July 27, 2012  |   I wasn't exactly wet behind the ears when I arrived at The Washington Post in 1984, but it was close. There was a wall of glass offices on the north side of the newsroom. When I was not laboring...

July 20, 2012  |   I am about to break a promise I made to you. I said this would be a safe space, one that would not turn itself over to rank speculation about the vice presidential sweepstakes. But the candidates for president...

July 13, 2012  |   People listen to Mitt Romney address the NAACP annual convention in Houston Wednesday. Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GettyImages You have probably already heard that they booed Mitt Romney and cheered Joe Biden at the NAACP convention in Houston, Texas this...

July 5, 2012  |   John Trumbull's painting, Declaration of Independence On the Fourth of July, I poured a cup of coffee and started my day reading the Declaration of Independence at my kitchen table. Out loud. You should try it. It's one thing...

June 29, 2012  |   Photo by Taylor Weidman/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images I can say quite honestly that Thursday was among the most dramatic days I've ever seen unfold in Washington. Understanding that I was too young to witness the Kennedy...

June 22, 2012  |   Greg Clement saved the Brunswick, Ohio apple orchard and restaurant he now owns from foreclosure last year. He grew up there and decided to use his experience launching a successful software firm to save a piece of his childhood....

June 14, 2012  |   Flash back with me to sixth grade recess. A bit of taunting that turns into a little shoving and trash talking. Next thing you know, a circle of children are egging you on, chanting: "Fight! Fight! Fight!" What choice...

June 8, 2012  |   I have become an excellent tea-leaf reader this spring. As I watch college graduates cross the stage on commencement day -- teetering in new heels, arms outstretched to grasp their hard-earned diplomas -- I study the terror in their eyes....

May 25, 2012  |   Christine Mastin, an immigration attorney whose Spanish-speaking grandmother emigrated from Chile to the United States, realizes that most of the Hispanics she knows are surprised she is a Republican. Barack Obama won two-thirds of the Latino vote in 2008, and...

May 18, 2012  |   Is it just my imagination, or have politics and politicians grown smaller? I've been flirting with this conclusion after diving into two enjoyable presidential history books by night while covering 2012 politics by day. The books, Robert Caro's "The Passage...

May 11, 2012  |   "There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos." Jim Hightower, a committed liberal and former Texas agriculture commissioner, liked to say this so much that he finally used it as a title for a...

May 4, 2012  |   Mitt Romney's May Day plan seemed pretty reasonable for a man who had been systematically and successfully clearing his path to the Republican nomination for more than a year. Republicans had been quietly dinging President Obama throughout the previous weekend...

April 27, 2012  |   Just when you thought it was safe to go back outside, it turns out the campaign lull we thought had just begun hasn't occurred at all. We were assured by the Democrats that the president's travels to three battleground states...

April 20, 2012  |   It took the 2012 presidential campaign to throw Democrat Hilary Rosen and conservative Ted Nugent into the same sentence. Rosen made more of a splash last week than she ever did in 17 years at the powerful Recording Industry Association...

April 13, 2012  |   INDIANAPOLIS | On the morning after the season's only Indiana Senate primary debate, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock arose early and headed for a Rotary Club in suburban Noblesville. There were fewer than 20 people there, which meant there was plenty...

April 6, 2012  |   With the Republican primary campaign approaching its end, and more than two weeks before the next voting, there is immense temptation to begin speculating about running mates. I will resist. That seems the respectful thing to do when there are...

March 30, 2012  |   I was never tempted to go to law school. But I love to parse language and reasoning, so listening to the audio of this week's Supreme Court health care arguments was -- in its nerdy way -- actually quite enjoyable....

March 23, 2012  |   I've spent a fair amount of time this week pondering what it means to stand one's ground. The term has taken on a new, disturbing meaning as the story of the shooting of an unarmed Florida teenager took on a...

March 16, 2012  |   Almost every Tuesday night this year, political junkies everywhere have gathered by the flickering light of their computer screens. We have pored over exit polls, tallied the minutes until results from Vermont to Hawaii and crunched delegate allocations. Invariably, we...

