerebral alternative there's "A Fateful Election" in the Nov. 6 New York Review of Books.

Those weighing in are very brainy folks not found on many...

In a political culture as obsessed with "story lines" as Madison Avenue, John McCain has suffered from "a narrative problem," an aide tells reporter Robert Draper in the Oct. 26 New York Times Magazine's revealing "The Making (and remaking and remaking) of the Candidate."

A troubled campaign's...

The latest issues of both Foreign Policy and the New Yorker inspire my recalling one Vincent Sirabella, a tough and charismatic labor organizer whose lanky frame, white pompadour and working class panache would fit a Martin Scorsese flick. He labored hard, partied hard, led strikes at Las Vegas casinos and...

If tiny New Hampshire is a swing state, John McCain has more than a financial crisis and high anxiety to worry about there. With Sarah Palin expected there Wednesday and Barack Obama Thursday, there's also the overriding reality of demographic change. According to a comprehensive new state survey released Wednesday,...

There is "that one" and then there is That One, namely an unadulterated bogeyman of the presidential campaign: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. My friends, we tend to throw partisanship to the winds to all agree that he is an evildoer and that we'd best not directly negotiate with him.

And...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin now asserts that she reads The Economist, at least to Fox News Channel. Such claims about The Economist are akin to claiming you saw Babe Ruth "call his shot" by pointing to center field at Wrigley Field during the 1932 World Series, then hitting a home...