Mountain View
Washington Monthly
How the Vietnam War Came Between Two Friends and Diplomats
Forty-nine years ago, David Halberstam told a young Charles Trueheart that there was a great novel in the story of how Vietnam ended the warm friendship between his father and his godfather. Bill Trueheart and Fritz Nolting (I’ll call them Bill and Fritz to avert père–fils confusion and preserve parity between the two combatants) were career foreign service officers posted to Saigon during John F. Kennedy’s administration. Fritz, the ambassador, hand-picked Bill to be his deputy. They’d known each other since 1939 when they were graduate students in philosophy at the University of Virginia. For two years, Bill and Fritz worked in close harmony. Their families were already close—their wives dear friends, Fritz godfather to both of Bill’s sons—but they drew closer in Saigon. It didn’t last.
America Is Already Great Again
For more than a decade, most of the world has subscribed to the idea that the rise of China is inexorable and the relative decline of the United States is inevitable. The main basis for this conviction has been China’s relentless economic growth with a population more than four times greater than the U.S. Other comparisons have buttressed the case—for instance, between China’s impressive high-speed rail system and America’s underwhelming Amtrak. Sometimes it is worry over Chinese technology, the growing number of patents, and research in artificial intelligence and quantum computing, or the awe-inspiring Belt and Road Initiative. Often this is contrasted with American social and political dysfunction, ailing public education, and lagging investments in infrastructure, science, and technology. The sense of a waning America has been compounded by our failures in Afghanistan, entanglements in the Middle East, anxieties over the future of Ukraine and NATO, and inability to resolve pressing issues such as immigration and growing federal debt.
Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?
Student protestors at college campuses nationwide, united by their outrage at Israel’s actions in Gaza, can rightly be described as diverse. Despite the masks, it’s clear that they come from different racial backgrounds, and their views range from the belief that Israel should give up on its war effort to the conviction that Israel should be destroyed entirely.
Public Education’s Reinforcements
For most people, the lesson of pandemic schooling was that remote learning was an unmitigated disaster for America’s K–12 students, especially those from lower-income families. Learning loss at all ages was profound. Chronic absenteeism nearly doubled. The achievement gap that separates rich and poor kids widened. And the...
Why Can’t America Build Enough Weapons?
On the morning of August 1, 1943, a strike force of 178 B-24 four-engine bombers lifted off from airfields in North Africa to attack the German-controlled oil refineries in Ploiesti, Romania, Nazi Germany’s main source of petroleum. The target was defended by one of the largest and best-integrated air defense networks in Europe, consisting of two regiments of antiaircraft guns and 57 fighter aircraft.
NATO Joe
When most Americans look at Joe Biden, they see (according to polls) a weak old man who hasn’t gotten much done. When European heads of state look at Joe Biden, they see an accomplished world-historic leader. An aging world-historic leader, to be sure. Joke: How old is Joe Biden?...
Poverty, Inc.
Walk down the eastern steps of the U.S. Capitol and follow Pennsylvania Avenue for several miles, and you’ll find yourself in District Heights, Maryland. Even without knowing much about the majority-Black suburb, you will quickly get the sense that District Heights is poor. Instead of shopping centers with Panera and Starbucks, you see names like Ace Cash Express, the nation’s largest check-cashing chain, and dd’s DISCOUNTS, a bargain clothing outlet. Alongside them is another class of business you might not notice, less obviously low-rent but still very much dependent on poverty. There’s Liberty Tax, a nationwide franchise operation that helps residents file for low-income tax credits; Pine Dentistry (formerly “Kool Smiles”), which serves patients on Medicaid; and Woodland Springs, an apartment complex that welcomes tenants with housing vouchers. These are private businesses, but they deliver public services using taxpayer dollars. And as the journalist Anne Kim argues in Poverty for Profit, these storefronts are more than just a signal of race and wealth. They are signposts of exploitation.
The Tastemaker
On a dreary afternoon in 1949, Judith Jones perched at her typewriter in Doubleday’s Paris office. As she composed rejection letters for unsolicited manuscripts, a slim volume buried in the slush pile caught the 25-year-old secretary’s eye. The cover photo was a haunting image of a young girl with a searching gaze and dark, wavy hair. The book, an advance copy slated for a limited print run in France, was a diary by a 13-year-old German Jewish girl named Anne Frank who had spent years hiding in an Amsterdam attic before her death in a Nazi concentration camp. Jones read the entire book in one sitting, transfixed by the intimacy of the diary entries and the author’s singular voice.
