Eleanor Clift

For the Democrats to win in '08, they need to go on the offensive. Here's one foreign-policy plan from two veterans of the Clinton era.

Chile's first woman president is getting mixed reviews as she tries to impose gender parity on her government. A tale of instinct, dialogue and the Santiago bus service.

Texas Republican Louie Gohmert is famous on the Internet for saying we'd all be speaking Japanese or German if an anti-war Democrat like John Murtha had been in Congress during World War II.

Rahm Emanuel was once a fierce gun-control advocate. As a top aide to Bill Clinton, he helped push the president's assault-weapons ban. At the time, Emanuel argued there was little reason for anyone to have a military-style weapon designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest time.Restricting guns is the last thing Emanuel wants to talk about now.

New Hampshire Sen. John E. Sununu is the "fastest man in the Senate," an honor he achieved after finishing ahead of his colleagues in a three-mile race last fall.

Nobody understood better than Jack Valenti the mind-set of powerful people. He began as an ad man in Texas, where he met Lyndon Johnson. When LBJ was tapped as vice president, Valenti went to work in the Kennedy White House.

From NEWSWEEK's April 30, 2007 issue: Rahm Emanuel was once a fierce gun-control advocate. As a top aide to Bill Clinton, he helped push the president's assault-weapons ban.

It was buried in the avalanche of coverage of the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech. But the Supreme Court's partial-birth ruling will likely have a much bigger impact on Campaign.

Speaker Pelosi's headgear draw fire from both right and left. What it says about Western attitudes toward Islam—and the state of American politics today.

Democrats on Capitol Hill hang on his every word, and Jim Webb doesn't disappoint. His son was extended in Iraq for the surge, and his resolve to end a war that he opposed from the start is undisputed.

A chat with an Iraqi journalist shows how hard it will be to win this war.

In the aftermath of 9/11, nobody thought he could fill Rudy Giuliani's shoes. But under billionaire Michael Bloomberg, New York City's Democrat-turned-Republican mayor, the city rebounded.

Marian Wright Edelman used to be close to Hillary Clinton. But they had a falling out over welfare reform. Can they mend their fences over health-care funding for kids?

How would Bill Clinton feel as First Gentleman to President Hillary? Ask the husband of Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

On the same day that tens of thousands of people marched in Washington against the Iraq war, the country lost one of its most principled and dedicated antiwar voices.

Senate Republicans are in a quandary. They don't like the Iraq war, but most are not willing to openly break with the White House—not yet, anyway. A vote taken Wednesday in the Senate Foreign Relations committee opposing the latest troop escalation won the support of only one Republican, Nebraska Sen.

Clinton and Obama are generating an enthusiasm among Democrats not seen since Kennedy was in the White House. Just ask JFK's TV adviser.

I was among the legion that visited Art Buchwald at the Washington hospice he called home for several months last year, and where he expected to die. He had chosen at age 80 to forego dialysis and accept his fate.

Virginia Senator John Warner is the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a trusted voice on both sides of the aisle . He is withholding judgment for now on the president's new plan to send more troops to Iraq, but makes it clear in an interview with NEWSWEEK's Eleanor Clift that Congress is prepared to assert its rightful role as an equal partner in the war-making powers of the administration.

Democrats in Washington have found a subtle new way to annoy Republicans: Every chance they get, they're starting to refer to Bill Clinton as "42." The idea is clear enough--that Hillary Clinton will be "44," a wink at the way the Bushes have long referred to George H.W.

In interviews with NEWSWEEK's Eleanor Clift, Carter's vice president and longtime press secretary share their recollections of the man who preceded them in the White House.

Former president Jimmy Carter has long been regard-ed as an elder statesman, using his political muscle to address issues like democracy and human rights.

In the spirit of holding our political leaders accountable, this year-end review will tabulate the worst lies told by Bush and company, along with several stories that were underreported in the media.

Every so often a politician comes along who doesn't pander to the president. Fresh off a nasty campaign that centered on the war in Iraq, Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb had no interest in a picture of himself with President Bush, and he didn't want to exchange small talk with the man whose war policies he opposes.

What sweet vindication it must be for Mississippi Republican Trent Lott to once again emerge victorious among his Senate colleagues. The White House engineered his downfall four years ago, and now Lott has made a remarkable comeback, winning the No. 2 leadership post in the Senate at a time when Karl Rove, the principal figure who betrayed him, looks out of touch.It is a personal and political triumph for Lott, 65, who was forced out as majority leader of the Senate in 2002 after remarks he...

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse knew the day his party lost the Senate. It was Sept. 29, and he circled it on his calendar. That was the morning excerpts from Bob Woodard's book "State of Denial" broke, chronicling an administration in disarray that was not being truthful with the American people about how bad things were in Iraq.That same day, a congressional committee issued a report documenting 400-plus contacts between indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House, and Republican...

Democrats have won the House, ending a 12-year drought. And Nancy Pelosi is on her way to becoming Speaker, becoming the first woman ever to hold the job.

Races that were never in play before are suddenly on Chuck Schumer's radar screen. The feisty and sometimes abrasive New York senator runs the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee like it's the campaign of a lifetime, and if the Democrats wrest control from the ruling party during a time of war, he deserves much of the credit.

Gerry Eastman Studds, 69 The first openly gay member of Congress, Studds was censured by the House in 1983 for having had a sexual relationship a decade earlier with a 17-year-old page.

Republicans booed their likely next House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when she rose to speak Wednesday evening "not only as Democratic leader but as a mother and grandmother." Some shouted "Jefferson," a lame attempt to find equivalency between a disgraced Democrat, Louisiana Rep.