Several new features launch in the Washington Examiner magazine this week. We’re delighted with them and hope you will be, too.
The biggest change is to the Life & Arts section, where we introduce weekly film and television reviews and increase our books coverage to at least two articles a week, sometimes three. We’ve always wanted to write more about books, and an autumn survey confirmed that readers approve.
Jay Cost reviews Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, by Lee Drutman, which argues that the two-party system fosters horrible polarization and should be replaced by an electoral system based on proportional representation. Cost acknowledges the merits of this but rejects PR as unworkable and as the product of a left-leaning technocratic mindset. In this week’s other book review, of Robert Musil’s Agathe, or the Forgotten Sister, Adrian Nathan West uses this new translation based on unfinished writings to discuss the legacy of one of the 20th century’s most overlooked authors.
On film, Daniel Ross Goodman reviews the Safdie brothers’ new movie, Uncut Gems, starring Adam Sandler. And Jibran Khan explores traditionalism in the new TV series The Mandalorian.
One other regular addition to Life & Arts is Long Life , a new column by screenwriter Rob Long. Rob has entertained audiences and readers in various forms for decades and now joins Eric Felten as a back-of-the-book columnist bringing wit, erudition, intellectual curiosity, and humanity on diverse subjects. I’m thrilled he’s joining us.
Elsewhere, in the Business section, we are launching a new weekly finance and economics column by Stephen Moore. Moore is a former member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, a founder and former president of the Club for Growth, and chief economist at the Heritage Foundation. He also worked as a senior economic adviser to President Trump’s 2016 election campaign and later collaborated on the 2017 tax reforms with Larry Kudlow, now director of the president’s National Economic Council.
We hope you’ll enjoy these new elements and continue to give us your feedback.
Our cover story is “Trump’s 2020 Vision.” W. James Antle III takes the start of election year as an opportunity to assess Trump’s chances as he cranks up his campaign. What will he focus on? Which Democrat will he face? Will his impeachment and the mayhem of his tenure help or harm him? The president has brought much odium on himself, but he’s also endured a more intense and dishonest onslaught from critics than any president in modern history.
Elsewhere, T. Becket Adams unpacks the vast media failings of coverage of the “Russia collusion” imbroglio, which were made incontrovertibly plain by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
