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Poor ScottWhy McClellan is a lousy press secretary for the president.

By Josh Levin
Updated Friday, March 19, 2004, at 4:18 PM ET

New Republic, March 29
Sean Wilentz compares George Washington's and Thomas Jefferson's slaveholding practice and rhetoric and argues that "a public hypocrite can have a more auspicious influence on history than a private convert." Despite the views of modern historians, Washington, who ultimately freed his slaves, was too silent in his public life, while the now-vilified Jefferson inspired "impassioned political anti-slavery efforts" on the "explicitly Jeffersonian ground that all men are created equal." … Jonathan Chait says Scott McClellan is a "bad liar," and consequently, a bad press secretary. Unlike the "syrup-tongued" Ari Fleischer, who "could spin elaborate webs of obfuscation, leaving the press corps mystified and docile," McClellan "overcompensates for his uncertainty with emphatic gestures" and "allows his adversaries to badger him repetetitively."

Economist, March 20
The demise of José Maria Aznar's People's Party, just voted out in favor of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's Socialists in Spain, may be the first sign that the Iraq war coalition's "four aces" (George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Australia's John Howard are the others) are on shaky political ground. While Spanish voters, including young people spurred to vote by last week's Madrid bombing, pat themselves on the back, Zapatero's pledge to pull Spain out of Iraq may mean "the biggest triumph has been that of the terrorists." … While progress in the world's sixth-largest economy has been real and remarkable, "China is bound to disappoint." In many ways, the nation is growing too fast: At least 12 million new jobs must be created every year to keep up with population growth, and most manufactured goods are overproduced. In sum, "China's growth will have to slow markedly unless its government wants to drown in debt."

New York Times Magazine

New York Times Magazine, March 21
Despite his "almost childlike habit of throwing himself directly at things he thinks are wrong," Al Franken isn't as liberal as you'd think, says Russell Shorto. The wonky comedian is a party-liner who thinks the moderate Democratic Leadership Council is "a moral force for good." Franken's mainstream political ambitions (he's considering a run for the Senate from Minnesota in 2008) may ultimately cut his nascent career as a liberal talk-radio host short. … Joshua Kurlantzick tells the fascinating story of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, a quasi-terrorist group, run by an accountant, that's trying to overthrow the Cambodian government from a strip mall in California. The State Department has so far ignored the group, which already helped stage a failed coup in Phnom Penh in 2000, and human rights advocates worry that Cambodia's authoritarian government may want to keep CFF around because the group "creates an excuse to crack down on mainstream opponents."

Mother Jones

Mother Jones, March and April 2004
Tim Golden writes a prescient profile of Baltasar Garzón, an investigative judge on Spain's high court who has prosecuted both members of the Basque separatist group ETA and radical Islamists with alleged ties to 9/11. Garzón, who has faced the wrath of civil libertarians for widening the scope of ETA prosecutions to include relatives and newspapers, may ironically be responsible for ETA's continued existence. A 1988 prosecution that tied the Spanish government to assassinations of ETA members helped prolong the movement by fostering the belief that they were targets. … Maggie Jones visits Lewiston, Maine, which has become "little Mogadishu" due to the influx of more than 1,200 Somali immigrants. Though the town's mayor wrote an open letter discouraging future arrivals because of the strain on public expenditures like welfare, the influx has brought the community increased tax revenue and a rising population, both increasingly rare in Maine in recent years.

Atlantic

Atlantic, April 2004
Michael J. Sandel, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, thinks genetic engineering is a force for bad because only "awareness that our talents and abilities are not wholly our own doing restrains our tendency toward hubris." … The latest take on John Ashcroft, as seen in Jeffrey Rosen's profile of the attorney general: He's "willing to discipline his conservative instincts in pursuit of electoral success." While Ashcroft has "devoted almost all of his energy since 9/11 to marketing himself as tough on terror," Rosen believes he has erred by not engaging the Patriot Act's critics. … Cullen Murphy says Missouri is our "most representative" state and should replace New Hampshire as the first-in-the-nation primary. The Show-Me State matches up with the U.S. demographically and has voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election but one since 1900. Among other candidates, "New Jersey consists essentially of suburbs," "Pennsylvania is surprisingly inert," and "Illinois is just too flat."

