Jon Meacham

Mike Ross is not exactly what you would call a colorful character, at least not in the context of national political theater. An Arkansas Democrat and five-term congressman, he is an amiable former state legislator and chief of staff to his state's lieutenant governor.

At first, there was something comforting in the predictability of the evening's conversation. At Doe's Eat Place on Nelson Street in Greenville, Miss., last Wednesday, within the space of perhaps five minutes, I was twice told that "the media" are too liberal. (Once was by my father-in-law, a Sarah Palin admirer, who delights in Bill O'Reilly's occasional volleys against NEWSWEEK.) With the possible exception of South Carolina, Mississippi has been the most reliably conservative state in the...

It was an unusually candid admission, particularly for a politician. A few years ago, in a meeting with NEWSWEEK editors, a distinguished and well-known United States senator—the session was on background, so I cannot identify the lawmaker by name—reflected on the fleeting nature of glory in his line of work.

Maziar Bahari is a NEWSWEEK reporter, a documentary filmmaker, a playwright, author, artist, and, since June 21, a prisoner being held in Iran without formal charges or access to a lawyer.

A true story: in 1986, when I was a senior in high school, I read Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men and then read Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas's The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.

Holden Caulfield had it right. The test of a great book, he said in The Catcher in the Rye, was whether, once you finished it, you wished the author were a great friend you could call up at home.

For years American conversation about Iraq has included a refrain about how we cannot expect to create a Jeffersonian democracy on the Euphrates. The admonition is true: if you think about it, America itself is not really a Jeffersonian democracy either (we are more of a Jacksonian one, which means there is a powerful central government with a cultural tilt toward states' rights).

The numbers are, by and large, pretty good. In the Gallup poll, President Obama's job-approval rating in May averaged 65 percent, a figure that puts him in good company.

Pro-gun sentiment in America is rising, not falling. Firearms sales are up, and there are reports of ammunition shortages.

President Barack Obama has said that Tim Geithner, whose job coincided with a credit crisis, faces more challenges than any Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton, the first to hold the post.

Twenty years ago, I accompanied Andrew Lytle, the Southern writer, to a conference at Russell Kirk's compound in Mecosta, Mich. A crucial figure in the postwar American conservative movement, Kirk ran a kind of permanent salon at his home, which was known as Piety Hill.

What he's like now

In a 30-minute interview aboard Air Force One en route from Washington to Phoenix last Wednesday, President Obama talked with NEWSWEEK's Jon Meacham about Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Dick Cheney—and Star Trek.

It is no secret that the business of journalism is in trouble. Venerable American institutions are facing uncertain futures; once profitable enterprises are struggling to find ways to fund their operations.

The son of Pat and Bill Buckley may not have always been happy, but he was never bored.

It may have been the most productive coffee date in NEWSWEEK history. Almost a decade ago, after the death of Meg Greenfield, Rick Smith, the magazine's longtime editor in chief, reached out to one of the great voices of the boomer generation: Anna Quindlen, who had left The New York Times in 1995 to devote herself full-time to writing fiction.

The question is not as the extremes on either side would have it. Today, eight years after the attacks of September 11 and three months into a new presidential administration, should the country in some way look back to review the tactics that shaped the war on terror under President George W.

The toll of epilepsy has been overlooked—and the research underfunded—for too long. A call to action.

It was supposed to be an ordinary Saturday. on Feb. 16, 2008—a cool but not cold late winter's day—my wife and I had plans for a late breakfast with a colleague of mine in New York when the call came.

The difference between Christianity and 'Christian America'

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

Reports of the death of the religious right or about the high hopes of the religious left are familiar, but something deeper and more fundamental (so to speak) than a tactical repositioning is going on at the moment.

It was, in a way, overdue. Beginning last September, when the financial sector of the economy collapsed and the markets melted down, a resurgence of American populism seemed inevitable.

Thrift, we all know, is one of the perennial virtues. For many of us, however, the inclination to save is a good deal weaker than the urge to spend, which is why personal indebtedness is so great.

On a late winter afternoon, the sunlight fading outside the window, John McCain was sitting in his Senate office—he uses Barry Goldwater's old desk—shaking his head about the billions of dollars in earmarks in the federal budget and talking about the future of his party.

Nothing against Abraham Lincoln, but in a way it is too bad that President Obama has replaced President Bush's Oval Office bust of Winston Churchill with one of the 16th president.

He was home, in a way, and among friends. Last Thursday evening, standing before the 102nd Abraham Lincoln Association banquet in Springfield, Ill., President Obama recalled Lincoln's words on leaving the state capital for Washington: "To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything." Then he told a wittier, and perhaps more revealing, story.

In many ways our economy already resembles a European one. As boomers age and spending grows, we will become even more French.

When Evan Thomas and I started talking about the idea that America has quite recently—and quite quickly—moved closer to Europe in terms of the relationship between the state and the market, we were skeptical.

Barack 0bama sees the world more or less as it is, and seems less susceptible to self-deception and self-delusion than most of us. With the possible exception of genuine saints, everyone is the star of the movie that plays in their heads, and the Obama story is thus far a heroic tale of a bright and blessed man who has defied history in order to make history.