American Politics

If the pill had never been invented, perhaps American politics would be very different today. Sex has consumed the political debate in recent weeks. To many it has been a surprising turn of events, given the near-universal prediction that this year's election would be all about the economy. If the history of the bipartisan sexual counterrevolution were better known, no one would be surprised. Conflicts over gay marriage, transvaginal ultrasounds, Planned Parenthood funding and insurance coverage for birth control are not isolated events.

Los Angeles reached a benchmark half a century ago when the City Council's first African American was appointed to represent the area then known as South Central. Gilbert Lindsay, a former cotton field worker and city janitor, was chosen in 1963 to fill a vacant seat in the 9th Council District, which covered part of South Los Angeles. The appointment helped make "The Great 9th," as Lindsay took to calling it, a hub of black political clout. Two generations later, with the seat open and the March 5 election approaching, the area that gave birth to historic South Central Avenue and the city's black middle-class culture has a far different political landscape.

Osama bin Laden is alive and well. President Obama is a closet Kenyan. Arnold Schwarzenegger hid his out-of-wedlock child with the help of scheming reporters. Most people dismiss such talk as obviously untrue, if not downright nutty. But to the conspiracy-minded, those assertions are not just plausible but absolutely true, making them just the latest threads in a long American tradition of suspicion and skepticism that is woven deep within our political and cultural DNA. Salem witches.

Wasn't this supposed to be the election in which "super PACs" and other outside groups took over American politics and swept Democrats out of office? Judging from all the gnashing of teeth following the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, that's what a lot of pundits were expecting. And those expectations seemed to be coming true when, starting with the Republican primary race and then in the general election, wealthy conservative donors poured unprecedented amounts of cash into independent political spending groups such as Karl Rove's Crossroads organizations and the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity.

I have Warren Beatty to thank for getting my East Coast friends to call me earlier than usual, usual being when the first snow falls in the Adirondacks and Los Angeles begins to look suddenly tolerable on their culture versus climate scale. "So," they ask, as casually as they can, "is Warren Beatty really going to run for president?" and then, no matter what the answer, the next question is, "What's he really like?"

A few hours after lunch with his old buddy President Bush last week, the Irish rock star Bono, a guitar slung low over his hips, paused near the climax of a raucous U2 concert to ask 20,000 fans to sign up to save the world. From a mammoth stage in a downtown Washington arena, Bono asked his audience to lift their cellphones and send a text message that would connect them to an organization he helped launch last year to prod the U.S.

"Compassionate conservatism" or "practical idealism"--choose your non-poison, in English or in Spanish. Two center-conscious politicians, George W. Bush and Al Gore, seem determined to overlap each other's idiom, as well as ideology. Bush said on Monday that he was against abortion "litmus tests" for judges, putting one more nail in the coffin of the Republican right-to-life movement.

Not only Jews should celebrate the latest breakthrough toward Middle East peace. The accord signed by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat is one more proof that the cynical realism and sophisticated pessimism that are the hallmarks of American political debate are often unrealistic. Moral passion and prophetic vision can sometimes break the stalemates imposed by our stereotyped fears of "the other."

In American politics, some issues are never resolved. That is the jagged reminder emerging from the past few weeks of racial unease and political turbulence in states from New York to Arizona. The angry clashes between blacks, whites and Asians in Brooklyn; the black Harvard Law School professor vowing to strike until the school hires a black female colleague; the threat by Arizona conservatives to launch an initiative drive to repeal the state's new holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

The latest micro-trend in the American media is the discovery that politics in general--and the Democratic Party in particular--is hopelessly dysfunctional. And so say the authors of the newest title in the library of political despair, "Chain Reaction." "The national Democratic Party enters the fray tired, buckling at the knees after five defeats in six rounds; its defenses down, gasping for a second wind," they write of the upcoming 1992 presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON - Even more than the election that made Barack Obama the first black president, the one that returned him to office sent an unmistakable signal that the hegemony of the straight white male in America is over. The long drive for broader social participation by all Americans reached a turning point in the 2012 election, which is likely to go down as a watershed in the nation's social and political evolution - and not just because in some states voters approved of same-sex marriage for the first time.

