Wow!

Snip...

In 2004, the New Yorker endorsed Democrat John Kerry for president, the first presidential endorsement in the magazine's history. Remnick has only one regret.

"In retrospect, I wish we had convinced more people," he says, adding he expects political endorsements to continue. "I have no regrets about that whatsoever. Not only do I think we were right (to make an endorsement), I also thought it was overly decorous of the New Yorker in the comments section to engage every issue on the face of the earth but not have anything to say on the presidential election."

Some wish that the New Yorker had taken a bolder stance in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. A June 2003 essay published in the Nation said, "Just as (the New Yorker) helped middle class opinion to coalesce against U.S. intervention in Vietnam, it might well have served a similar function today by clarifying what is at stake in the Middle East."

Remnick shakes his head and furrows his brows at mention of the Nation essay. True, he believed the same faulty intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that most other journalists did, though he was ambivalent about the invasion. But he defended the New Yorker's coverage of the war.

"I thought (the Nation essay) was a foolish piece and a dishonest piece," Remnick says. "The idea that the New Yorker as a magazine was pro-war is preposterous."

For the past several years, much of the magazine's most critical political coverage has come from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, whose reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison story led to several criminal investigations. Last month, Hersh wrote that the United States is intensifying plans for an attack on Iran. President Bush responded by calling the story "wild speculation."

While other editors stay awake nights worrying about running the type of no-named-sources stories that Hersh specializes in, Remnick says he knows "every source in the piece." By name?

"Absolutely. So does the checker, and we call them. Sometimes, we say, 'Sy, does this have to be as vague as it is?' And he'll answer yes or no."

more...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/26/DDGN3ITK5B85.DTL

The damage visited upon America, and upon America’s standing in the world, by the Bush Administration’s reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.

Throughout his long career in public service, John Kerry has demonstrated steadiness and sturdiness of character. The physical courage he showed in combat in Vietnam was matched by moral courage when he raised his voice against the war, a choice that has carried political costs from his first run for Congress, lost in 1972 to a campaign of character assassination from a local newspaper that could not forgive his antiwar stand, right through this year’s Swift Boat ads. As a senator, Kerry helped expose the mischief of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, a money-laundering operation that favored terrorists and criminal cartels; when his investigation forced him to confront corruption among fellow-Democrats, he rejected the cronyism of colleagues and brought down power brokers of his own party with the same dedication that he showed in going after Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal. His leadership, with John McCain, of the bipartisan effort to put to rest the toxic debate over Vietnam-era P.O.W.s and M.I.A.s and to lay the diplomatic groundwork for Washington’s normalization of relations with Hanoi, in the mid-nineties, was the signal accomplishment of his twenty years on Capitol Hill, and it is emblematic of his fairness of mind and independence of spirit. Kerry has made mistakes (most notably, in hindsight at least, his initial opposition to the Gulf War in 1990), but—in contrast to the President, who touts his imperviousness to changing realities as a virtue—he has learned from them.

In the face of infuriating and scurrilous calumnies, he kept the sort of cool that the thin-skinned and painfully insecure incumbent cannot even feign during the unprogrammed give-and-take of an electoral debate. Kerry’s mettle has been tested under fire—the fire of real bullets and the political fire that will surely not abate but, rather, intensify if he is elected—and he has shown himself to be tough, resilient, and possessed of a properly Presidential dose of dignified authority. While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America’s mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that this election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half century. That insistence is a measure of his character. He is plainly the better choice. As observers, reporters, and commentators we will hold him to the highest standards of honesty and performance. For now, as citizens, we hope for his victory.
— The Editors