In December 1962, John F. Kennedy sat for an interview with the three television networks. The nationally broadcast program, titled “After Two Years: A Conversation with the President,” saw Kennedy reflecting on the presidency two years after being hired.
The conversation took place shortly after Kennedy diffused a potential World War III over the Soviet Union’s placement of nuclear weapons in Cuba. A year earlier, he disastrously erred when Cuban insurgents were slaughtered a...
Opinion
For Joe Biden, results matter most
In December 1962, John F. Kennedy sat for an interview with the three television networks. The nationally broadcast program, titled “After Two Years: A Conversation with the President,” saw Kennedy reflecting on the presidency two years after being hired.
The conversation took place shortly after Kennedy diffused a potential World War III over the Soviet Union’s placement of nuclear weapons in Cuba. A year earlier, he disastrously erred when Cuban insurgents were slaughtered a...
Healthcare justice for Puerto Rico
It has become a bit of an end of year tradition: Congress is scrambling again to enact legislation to keep the federal government open. Unfortunately for the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico, Congress is also scrambling to provide additional funding for the island’s Medicaid program and avoid a so-called “Medicaid cliff.”
Medicaid is a core pillar of the U.S. healthcare infrastructure that helps ensure that everyone — regardless of income — can have access to quality care. This supp...
Healthcare justice for Puerto Rico
It has become a bit of an end of year tradition: Congress is scrambling again to enact legislation to keep the federal government open. Unfortunately for the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico, Congress is also scrambling to provide additional funding for the island’s Medicaid program and avoid a so-called “Medicaid cliff.”
Medicaid is a core pillar of the U.S. healthcare infrastructure that helps ensure that everyone — regardless of income — can have access to quality care. This supp...
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s legacy: Seize power to do good
Many years ago, having just finished a detailed conversation in the Democratic cloakroom in the U.S. Capitol about next steps for trying to pass legislation through the House and Senate to create a 9/11 Commission, Nancy Pelosi inquired about my family. I conveyed the progress of each of my four kids through school and sports programs and ended by mentioning to her that I had sent a book to Willie Mays (we are both avid San Francisco Giants fans) for an autograph but it must have been los...
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s legacy: Seize power to do good
Many years ago, having just finished a detailed conversation in the Democratic cloakroom in the U.S. Capitol about next steps for trying to pass legislation through the House and Senate to create a 9/11 Commission, Nancy Pelosi inquired about my family. I conveyed the progress of each of my four kids through school and sports programs and ended by mentioning to her that I had sent a book to Willie Mays (we are both avid San Francisco Giants fans) for an autograph but it must have been los...
Intensive care: America’s patients need prevention, not procedures
With the recent rise in flu cases and the increase in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases nationally putting a strain on the health care system, the burden on health care professionals across multiple professions is rising to levels last seen during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through each wave of the pandemic, in intensive care units (ICU) across the country, teams worked to pull patients back from the brink of death using invasive, life-sustaining therapies.
...
With Nancy Pelosi, we witnessed one of the political greats
When writing thousands of columns about American politics, there are some you'd like to have back. The worst I ever wrote was in 2010, calling on then-House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to step aside.
The Democrats had just lost 63 seats in the midterm elections; I reasoned that “shellacking,” as President Obama termed it, called for a change in leadership. Diane Dewhirst, a top aide, cautioned me that was wrong and would not be forgotten.
That stupid column — had ...
The legacy of Nancy Pelosi
The decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to step down from her leadership position provides an important opportunity to assess the legacy of the first woman to lead the legislative branch of our government. When Pelosi arrived on Capitol Hill, many dismissed her as the personification of the “San Francisco liberal” Democrat that conservatives had castigated. After three and a half decades of legislative achievements and skilled political helmsmanship, no one doubts her hist...
After midterms, the return of the ‘pen and phone’
The pattern has become so common now that we may take it for granted: A president, particularly a Democratic president, has control of Congress for the first two years of his first term; during those two years he focuses on major legislation. For President Clinton it was the Family and Medical Leave Act and a failed attempt at health care reform. For President Obama, it was the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd Frank Act. And for President Biden it was the Inflation Reduction Act and num...