March 9, 2012  |   Remember those five things we asked you to watch Tuesday night? It turns out the voters decided to raise more questions than even we had. But here are the things we were watching for: 1. How weak or strong will...

March 6, 2012  |   At the end of a long evening of introductions and speeches, President Bill Clinton liked to say that everything had been said but everyone had not yet said it. If you follow politics, you already may have read all the...

March 2, 2012  |   Michael Dukakis was the first politician I ever heard describe the presidential campaign as a "marathon, not a sprint." But he was not the last. Since the first campaign I covered in 1988, I've always been sort of impressed by...

February 24, 2012  |   PHOENIX | If there is one reliable source of applause to be found along the Republican primary trail this year, it is ignited by candidates who boast of being able to speak without a Teleprompter. The speech delivery device used...

February 17, 2012  |   I've often wondered what it meant that the month we set aside to take special note of African-American achievement is the one that's usually only 28 days long. As a child, I took that kind of personally. As an adult,...

February 10, 2012  |   Updated 5:30 p.m. Friday | One of the things we tell our children is that life is all about choices. We celebrate this idea, because it is an essential part of the kind of ambition we want them to have....

February 3, 2012  |   Right after the polls closed Tuesday night and Mitt Romney had been declared the winner of the Florida primary, syndicated columnists and PBS NewsHour contributors David Brooks, Mark Shields and I looked at each other and sighed. As we prepared...

January 31, 2012  |   For some reason in modern politics, it always seems to come down to Florida. It is an irresistible destination. The northern panhandle is a sweet piece of the South. The I-4 corridor -- where half the state's registered Republican voters...

January 27, 2012  |   Pundits. Analysts. Historians. Political scientists. The landscape is lousy with them this election year, and I love talking with them. But in our PBS NewsHour political coverage this year, we are making a special commitment to seek out the opinions...

January 21, 2012  |   COLUMBIA, S.C. | In retrospect, it should not come as a surprise that Election Day came to South Carolina with wind, rain and tornado watches. The Gingrich surge here has been that strong. It cannot be overstated how dramatic the...

January 20, 2012  |   COLUMBIA, S.C. | This has probably been the single craziest week of the 2012 campaign, as candidates rose and fell nearly every single day. As the voters here head to the polls for an unusual Saturday Republican party primary, here's...

January 13, 2012  |   Throughout this year's election, I will pose and answer key questions at critical moments during the campaign. On New Hampshire's primary Election Day, I shared the five things I was watching for. Here is how it all shook out. 1....

January 10, 2012  |   MANCHESTER, N.H. | Tuesday's is the seventh New Hampshire primary I've covered, so I've learned the shortcuts through the Lakes Region, the best diners and the ways that voters here can confound pundits on Election Day. Here is what I...

January 6, 2012  |   Northfield, N.H. | The scene is a rustic old building perched on a pretty river in the center of the state. The walls are knotty pine and the pot-bellied stoves are putting out real heat. It is standing room only...

January 3, 2012  |   We love it when voters take over the narrative, and that's what will happen in Iowa Tuesday night as voters meet to caucus and choose a possible presidential nominee. Here's what we're watching: How will social conservatives split? Conventional wisdom...

December 30, 2011  |   We have by now spent so many weeks consumed with the ups and downs of Republican presidential politics that we are in danger of misgauging its real impact, especially in these early days. It can be easy to dismiss the...

December 23, 2011  |   "Politics is politics" House Speaker John Boehner opined Thursday, as he stepped before the cameras to explain why he would not back down in the payroll tax fight House Republicans have been waging with the Senate. Seldom have truer words...

December 16, 2011  |   Welcome to my hometown. There are few places in the world that people hate so much, yet expend such extraordinary effort trying to get to. Myself, I find much to love about Washington. The monuments are pretty. The green spaces...

December 9, 2011  |   Scientists at the University of California Berkeley have discovered something awesome: monster black holes -- 10 billion times the mass of the sun -- that suck in everything around them. Even light To say this reminded me of the current...

December 2, 2011  |   As I prepared for a PBS NewsHour discussion about the prospects of extending and expanding the year-old payroll tax holiday, I knew the challenges that lay ahead. And that was before the Senate confirmed my pessimism by rejecting not one,...

