Dec 02 The Tax Cut Debate: The Latest Train Wreck Waiting To Happen 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,… Continue reading
Nov 18 Gwen's Take: a Little Q&A From the Road By Ray Suarez 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… Continue reading
Nov 04 Condoleezza Rice Tells Her Story 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… Continue reading
Oct 28 Pick Your Poison: How Compromise Ceased to Be a Choice 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… Continue reading
Oct 21 Why the End of Gadhafi May Not Help Obama 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,… Continue reading
Oct 14 Gwen's Take: The Danger of the Sweeping Conclusion By Gwen Ifill 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… Continue reading
Oct 07 Controlling The Stage: A Politicians' Primer By Gwen Ifill 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 other… Continue reading
Sep 23 Debate Night: When the Questions Count as Much as the Answers By Gwen Ifill 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 moderate… Continue reading
Sep 16 Searching for Bottom: Why Everybody Had a Bad Week "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… Continue reading
Sep 09 A Decade Since 9/11: Reporters Reflect on the Day That Changed Everything 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… Continue reading