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Power Knowledge

A collection of 36 issues

How to Go On Offense When the Powerful Want Us On Defense

"This will be our reply to violence," wrote New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein after President Kennedy was assassinated, "to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." The night before, Mr. Bernstein had led the Philharmonic in Mahler’s Second Symphony, known

A Gentle Guide For Hard Times

This is a noisy season, isn't it? Rapidly accumulating headlines on top of posts on top of podcasts on top of people at the gym saying, "Can you believe that they're going to..." We couldn't be blamed in this young year for

Which Politicians We Should Pay Attention to Right Now

"Folks come to Washington to do one of two things, " Senator Mitch McConnell said from the Senate floor one December day. "To make a point. Or to make a difference." The politicians who're in Congress to make a point might be making the finest

What's Worth Our Attention Right Now

Years ago, my mother took a nail, hammered it into the kitchen wall, and hung the prayer. "Grant me the serenity," it started in dark calligraphy, "to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the

Decoding Those Political Ads

One chilly autumn evening, as I watched the Phillies kiss another win farewell, a political ad caught my eye. A young candidate in flannel was talking to a group of weather-worn fisherman on a pier. A real tough-guy voiceover promised that this candidate would hold so and so accountable, would

The Race We Aren't Talking About

I want to talk about 26 people in a rural pocket of Maine. But let's set the scene first. We're about 12 miles northwest of Portland in a town called Windham. It's home to about 19,000 people, give or take a few hundred

The Secret to Bipartisanship

White oaks are in a bad way. They need what we all need: sunlight, nourishment, some room to grow. But those wise old controlled burns – the ones the Narragansett, Wampanoag, Pequot used to do to thin out the beeches, birches, maples so the oaks could have some space already – those

Understanding Politicians' Power & Our Own

Not too long ago, I was giving a summertime workshop on policymaking. And everything I was saying could be boiled down to two syllables: power. The bones, marrow, and heart of policymaking is power - who has it, who stands to gain or lose it. And the more we understand

Understanding Why Politicians Take Foolish Votes

It's Washington D.C., 1957, Frank Church's first day as a United States Senator from Idaho. And Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson is turning the screws on him. "Now Frank, you are the youngest member of this Senate, and you have a great future..." the

How to Beef Up Cancer Funding in Two Steps

Who do you think the largest funder of cancer research in the world is? It's not Susan G. Komen or Lance Armstrong, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or the American Cancer Society. It's actually you and me. Our taxpayer dollars fund