The New Yorker

The New Yorker, March 22
Kathy Gannon offers a rare dispatch from Afghanistan that doesn't mention the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Gannon cruises the new road from Kabul to Kandahar, paved with $270 million from the United States, and reports that the resurgent Taliban is composed of "a lot of pissed-off Pashtuns." While most of the American military's offensives have been launched from the Pashtun homeland of southern Afghanistan, this part of the country has been neglected in terms of aid from the U.S. and the government of Hamid Karzai. … Jeffrey Toobin notes that Martha Stewart is going to prison "with the help of the best and most loyal people that money could buy." Throughout most of the long piece, Toobin pairs Stewart's prosecution with those of other corporate executives, but only near the end notes the crucial difference that "Stewart didn't steal anything, or fleece any investors." (Read Slate's Dispatches From the Martha Stewart Trial.)

Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard, March 22
Matthew Continetti reports that family members of 9/11 victims who vented about the use of ground zero in Bush campaign ads are PR-savvy left-wingers. While newspapers did err in omitting that the much-quoted pundits were members of an anti-Bush advocacy group, the fact that they have an agenda isn't as shocking as Continetti wants it to be. He also undermines his argument by lamenting that the Bush administration didn't deploy Republican-leaning 9/11 survivors to counteract the liberal mouthpieces. … After attending a weeklong junket, it seems Max Boot has forced himself to believe that a "flourishing democracy has taken root in South Africa's rocky soil." Boot rightly praises the nation for diversifying its economy, but his warmed-over apologia for the country's clear problems—the "AIDS crisis has also been a story of disaster followed by a conscientious if belated response"—make the piece look like an unabashed advertorial.

Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report

Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, March 22
Spanish prisoners: Newsweek puts a gruesome photo of victims of "Europe's 9/11" on the cover and argues that al-Qaida's "global campaign of terror has raised the threshold of horror so high that other groups … are embracing its terrorist tradecraft and its penchant for mass murder." … Time's coverage, though, is more extensive, with reports of a possible link between the attack on a Spanish commuter train and suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed 33 last May. Also noted: The U.S. budget for rail security is $65 million this year compared to $4.5 billion for airplane security; and one-quarter of Amtrak passengers never show ID. … U.S. News says that U.S. intelligence is highly skeptical of a letter sent to a British paper by a terror group called the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. That's the same organization that claimed responsibility for last year's blackouts in New York.

First strikes: Both Time and Newsweek credit the Kerry campaign for scuttling the nomination of the Bush administration's proposed "manufacturing czar" Anthony Raimando. Though the Kerry camp did learn that Raimando laid off American workers and opened a factory in China in his time as a manufacturing exec, the whole scenario seems like more a Bushie blunder than a genius move by Kerry. … Time argues that a potential return of old Bush-campaign hand Karen Hughes from semi-retirement may not be much of a boon. Hughes "helped craft" the much-lamented State of the Union address and the president's oft-criticized 9/11-invoking ad campaign.

Thinking of the children: Time echoes last year's New York Times Magazine cover story on affluent moms who are finding that "You can have it all, just not all at the same time." Evidence that working mothers are deciding to stay home with the kids: a study showing that 1 of 3 women with an MBA degree aren't working full time, as compared to 1 in 20 men. The piece argues that the myth of "flex time" in the 1980s shows that women who opted to stay home with the kids may not have an easy time getting back on the corporate ladder. … U.S. News reports that 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, "the nation still has not figured out how to educate all of its children." Since 1988, African-American and Hispanic students haven't made much progress on standardized tests compared to their white peers. Equalizing budgets may not matter: The foundering District of Columbia school system spends more per pupil than the sparkling schools in wealthy suburban Maryland.

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Josh Levin is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at .
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