November 18, 2011  |   Not many people can boast of having traveled to Providence, R.I., Cleveland, Newark, Madison, Wis., St. Louis and Venice, Italy, within little more than a month. In every instance -- including the Italian trip, where I got to hang out...

November 4, 2011  |   When former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice walked into our interview at her publisher's office in New York this week, she was as composed as ever -- happy to be out of Washington and now free to tell her...

October 28, 2011  |   It happened again the other day. Someone in the audience I was speaking to in Newark, N.J., wanted to know: "Is compromise too much to hope for in Washington?" And once again, I had to duck the question. I simply...

October 21, 2011  |   Three years into his presidency, Barack Obama is turning out to be quite the tough guy. Osama bin Laden is a bad memory. Anwar al-Awlaki - an American citizen no less - is gone. And now, thanks to U.S.-led support,...

October 14, 2011  |   Breaking news: Herman Cain has endorsed Mitt Romney. If that's news to you, it's because it happened four years ago. Thanks to Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic for the reminder that everything old is new again. Cain, who emerged this...

October 7, 2011  |   Politics is not an ego-free business. And why should it be? I got a taste of that this week as New Jersey's Chris Christie and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took themselves out of presidential consideration. I saw the...

September 23, 2011  |   If you are a political junkie like me, there can never be too many candidates' debates. FOX? CNN? MSNBC? Have at it. The more they talk, the more we learn. But as someone who has gotten the chance to...

September 16, 2011  |   "I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the...

September 9, 2011  |   I have long held that most of the people who grow up to be reporters are idealists. We like to think if we just dig deeper, understand better and listen harder, we will find something revealing -- then get to...

September 2, 2011  |   Not long ago, I was at the army installation at Fort Bragg, N.C., reporting a story for the PBS NewsHour when my cellphone began to vibrate with news of a big earthquake back home in Washington, D.C. We'd felt nothing....

August 26, 2011  |   My daily commute takes me south along the Potomac River and past the neoclassical majesty of the Lincoln Memorial, a beautiful drive I try not to take for granted. But I had been living and working in the nation's capital...

August 12, 2011  |   DES MOINES, Iowa | About halfway through my grilled pork chop on a stick at the State Fair, I was reminded why covering politics in Iowa is so different than anywhere else. Gwen Ifill and NewsHour Political Editor David Chalian...

August 5, 2011  |   In the fine tradition of the well-executed post-mortem, we now find ourselves in the season of the "tick-tock" -- the well-reported explanations of how a big story unfolded. We have been treated to the finest of the genre in the...

July 29, 2011  |   As Washington's debt ceiling debate approaches its deadline, those of us who watch and cover it anxiously await its drop-dead date. Or its do or die moment. Or, its my-way-or-the-highway climax. Skyrocketing interest rates. Huge tax hikes. Bottom lines....

July 22, 2011  |   The national debt clock ticks on in April, 2011. Photo via Getty Images. It's a conundrum. We in the news business are constantly justifying to ourselves why we cover the stories we cover, and why you should care. It...

July 15, 2011  |   Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images I've been afflicted this week with a disorienting sense of déjà vu that affects any reporter who has covered Washington long enough. Even the most consequential and operatic standoffs begin to seem eerily familiar....

July 8, 2011  |   President Obama updates reporters on debt talks. White House photo. The president knotted his tie and strode into the White House press briefing room Thursday to announce that he'd just concluded a "very constructive" meeting with members of Congress....

July 1, 2011  |   ASPEN -- Since we established in this space that I am a professional skeptic, I arrived at the Aspen Ideas Festival -- a kind of Rocky Mountain think-fest -- prepared for a pretty dreary recounting of where the nation...

June 24, 2011  |   I am a great champion of the notion that it helps to be skeptical, but hurts to be cynical. But weeks like this one make it tough to distinguish between the two. Because I strive to maintain my balance,...

May 27, 2011  |   It never gets old listening to Bill Clinton. Like a thoroughbred watching the race from the sidelines, he is always champing at the bit to get back on the track. That became clear once again this week when I...

May 20, 2011  |   The past several days have handed me a cluster of excuses to return to one of my favorite topics: what happens when politicians speak in code. Known in some circles as dog-whistle politics - saying one thing intended to be...

