Reihan Salam

Saturday

Reihan Salam

Diary – 22 August 2009

From our UK edition

I spent last weekend in Edinburgh taking part in a small celebration of a friend’s eventful life. Fred was dazzlingly intelligent and witty and kind, and though I hadn’t seen him in years, the news of his death came as an awful shock. Poignantly, I first heard the news from Cary, one of my best friends. After getting off the phone, I was mugged by a young man I’m guessing couldn’t appreciate the grim irony: I was already feeling so bereft that I couldn’t care less. Oddly, I spent a good deal of time thinking about my assailant. What led him to become a crook, and would he wind up in some grim, miserable prison, leaving a weeping mother behind, and perhaps a child? Perhaps I’m taking compassionate conservatism too far.

Saturday

Reihan Salam

The big glitch in Dave’s ‘post-bureaucratic’ vision

From our UK edition

Reihan Salam is a fan of Cameron’s plan for shifting power to citizens. The trouble is — as the row over Obama’s healthcare reform shows — technocrats can often be right As neoconservatives pressed for the democratic transformation of the Middle East, curmudgeons on the right and left often wondered if the peoples of the region were in fact ready for democracy. Robust democracy is rooted in a flourishing civil society and a large and literate middle class that is capable of holding elected officials to account. Democracies also require mature and responsible leadership that is committed to the long-term survival of constitutional government. It was and is by no means obvious that Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran score particularly well on any of these metrics.

Wednesday

Reihan Salam

Obama’s America will be more equal but less mighty

From our UK edition

Reihan Salam says that the President-elect is no socialist and it was desperate of McCain to claim as much. Obama’s policies more closely resemble European social democracy — with the attendant risk of economic sclerosis in the face of Asian competition While walking to work on the morning of Election Day, I was struck by the number of times I encountered Barack Obama’s beaming countenance on posters and bumper stickers. To be sure, I live in a neighbourhood in the District of Columbia that is particularly thick with the politically obsessive, but I’ve also encountered striking portraits of America’s next president across the country. Will the Obama iconography fade away as voters grow disillusioned?

Saturday

Reihan Salam

Not what we were expecting

From our UK edition

Why have Barack Obama and John McCain run such drearily conventional campaigns? Hard though it is to remember those halcyon days, informed observers once believed that Obama and McCain would barnstorm the country together, flying on the same plane and taking part in Lincoln–Douglas-style debates over war and peace and the meaning of life itself. In fairness to both candidates, there has certainly been plenty of tactical innovation on both sides. Flush with money, the Obama campaign has embraced sophisticated technologies and management techniques. The McCain campaign has gone for death-defying stunts, up to and including the nomination of a largely unvetted unknown for vice president, that are far from dreary.

Wednesday

Reihan Salam

Here’s how McCain can beat Obama to the White House

From our UK edition

In January, I met a friend of mine to discuss his impending departure from Washington DC. He was moving to Chicago to join Senator Barack Obama’s budding presidential campaign. At the time, it was hard not to have an instinctive sympathy for Obama, not least because the Clinton campaign had by that point attracted many of the most loathsome careerists in Democratic politics. Among other things, we discussed the general election landscape. My friend, confident even then that Obama would win the Democratic nomination, was convinced that New York mayor Rudy Giuliani would be Obama’s toughest opponent in a general election.

Saturday

Reihan Salam

The new Woodstock generation

From our UK edition

In late May, New York magazine noted a highly unusual advertisement that appeared on Craigslist. A young Brooklyn couple had decided to sell virtually everything they owned, from electronics to furniture to designer shoes, for $8,500. As it turns out, the couple was planning on taking their two young children and setting out for the open road. Two weeks earlier, the New York Times profiled several other couples who had made a similar choice — to surrender their accumulated possessions and, with toddlers in tow, to leave a dreary, consumption-driven urban existence behind for something nobler and more environmentally sound.

Saturday

Reihan Salam

McCain is in for a terrible shock if he wins

From our UK edition

Reihan Salam says that most Republicans have no idea how much the American social landscape has changed. They should learn from Obama’s Google-like appeal Britain’s Conservatives might be plotting a triumphant return to power but America’s Republicans are in a state of utter collapse. And it’s not just because the tide is turning after two terms of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, the Cameron Conservatives have adapted to a more culturally liberal, urban, diverse society. They have reconciled themselves to the welfare state in a way that Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher never did. Republicans, in contrast, are labouring under the illusion that America remains the yeoman democracy of yesteryear, full of plucky individualists.