A War Correspondent’s Inner Struggle
One evening in December 2003, a colleague and I were sitting in our suite in the Hamra hotel in Baghdad. We were part of a small team of Newsweek reporters dispatched to cover the rising insurgency in U.S.-occupied Iraq. We were always on the alert, wondering when the insurgents might...
How the Right’s Illiberal Past Became Present
In his 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, Philip Roth imagined an alternate history in which the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh captured the Republican nomination at a stalemated convention in Philadelphia in July 1940 and went on to win a surprise victory against Franklin D. Roosevelt.“ The terror of the unforeseen,” Roth wrote, “is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.” Roth’s Lindbergh allies America with the Axis powers, ponders war with Canada, and launches an anti-Jewish campaign.
The Supreme Court Keeps Misfiring on Guns
In an 8-1 decision last week, the Supreme Court followed the logic of our historians’ amicus brief to come to what should have been an obvious decision. The justices prohibited a domestic abuser who had already shot at his girlfriend—and the mother of his child—from possessing a gun after a judge had imposed a domestic restraining order on him. In so doing, they upheld a federal law that the Fifth Circuit had invalidated using the Court’s logic in its 2022 precedent-destroying decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which struck down a century-old Empire State statute limiting guns in public.
Democrats Need to Try Something Radical: Hire Christopher Nolan
“What’s at risk in 2024 are our freedoms and our democracy,” warned President Joe Biden at a campaign event last month. But if this is truly a battle to defend the republic, why are Democrats mostly deploying a single, flawed, conventional weapon that may not even work anymore?
The 2024 Kukula Award Winners
The Washington Monthly proudly announces the winners of the 2024 Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing—the only journalism prize dedicated to highlighting and encouraging exemplary reviews of serious, public affairs-focused books. Now in its fifth year, the award honors the memory of Kukula Kapoor Glastris, the magazine’s longtime and beloved books editor.
Trump’s GOTV Plan Looks Scandalous. Republicans Should Be Outraged.
Today for the Washington Monthly, I examine Donald Trump’s eyebrow-raising get-out-the-vote strategy: outsource the job to other groups, chiefly the right-wing Turning Point network. The strategy might make sense if Turning Point had a successful track record in getting out the vote. It does not. Moreover, it appears that...
Trump’s Tax-by-Tariffs Plan Would Enrich the Wealthy, Cripple the Economy, and Send Inflation Soaring
Based on Donald Trump’s pledge last week to replace the personal income tax with trade tariffs, there can be no question about the depths of his economic ignorance. Consider the plan’s effects: It would cripple U.S. trade, growth, and employment while triggering the worst inflation since 1980. Tariffs that could replace income tax revenues will have to be very broad and extremely high, damaging the economies in states with major ports or industries that rely on imported parts and materials. In its first year alone, Trump’s scheme for raising revenues would also save the top one-half of one percent of Americans—those with incomes of $1 million or more—a gob-smacking $850 billion.
“The Opportunity for Democrats to Break Away from the Ethnic Identity Headlock”
Latino voting patterns loom large in the 2024 elections. Here in California, yes, we’re deep blue, but Latinos will likely play a key role in determining whether Democrats will bounce back from underperforming in U.S. House races in 2022. In Arizona, Ruben Gallego—who I wrote about here almost a...
The Truth About the “Horrible” Crime in Milwaukee
Last week, Donald Trump said behind closed doors to House Republicans, “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city.”. Trump now denies making the insult to the city where the Republican National Convention will convene in mid-July. But several Republicans in the room already copped to it, while making excuses such as, “he was only talking about crime.”
The Deeply Flawed Crypto Bill Making Its Way Through Congress
Last month, a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives passed a bill to deregulate the cryptocurrency industry. The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century or “FIT 21” Act passed with 71 Democratic votes and now heads to the Senate for consideration, where there appears to be bipartisan interest considering the measure. And while the White House released a statement of opposition, it did not threaten to veto the legislation. But even if the bill dies in the Senate or on the president’s desk, its progress is still worrisome because it might augur that an inadequate regulatory regime is coming for the booming crypto economy.
Hillary Clinton, Truth Teller
Hillary Clinton has an odd habit that infuriates the press and millions of Americans of all ideologies. She tells the truth. Her delivery is often unforgiving, and her timing impolitic, but the message is, typically, what few people in the madness of contemporary discourse seem to value—correct. The latest...
Washington Monthly
2K+
Posts
3M+
Views
The Washington Monthly was founded in 1969 on the notion that a handful of plucky young writers and editors, armed with an honest desire to make government work and a willingness to ask uncomfortable questions, could tell the story of what really matters in Washington better than a roomful of Beltway insiders at a Georgetown dinner party.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.