May 4, 2011  |   My flight from Seattle had just touched down at Reagan Washington National airport late Sunday night when I clicked on my BlackBerry. It immediately began buzzing with an alarming stream of emails and tweets. An hour later, the president...

April 29, 2011  |   Imagine how proudly gratified I was this week to scroll through my Twitter feed and discover that Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have so much in common. On the day that Donald Trump was touring the New Hampshire seacoast by...

April 22, 2011  |   I once covered a politician who was a very certain man. He remained convinced throughout his public career that he knew best - certainly better than any naysayer, political opponent or reporter. His certainty got things done, but you had...

April 15, 2011  |   A few weeks ago, I mused in this space about why anyone would want to be president. This week, I had an epiphany. And so did Rep. Paul Ryan. To understand this, it helps to be a student of the...

April 8, 2011  |   As the shutdown showdown approached its third or fourth climax late this week, I found myself in Flint, Mich., the former General Motors manufacturing powerhouse, where the unemployment rate still stands at nearly 12 percent and people can be...

April 1, 2011  |   AMES, Iowa | I have this little theory that has long served me well. Everything, I believe, is politics. Politics determines whether your children go to school or to jail; whether they eat or starve; whether their futures will...

March 25, 2011  |   Every four years, as I set off to cover another presidential election cycle, I secretly ask myself: Why do any of these people want to be president? Consider the choices that have faced the current president just within the last...

March 18, 2011  |   I was sitting behind the wheel on Pennsylvania Avenue Thursday afternoon in the kind of traffic clog that those of us who live in Washington, D.C., have become accustomed to. The clamor of sirens signaled that President Obama's motorcade...

March 11, 2011  |   Gwen Ifill and David Broder on "Meet the Press." Photo courtesy NBC News. David and Ann Broder were precisely the same age. So when they decided to celebrate their 80th birthdays last year, the couple's four sons, daughters-in-law and...

March 4, 2011  |   Indiana State Capitol building. Photo via Flickr user Intiaz Rahim. INDIANAPOLIS | This otherwise unprepossessing state capitol has in recent weeks morphed into one of several hot spots around the nation that are testing what it means to govern...

February 25, 2011  |   When I was just a young thing, I loved a song by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five called "The Message." "Don't push me, 'cuz I'm close to the edge," the refrain went. "I'm trying not to lose my head."...

February 18, 2011  |   It's a familiar cycle. Voters say they want new faces and fresh thinking in Washington. But once the newcomers arrive in the nation's capital, they discover themselves consigned to back benches and basement offices. Reality soon sets in. It's harder...

February 11, 2011  |   House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor strolled out onto the White House lawn after lunch with the president this week to deliver an upbeat and focused message to the reporters gathered there. "I thought it was...

January 28, 2011  |   Seldom have I watched the president's annual speech to the joint session of Congress with anticipation that had so little to do with the contents of the address itself. By now we surely know that - aside from the...

January 21, 2011  |   I am not such a fan of celebrating anniversaries for their own sake. Much of what we say on such occasions is rote - if not trite - and the true meaning of observance is easily lost. But there were...

January 14, 2011  |   Last week in this space, I mused about how quick we can be to over interpret events and ascribe tenuous meaning to actions that so often defy explanation. Less than 48 hours after I posted that column, 19 people were...

January 7, 2011  |   Just a few weeks before Christmas in 1996, I was seated in the front row in an auditorium at the Old Executive Office Building across from the White House. My job, then for NBC News, was to cover the announcement...

December 30, 2010  |   One of the things that I promise reporters who appear on "Washington Week" is that they will never have to make predictions. Even on the PBS NewsHour, where many of our guests actually make their livings by peering into...

December 24, 2010  |   Let's face it. If you still have to go to work while everyone else is out shopping and partying and hanging mistletoe, you might as well have fun doing it. Gridlock is not fun. Poisonous debate is not fun. Being...

December 17, 2010  |   Polls can be confusing. Americans generally hate Congress but don't mind their own congressman. And many of them say they hate President Obama but consider him a good father and a generally likable fellow. What gives? I did a deep...

