Anxieties on The Atlantic Front

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My colleague and editor of The Atlantic magazine, Scott Stossel, has been fighting anxiety demons all of his life, and he shares the highs and lows, the funny spots and very dark places he has traveled on his journey to get his anxiety under control in a new book, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread,…

Senator Bob Menendez Becoming the Dem’s Jesse Helms

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This morning, I joined Evan McMorris-Santoro, Krystal Ball, Ali Gharib and Steve Kornacki on MSNBC’s Up with Steve Kornacki to discuss Senate efforts to botch up President Obama’s & Secretary of State John Kerry’s important diplomacy with Ira

Discussing John Kerry’s Middle East Diplomacy

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Thought I’d share this exchange I had yesterday afternoon with MSNBC anchor Ari Melber on Secretary of State John Kerry’s impressive diplomatic efforts between Israel and Palestine. We haven’t seen a Secretary of State put himself or herself on the line like this in a very long time.

Good Morning Washington, DC!

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  Good Morning Washington, DC.  I know it’s a tough haul for other parts of the Northeast, but a lovely coating over the Capital. Took this pic on the way to the gym.  Michael Werz of the Center for American Progress was also there.  A witne

Happy New Year: Revving up TWN in 2014

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2014 is upon us, and I’m using this semicolon between years to rev up The Washington Note again. As editor in chief of The Atlantic‘s events division as well as Washington Editor at Large of The Atlantic, I just have not had the time I had hoped to offer the regular commentary here I would have liked…

Biden Maneuvers Through High Stakes Nuances in Asia Trip

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Earlier this week, Vice President Joe Biden spent five and a half hours with Chinese President Xi Xinping.  They met in three formats — one a restricted meeting with a small handful of advisers, the second a larger meeting with many more advisers, and the third a small working dinner

Romney Code Name for Chris Christie: Pufferfish

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A juicy TIME staff-written teaser from Mark Halperin’s and John Heilemann’s new book, Double Down: Game Change 2012, on the elections fiascos last round: Codenamed “Pufferfish,” in the aquatic-themed parlance of the campaign’s vetting team, Christie was a constant  thorn in the side of the Romney campaign, going back to a 2011 demand that the…

Remembering When Power Was Unconstrained

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As I witness from the far-off vantage point of India this week the collapse of American authority and gravitas around the world because of the debt ceiling debacle still in play in Washington, I ran across a clip about the one-hundred year rise to global power and ferocity of the Mongol tribes at a great…

Sergeant Hagel Still: Talking with the Secretary of Defense

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Recently, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent a 904-page book to Egyptian Army Commander-in-Chief Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, with whom he has had over twenty conversations since assuming his Pentagon role.  The book, Washington: A Life, won for its author Ron Chernow the Pulitzer Prize