U.S. Presidency

Both John McCain and Barack Obama are courting the religious vote, but whose campaign will be more effective? Journalist Dan Gilgoff, the politics editor for Beliefnet.com, discusses the candidates' tactics.

Marlin Fitzwater spent 17 years as a government employee before being appointed White House press secretary under Ronald Reagan. He also worked for George H. W. Bush.

United States security has long been a primary issue for the conservative movement. But is an aggressive foreign policy actually counterproductive? Author J. Peter Scoblic says yes.

Parsing the presidential candidates' tax plans is necessary to understanding their general takes on the economy. Economist Len Burman has been doing just that. He is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, which has just released a report comparing the candidates' proposed tax policies.

To win this coming election, presidential candidate John McCain must prove that he is as strong on the economy as he is on military and foreign affairs. His senior economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, discusses McCain's approach to economic policy.

Jason Furman has been given the task of formulating Barack Obama's economic policy. He's the presidential hopeful's top economic adviser, and he will talk about where Obama stands on the most pressing economic issues.

Barack Obama has been portrayed as an outsider candidate — an idealist not mired in the political game. But Ryan Lizza says that a look at Obama's political history in Chicago might offer a different view of the candidate. Lizza is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, and has been tracking the Obama campaign.

When the candidate was assassinated 40 years ago, Hamill was there: He was Kennedy's friend and had helped persuade him to run for president. A journalist and author, Hamill covered the story for The Village Voice.

The former White House spokesman rocked the capital last week with a provocative memoir. He joins Terry Gross to talk about What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

Fresh Air's TV critic reviews HBO's Recount, about the uncertain and still-controversial aftermath of the U.S. presidential election. The movie stars Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern and Tom Wilkinson.

In 1964, Democrat Lyndon Johnson won the presidency in a landslide victory; eight years later, Republican president Richard Nixon was reelected in an equally lopsided race. In his new book, Nixonland, historian Rick Perlstein looks at the chaotic years between those elections.

Iran's president was relatively unknown on the international stage before he was elected, but he's a standard-bearer for a new generation of hardliners. In a new biography, journalist Kasra Naji explores Ahmadinejad's rise to power, his complex character and his motivations.

Al Gore made waves for his work raising awareness on climate-change issues. Another poisonous environment has captured his attention as well: a climate that threatens reasonable public discourse.

In the upcoming issue of the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh writes that the United States may be closer to armed conflict with Iran than previously imagined.

"Bush's War," a two-part special from the PBS series Frontline, investigates the lead-up to — and the justification for — the U.S. war in Iraq. Journalist and Frontline producer Michael Kirk joins Fresh Air to discuss the program.

If there's one thing the presidential primary candidates agree on, it's that the American health-care system could use some treatment — if not a complete overhaul. Political scientist Jonathan Oberlander diagnoses the ailments and examines the remedies offered by each candidate.

With Mitt Romney out and John McCain looking like the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, the GOP's conservative base is rethinking its options. The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick analyzes reaction on the right.

Slate columnist Fred Kaplan offers a scathing critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy initiatives in his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.

Delegates, superdelegates, penalized states with half their delegates — or none. This year's political primaries are putting renewed focus on the delegate system, but what does it all mean? Political scientist David Rohde clarifies.

Slate magazine editor Jacob Weisberg has a few things to say about the presidency of George W. Bush. He's assembled his thoughts in a book called The Bush Tragedy, which Time magazine political columnist Joe Klein calls a "scorching, powerful and entirely plausible account" of an administration whose "epic collapse" Klein has lately been writing about.