December 10, 2010  |   I am not much for putting U.S. presidents on the couch, but there was something about watching Barack Obama striding into the White House briefing room with fists clenched the other day that appealed to the Sigmund Freud in...

December 3, 2010  |   I have a new theory. Let me know what you think about it. Has it occurred to anyone lately that so many of the things we obsess about turn out to be stories that last for - give or take...

November 19, 2010  |   Newly elected freshman members of the upcoming 112th Congress pose for a class photo on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty. Why are we surprised when campaign trail promises or high-minded mission statements collide with...

November 12, 2010  |   Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican, and former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, have been to this rodeo before. That's why they waited one week and one day to drop their post-election bombshell. By...

November 5, 2010  |   Updated 3:00 p.m. ET Now that we can place the term "shellacking" right next to "thumpin' " in the post-election political dictionary, let's sort through the wreckage and victories from the midterm elections to answer the five questions I...

October 29, 2010  |   At just about this point in every election cycle, we begin to overuse the same words, phrases and arguments. Everything is a tossup, or a dead heat, or a last-minute dash to Election Day. The other guy is always...

October 22, 2010  |   I've been giving a lot of thought during the waning days of this bitterly-fought midterm election campaign to the idea of peace and harmony. "Come on," you say. "What does peace or harmony have to do with dead heat campaigns...

October 15, 2010  |   Kendrick Meek was in the basement of St. John First Baptist Church, a black congregation in the impoverished South Florida town of Belle Glade, sweating up a storm. The post-Sunday service crowd was dressed to the nines and fanning...

October 8, 2010  |   If you want to sum up the challenges facing mainstream Democrats and Republicans this campaign season, hop a plane to Kentucky. That's what I did this week, and when I got there I discovered the political world must be a...

October 1, 2010  |   I spent a day at the University of Vermont this week, getting up close and personal with my favorite people - the ones who like getting their news from PBS. In the back of my mind, I had hoped the...

September 24, 2010  |   Two women I know have recently written terrific books that could easily have never seen the light of day. By complete serendipity, each is a former colleague and friend. Isabel Wilkerson and I were both reporters for the New York...

September 17, 2010  |   With a little more than six weeks left before Americans go to the polls and put us out of our midterm election madness/misery, this year's prevailing political story line got a fresh bump this week: voters want to throw the...

September 10, 2010  |   Like many of you, I have become slightly addicted to the voice embedded in my dashboard that tells me where and how to drive my car. If I miss an exit, it grows silent for a moment before calmly advising...

September 3, 2010  |   "A great moment of opportunity," she said. "There's a lot of skepticism out there," he said. "But I think there is ground to be hopeful." She was Madeleine Albright, a Democrat and former secretary of state. He was Stephen Hadley,...

August 27, 2010  |   The president of the United States is on vacation. I am not. It rained for his first three days in Martha's Vineyard. The sun was shining here in Washington. Forgive my enjoyment. But it's nice to take a...

August 20, 2010  |   If the camera had continued rolling Monday night at the NewsHour after I completed a segment on the debate over the so-called Ground Zero mosque, you would have seen me beating my head against the anchor desk. I am not...

August 13, 2010  |   OK, folks, it's time for another of my periodic forays into definitional politics. To accomplish this, I have to take my own profession to task - and then rise to its defense. The problem: we reach too easily for shorthand....

August 6, 2010  |   Perhaps Oprah brought the president a cake when she joined his tight circle of Chicago friends for a birthday dinner this week. That's more of a celebration than he has been able to have for any of his other landmark...

July 30, 2010  |   A few years ago, my friends Mark Halperin, now of Time Magazine, and John Harris, now of Politico, coined the term "freak show" as a catchall for the fever that overtakes those of us in the information gathering business from...

July 16, 2010  |   You see, that headline is what I've always hated about Twitter. It's way too cute. But, alas, I have been lured in. My first week on Twitter has been enlightening, funny and a little creepy. You have to understand first...

July 9, 2010  |   Let me let you in on a Washington reality game show -- the ongoing push and pull between journalists and the people they cover. The prize: simple candor. By candor, I don't mean that I expect the people we interview...