While dozens of states, mostly those dominated by Republican legislatures and governors, have spent the past few years devising ways to suppress votes in the guise of cracking down on voter fraud, California has embarked on the opposite course - making voting in California easier and more consequential. That trend will continue in the coming months as a result of innovation and smart use of technology, and it will receive yet another boost should the governor sign a bill, AB 1436, which would allow voters to register up to and on election day. These are welcome developments that address the real crisis in contemporary American politics - voter disinterest.

The situation remained tense for U.S. overseas personnel Thursday, as diplomatic outposts through much of the Muslim world faced harsh protests from extremists. The demonstrations came a day after a mob killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. The episode continued to resonate in American politics, as well, particularly because Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney argued that President Obama had sympathized with foreign protesters more than with the American victims.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The chairman of the California Democratic Party likened Republicans to a Nazi propagandist Monday morning. “They lie and they don't care if people think they lie … Joseph Goebbels - it's the big lie, you keep repeating it,” John Burton told reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle and CBS News before a delegation breakfast. He said GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan told “a bold-faced lie and he doesn't care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie.” Goebbels was the Nazis' minister of propaganda.

Rude, rowdy and raunchy,"The Campaign"gleefully skewers the current sad state of American politics. With a target that tempting, it's not surprising that this cynical and funny film hits more often than it misses. Starring practiced comics Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as two politicians who do not hesitate to stoop as low as it takes to claim victory, "The Campaign" allows Jay Roach to nicely reconcile the divergent strands of his directing career. Roach has become known to HBO audiences in recent years as the director of a pair of smart, trenchant political dramas, the Sarah Palin-focused "Game Change" and "Recount," a look at the Bush-Gore Florida standoff, which won him a directing Emmy.

The McSweeney's Book of Politics & Musicals Edited by Christopher Monks Vintage: 347 pp., $14.95 paper Forget the theatrical success of "The Book of Mormon. " What about "Palin! The Musical"? You can't help tapping your toes and singing along during the scene in which the former Alaska governor confronts Levi Johnston about her daughter's maternal condition: I hunt with a shotgun, Not a musket or pistol. I'm holding one now, Will you marry my Bristol?

The McSweeney's Book of Politics & Musicals Edited by Christopher Monks Vintage: 347 pp., $14.95 paper Forget the theatrical success of "The Book of Mormon. " What about "Palin! The Musical"? You can't help tapping your toes and singing along during the scene in which the former Alaska governor confronts Levi Johnston about her daughter's maternal condition: I hunt with a shotgun, Not a musket or pistol. I'm holding one now, Will you marry my Bristol?

When it comes to big money in politics, Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons' influence has long been apparent in Texas, where he has plowed more than $1 million into Rick Perry's gubernatorial campaigns. Now Simmons has found a new outlet for his outsize political giving — the explosion this election cycle of "super PACs," independent political organizations that can accept massive contributions to influence the presidential race and other federal elections. Simmons and his privately held holding company, Contran Corp., dumped $8.6 million into a series of GOP-allied super PACs last year, according to campaign finance records released late Tuesday night.

Partisan differences now divide Americans more sharply than distinctions of race, religion, education or sex as a decade-long wave has pushed Democrats and Republicans to opposite corners on a wide range of formerly less partisan issues. On matters as disparate as environmental protection, support for the social safety net and immigration, former areas of bipartisan agreement have dissolved as Democrats have moved left and Republicans have shifted to the right, according to a major new study by the Pew Research Center , which has tracked American values over the last 25 years.

The man who made his political bones handling Boston's blizzard of 1978 has spent the last 17 winters in the sunshine glow of UCLA. Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and the 1988 Democratic presidential candidate for president, is a visiting professor at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, launching young people into the public service careers he endorses so passionately. UCLA is where he staged his last fervent campaign rally the day before he lost toGeorge H.W. Bush; the day after the election, he was back at his governor's desk.