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Obama the ScoldTime on Barack Obama's straight talk.

By Christopher Beam and David SessionsUpdated Friday, June 1, 2007, at 5:24 PM ET

Time, June 11
A piece examines how Barack Obama gets mileage by telling audiences what they don't want to hear. He recently told a group of automakers that any aid to them should be tied to improving fuel efficiency. "It was sort of an eat-your-spinach approach," Obama said later. But some Democrats are wary. Even Obama's political consultant, David Axelrod, has warned the campaign "not to sit in the middle of the town square and set ourselves on fire." … The cover piece discusses new research into appetite—why it drives behavior and how to control it. When food was less plentiful, the drive to eat made sense. "The people who didn't immediately lose their appetites, who could gorge themselves and keep going, those people would survive longer during the next famine." But with 67 percent of the U.S. population overweight or obese, Americans are looking for ways to curb the urge. One hormone, ghrelin, creates the "empty feeling" in the stomach, while another, leptin, suppresses hunger. But in some obese people, leptin stops working.—C.B.

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The New Yorker. The New Yorker, June 4
Slate contributor Jeffrey Goldberg ventures into the heart of Republican strategizing—Karl Rove's office—to uncover how the GOP is "imploding." Conservatives who were once Bush's strongest supporters are now disillusioned with Iraq and seem willing to support the socially liberal Rudy Guliani. The party's strategic heavyweights offer a wide range of positions: Karl Rove remains confident in the clout of a strong religious-right base. Newt Gingrich tells Goldberg "the second-order effect [of base mobilization]" is a dangerous alienation of the center, which he deems "Rove's mistake." But Tom DeLay has "undisguised contempt" for Gingrich, accusing him of embracing big government as a solution, when "it's the problem." … An article follows Paul McCartney as he prepares to release his new album, Memory Almost Full, and reflects on the lives and composing methods of the Beatles. Memory is "a suite of deeply personal songs that reflect McCartney's awareness of aging and loss."—D.S.

New York Times Magazine, June 3
The cover article examines the evolution of Hillary Clinton's positions on Iraq, which "may provide as good an insight as we have into what sort of president she would be." Clinton's vote to authorize the war, cast as she contemplated her presidential run, "involved a knotty set of calculations"—she voiced support for the war without reading the complete National Intelligence Estimate report that made several of her colleagues skeptical. As the war became unpopular, Clinton's statements exhibited a "careful selection of her voting record" that is shaky at best. At this point, she's better off looking forward. … A piece sizes up "redshirting," the practice of parents who hold their children "back for a year … so that they will be … better prepared to handle the increased pressures of kindergarten." Several states are pushing back their birthday cutoffs to embrace the benefits of starting kindergarten older, though for some, the extra year may be "a chance, before they even reach the classroom, to fall further behind."—D.S.

The New Republic. New Republic, June 4
A sprawling essay attempts to set the record straight on controversial Swiss Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan. Paul Berman quotes European philosophers who have criticized Ramadan for engaging in "double discourse"—saying one thing to Western audiences and another to Muslim audiences. Berman takes particular issue with a recent New York Times Magazine profile that declined to challenge Ramadan's characterizations of himself and his grandfather Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ramadan claimed al-Banna's plans to abolish the Egyptian multiparty system were consistent with British parliamentary democracy—a point Berman thinks the interviewer should have disputed. … A piece speculates that Hillary Clinton's doomed 1993 health-care plan could have succeeded. At the time, it was criticized as "too big, too complex, too government." But many of the ideas now being proposed by presidential candidates—for example, letting people shop for private health plans and form purchasing cooperatives—were also major elements of "Hillarycare."—C.B.

Weekly Standard, June 4
The cover piece looks back at the lengthy run of The Clintons, a political soap opera and a "riveting saga of lust and ambition [that] still keeps the world on the edge of its seat." As Hillary's presidential run continues, observers are forced to "look anew at the two major characters and their complex bargain." Their marriage was always the center of the story; now the Clintons have been thrust into separate lives, and Hillary is "proving a harder sell than she or Bill ever imagined." How they handle the next season of the drama will be "must-see-TV." … Fred Barnes traces Sen. Ted Kennedy's animated participation in the contentious immigration-reform debate. Kennedy, "the ally of the pro-immigrant Republicans," often "makes the compromise immigration bill sound like the latest loopy liberal legislation to provide welfare to the world." With his ferocious attacks on opponents—Kennedy "berates Democratic and Republican senators alike"—the senator is single-handedly keeping the compromise bill alive.—D.S.

Newsweek. Newsweek, June 4
Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas chronicle the misdeeds of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and last week's testimony by Monica Goodling, "the administration's enforcer of political purity inside the Justice Department." Goodling's hearing was a "soft sell," but her actions were "part of a broader and more troubling picture—a slow and stealthy erosion of the independence of the Justice Department." Officials disagree on whether the ordeal was routine political maneuvering or a disturbing, top-down implementation of ideology. President Bush's role in the affair has been "shadowy," but "there are strong suggestions that he was an active presence." … The cover story diagnoses new science on chronic pain, "one of the most pervasive and intractable medical conditions in the United States." Although 90 percent of soldiers wounded in Iraq have been released healthy, an alarming number are reporting nagging physical discomforts. Along with the medical community, the military has begun implementing new pain-treatment strategies like "high-tech nerve-blocking devices."—D.S.

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Christopher Beam is a Slate political reporter. Follow him on Twitter. David Sessions is a former Slate intern. He is currently a blogger at Politics Daily.

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