Run, Arnold, Run!

Despite Disqualifying Constitutional Limits on His Candidacy, Trump Is Running for President. Only You-Know-Who Can Help Our FUBAR Country

Dear Arnold,

I’m enjoying your new Netflix action series, FUBAR. You’re funny and convincing as a retiring CIA agent who is pulled back into a very messed-up intelligence conflict because he didn’t realize his daughter is also a secret agent.

You also may not realize that, in real life, the door just opened for you to be pulled back into the FUBAR (“F’ed Up Beyond All Recognition”) of our national politics. I’m writing to ask you to walk through that door immediately, and run for president for the good of our country …

by Joe Mathews | January 9, 2024

Dianne Feinstein’s Most Important Job Was an Unofficial One

Appreciating California’s Last Ambassador to the United States

by Joe Mathews | October 4, 2023

The death of Dianne Feinstein isn’t just the end of a pathbreaking life. Or a generational shift in power in the U.S. Senate.

It’s the …

Jimmy Carter’s Pragmatic Path to Power

An Idealist in and After Office, He Became a Governor and a President By Appealing to Racial and Class Prejudice

by James C. Cobb | September 28, 2023

Former president Jimmy Carter, who will be 99 this Sunday, October 1, was only 46 when he first popped up on the national political radar. After declaring in his 1971 …

When the Public Narrative Fails

In a Nation That’s Lost Its Way, Literature—the Private Narratives of Others—Can Guide Us

by David L. Ulin | August 11, 2022

Leave it to Joan Didion. In her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” published in 1967, she identified a kind of slippage in our culture, the breakdown of collective narrative. “The center …

Why Tolerate Intolerance?

It’s Easy to Cancel Political Opponents With Harmful Views—It’s Also Dangerous to Democracy

by TAYLOR DOTSON | November 15, 2021

Is it better to tolerate seemingly prejudiced political opinions, or should we be intolerant of people whose views on diversity, equity, and identity strike us as harmful?

I am an advocate …

How 1970s Pop Culture Cemented Today’s Partisan Divisions

Journalist Ronald Brownstein Explores the Creative Explosion in Los Angeles That Prefigures Our Current Politics

by Sara Suárez | April 23, 2021

Longtime political journalist Ronald Brownstein paid a visit to Zócalo yesterday to speak about his new book, Rock Me On the Water: 1974- The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, …

American politics