Jacob Heilbrunn is the author of the newly released, They Knew They Were
Right: the Rise of the Neocons
, and a senior editor at the National
Interest
.

Blog Entries by Jacob Heilbrunn

Bush's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

1 Comments | Posted December 30, 2008 | 12:36 PM (EST)


Karl Rove deployed his Wall Street Journal column yesterday to defend his old boss' intellectual bona fides. To hear Rove tell it, George W. Bush has devoted much of his free time to wading through weighty fiction (Camus) and nonfiction tomes. Just as Rove once tried to play up...

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Cheney's Out of Angles and Biden's Full of Them

94 Comments | Posted December 21, 2008 | 07:13 PM (EST)


It was refreshing to see Joe Biden refuse to take the diplomatic route about Dick Cheney's preposterous statements on -- where else? -- Fox News Sunday about the sweeping powers that the Constitution grants the vice-president. Biden was having none of it. He didn't simply dismiss the notion that the...

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In Defense of Hillary Clinton

41 Comments | Posted December 18, 2008 | 11:54 AM (EST)


So Bill Clinton has coughed up the names of the donors to his presidential library. It's about time, but there don't seem to be any surprises, which isn't surprising. Countries that have been less than passionately interested in promoting democracy and the better the state of the world such as...

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Bush's Solecisms in Iraq

168 Comments | Posted December 14, 2008 | 06:48 PM (EST)


Not since Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev took off his shoe and pounded it at the United Nations has anyone had the effect that an Iraqi journalist did when he hurled both his shoes, one after the other, at President Bush during his new conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al...

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Blagojevich Deserves the Chicago Tribune's Thanks

1 Comments | Posted December 9, 2008 | 10:02 PM (EST)


One of the oddest parts of the case of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich -- apart from his mouthful of a last name -- is his apparent obsession with sidelining editorial writers at the Chicago Tribune who were critical of him. Having worked for several years at the Los Angeles Times...

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Is Gore Energized to Join the Obama Cabinet?

27 Comments | Posted December 8, 2008 | 10:19 PM (EST)


Al Gore is flying to Chicago tomorrow to meet with Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Is it just to chat up and advise the new Democratic president and vice president? Or is there something more at work?
Obama is reportedly considering creating an energy czar. Gore would be the...

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Obama Shouldn't Bide His Time On Biden

71 Comments | Posted December 2, 2008 | 09:34 PM (EST)


It was supposed to be self-deprecating, but like all jokes, it had a kernel of truth to it. Joe Biden plaintively observed at the Governors' meeting in Philadelphia on Tuesday that "Since the race is over, no one pays attention to me at all." Forget Barack Obama's cabinet picks on...

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Obama and Lincoln: Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving

11 Comments | Posted November 27, 2008 | 08:01 AM (EST)


It's time to give thanks on Thanksgiving to Abraham Lincoln. Somehow at moments of great crisis America manages to produce great leaders. February 2009 will mark the 200th bicentennial of one of its greatest, the railsplitter from Illinois.

I would like to suggest that Barack Obama, who represents the fulfillment...

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Obama's Big Congressional Victory

5 Comments | Posted November 20, 2008 | 12:24 PM (EST)


That thunderous crash you just heard emanating from Washington, DC was Henry Waxman's toppling of John Dingell to become chair of the energy and commerce committee. West Coast beats Midwest Coast. Good versus evil. A rotten oak has been felled.

Whatever you want to call it, it's a big...

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Hillary Clinton, Neocon Savior?

80 Comments | Posted November 19, 2008 | 10:27 AM (EST)


The neocons, deprived of a John McCain presidency, have latched onto a new potential female savior. No, it isn't Sarah Palin. It's Hillary Clinton. Two new pieces in the Weekly Standard make it clear that the neocons see Hillary as their best hope over the next four years. In "Hail...

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Obama Is Killing the GOP With Kindness

383 Comments | Posted November 17, 2008 | 04:22 PM (EST)


Now that Barack Obama and John McCain met on Monday, it's looking increasingly as though McCain will be offered a position by Obama. Where will Obama's team of rivals idea end? Will Dick Cheney be offered a post as well?

Maybe Hillary Clinton and McCain won't serve in the Obama...

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Obama's Team of Rivals

190 Comments | Posted November 14, 2008 | 09:54 AM (EST)


If Barack Obama asks Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State, it would be a brilliantly audacious political move. Choosing Clinton would elate her fans, soothing any lingering bruised feelings, and bring some major star power to the State Department. Clinton would possess real clout and, like Obama, serve as...

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Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington

26 Comments | Posted November 12, 2008 | 03:41 PM (EST)


The Democrats face two potential dilemmas in the Senate. The first one is easy: If they win the Senate seats still up for grabs, then they have to make nice with Senator Joseph Lieberman in order to secure a filibuster-proof majority.

The second one is a a lot trickier: does...

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Election Results Liveblog

Posted November 4, 2008 | 09:32 AM (EST)



Read more Election Day Liveblogs, Reaction and Analysis from HuffPost Bloggers

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Bush Expands His Unilateral Warfare Doctrine

105 Comments | Posted October 28, 2008 | 07:49 PM (EST)


Thought that the Bush administration was going to go quietly into the night? Think again. With his unilateral military strike this weekend four miles inside Syrian territory against an Iraqi insurgent leader, landing boots on the ground and thumbing his nose at the notion of Syrian sovereignty, Bush made it...

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The Tip of the Iceberg

61 Comments | Posted October 27, 2008 | 07:24 PM (EST)


The amazing thing about Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens isn't that he was convicted of seven counts of fraud. It's how trivial his infractions were in the first place, ranging from accepting a free massage chair to a dog sled. But even if Stevens is going down for fairly minor crimes,...

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McCain's New Stimulus Plan: Buying Palin Designer Clothes

5 Comments | Posted October 22, 2008 | 08:56 AM (EST)


The McCain campaign seems to have come up with an ingenious new trickle-down economic plan for ending the recession. Its stimulus program apparently involves spending hundreds of thousands in campaign funds at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue on Sarah Palin so that she can singlehandedly revive the slumping...

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Dick Cheney Endorses Barack Obama

19 Comments | Posted October 21, 2008 | 10:54 AM (EST)


In the latest example of conservatives flocking to the Obama camp, vice-president Dick Cheney emerged from his secret bunker this morning to announce that he, too, is supporting Barack Obama for president. A pensive Cheney said that, like Colin Powell, Christopher Buckley, Kenneth Adelman, and numerous other conservatives, he had...

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The Conservative Purge Has Begun

308 Comments | Posted October 15, 2008 | 05:31 AM (EST)


Christopher Buckley's announcement that he's supporting Barack Obama for the presidency comes as no surprise to me. Years ago Buckley, who worked as a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and reveres him, expressed his consternation to me about George W. Bush's dismal performance. He seemed to watch the self-destruction of...

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Let Obama Be Obama In the Debate

60 Comments | Posted October 14, 2008 | 11:02 AM (EST)


John McCain's campaign is in shambles. His advisers are bickering. He looks like he's finished.
Sound familiar? It's where McCain was in the Republican primary season before he rebounded from the precipice to win the nomination. With polls pegging McCain at some 10 points behind Barack Obama, most commentators...

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