The Dignity Index: Pat Boone, Patti Blagojevich | Newsweek Scope

An Inconvenient Truth Teller
Holly Bailey 10/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, "Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.
Pakistan’s Fickle Ally
Sumit Ganguly 10/9/2009 12:00:00 AM
President Obama is on the verge of signing legislation that would grant $7.5 billion in new aid to Pakistan over the next five years, most of it in the form of economic assistance designed to strengthen the alliance and induce Pakistan to move more aggressively against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
AMERICA AND ITS IMAGE
Where Bush Was Right
David Frum 12/31/2008 12:00:00 AM
Yet there are some things the next president shouldn't change. George W. Bush hasn't gotten much good press in recent years, but he's accomplished some important things that the next president would do well to preserve and extend.
Perspectives
12/6/2008 12:00:00 AM
CRITICAL MASS
Eye of the Storm
9/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
The Democrats couldn't have had a much more exuberant week last week: historic barriers broken, historic torches passed, historic numbers of Kleenex used for historic happy tears. Though it won't be easy for the Republicans to match that kind of epochal spectacle at their convention this week, they still have a shot at groundbreaking drama, thanks largely to the vice presidential nomination of Sarah Palin, the rootin'est, tootin'est, unvetted'est first-term governor in these United States. But not on Monday. With Hurricane Gustav roaring ashore along the Gulf Coast, the Republicans pieced together a shortened opening program. And with all notions of Change and of Reform left on hold until Tuesday, the Republicans looked and sounded, for one more afternoon, like the party we've long come to know.
THE LAST WORD
The Final Repudiation
George F. Will
In a Presidential contest replete with novelties, none was more significant than this: A candidate's campaign—for his party's nomination, then for the presidency—was itself virtually the entire validation of his candidacy. Voters have endorsed Barack Obama's audacious—but not, they have said, presumptuous—proposition, which was: The skill, tenacity, strategic vision and tactical nimbleness of my campaign is proof that I am presidential timber.