July 2, 2010  |   Perhaps Antonin Scalia has met his match. It is all well and good that the high court's most conservative justice probably disagrees with Elena Kagan on nearly everything involving Constitutional interpretation. But Scalia and Kagan may find far more common...

June 25, 2010  |   Several of us had a debate going on Wednesday morning. Would the president fire Stan McChrystal? Would he leave him in charge because change would be too risky? Or would he kick the can down the road and replace him...

June 18, 2010  |   As President Obama struggled to assert control over what seems to be an uncontrollable situation, I had the chance to assess the unspooling oil disaster dilemma this week by talking to folks living with it, and folks watching from afar....

June 11, 2010  |   I am frequently wrong. Now there's an admission you won't hear that often from someone who makes a living in Washington. But this most recent round of primary results reminded me of all of the times I have assumed outcomes...

June 4, 2010  |   On a hot summer day in 2008, I visited the Civil Rights Institute in downtown Birmingham with the man who thought he was going to be Alabama's first African-American governor. The time seemed right for an ambitious young lawmaker to...

May 28, 2010  |   I was strolling through the town square in the pretty, precious town of Mill Valley, California, last weekend, reporting on California's gubernatorial race, when I realized I might have to change my mind about politics. Only a few weeks ago,...

May 21, 2010  |   Every few years, national politics seems to get a jolt. Tuesday's elections in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Arkansas proved once again how Washington insider status can be a two-edged sword. One man's experience can be another's complicity - especially in times...

May 14, 2010  |   I am frequently asked if I think journalism is doomed. I happen to think it's not. We'll always need to know more; we just may have to find new ways to learn and alternate platforms from which to tell the...

May 7, 2010  |   It felt as if everyone was rushing to the ramparts this week. From Times Square to the Gulf Coast to Greece and Wall Street, the world has seemed positively out of breath. Part of the reason, of course, is the...

April 30, 2010  |   Emotion. Fear. Guilt. Racism. These drivers, according to former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, are the four horsemen of a rhetorical apocalypse that stops things from getting done in Washington. "Those are the four things I find in my time here...

April 20, 2010  |   I was always thoroughly intimidated in Dorothy Height's presence. It's not because she was regal or holier-than-thou. It's that she was neither of those things. And somehow, she should have been. Could easily have been. In the news business, we...

April 16, 2010  |   I got a lot of mail this week, almost all of it online, and much of it angry. The reason? I tried to tell both sides of a story. The occasion was our PBS NewsHour "Spotlight Series" in Tampa, Florida....

April 9, 2010  |   When The Washington Post asked me to review David Remnick's new book "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama," I quickly said yes. As someone who spends my days trying to peer inside, through and around national and...

March 26, 2010  |   I have a little hobby as a journalist. I love to listen to how people use words. That sounds simpler than it is. It requires the listener to be skeptical rather than cynical, yet to cheerfully expose the meaning behind...

March 23, 2010  |   Regular NewsHour viewers know that, from time to time, the broadcast likes to note the passing of notable people -- from famous entertainers to men and women of letters to consequential world leaders. We introduced you to one of these...

March 19, 2010  |   "If you don't set deadlines in this town, things don't happen.The default position is inertia."- President Barack Obama July 22, 2009We enter another weekend with yet another health care deadline hanging low on Washington's horizon. It will be neither the...

March 12, 2010  |   I loved the movie "Up." I would have given it my Oscar party vote for Best Picture if I hadn't seen "The Hurt Locker." But the part of "Up" that makes me laugh out loud every time I...

January 27, 2010  |   This will not be the first time that we have seen an address delivered by President Obama described as the most critical speech of his campaign/presidency/life. But this State of the Union address may actually deserve that title, if only...

December 31, 2009  |   As the new year approaches, the Rundown asked NewsHour correspondents to reflect on memorable reporting moments from 2009. Thinking back over a year of covering auto and bank bailouts, financial scams, uprisings and wars, and political fits and starts, I...

December 3, 2009  |   Blogs can be fun because they offer the opportunity to climb into someone's head for a few minutes, and, in the case of this blog, The Rundown, you can travel behind the scenes as the NewsHour comes together each weeknight....