U.S. Presidency

David Kirkpatrick is a correspondent in the Washington bureau for The New York Times. He covered the politics of the conservative Christian movement in the 2004 election, and has been following the presidential campaign of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

As head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith led the team of lawyers that advises the presidency on the limits of executive power. During his tenure, he battled the Bush White House on the now-infamous "torture memos," as well as on issues of surveillance and the detention and trial of suspected terrorists. Goldsmith resigned his post after nine months.

Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for a series detailing how often President Bush used "signing statements" — controversial assertions of a chief executive's right to bypass provisions of new laws.

Now Savage has written a book describing how the Bush-Cheney administration has expanded executive power. It's called Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.

Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe. He's been writing about a Christian law school, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, whose graduates have become influential in the Justice Department.

One of those Regent University graduates is Monica Goodling, former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Savage writes that Goodling has "drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations."

In Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, historian Michael Beschloss takes a look at nine crucial moments when a president risked his political career for the good of the country, often by taking an unpopular or controversial stand.

Presidential historian Robert Dallek has written about LBJ, JFK, FDR and Ronald Reagan. Now, in his book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, he tackles two political titans he describes as "self-serving characters with grandiose dreams of recasting world affairs."

Charlie Savage Talks with Monique Nazareth.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) is serving out his term after being ousted by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in the midterm elections. Considered to be the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Chafee is the only one to have voted against the war in Iraq. He made another notable split with the GOP when he opposed the nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations.

The election results didn't just reshuffle the Congress -- they also got people debating the meanings of the labels people use to map out the political spectrum. Our linguist Geoff Nunberg has been thinking about what's in a label.

Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent for The New York Times, was recently in Iraq. He discusses efforts to stem the violence in Baghdad, and the prospects for change in American policy. His recent book is Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

Election reform expert Dan Seligson is the editor of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan and non-advocacy organization that tracks and analyzes election reform issues. The site is a venture of the Election Reform Information Project.

NAACP officers Marvin "Doc" Cheatham and Rev. Nelson B. Rivers, III, talk about manipulation of African-American voters, and the efforts they are making to change the voting landscape. Cheatham is the seventh president of the NAACP Baltimore city branch, and an election specialist. He's also the founder and chairman of the Maryland Voting Rights Restoration Coalition. Rivers is CEO of the NAACP.

H. James Towey is the former director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He is David Kuo's former boss. He responds to Kuo's criticisms of the Bush administration's follow through on the initiatives. Towey is now president of the Benedictine Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Penn.

Journalists Mark Halperin and John Harris have collaborated on a new book, The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008. Halperin is the political director of ABC News and creator of "The Note," its online tip sheet. Harris is the national political editor of The Washington Post. They write that the United States is "on the brink of what promises to be one of the most intensely fought and consequential presidential elections in its history."

Journalist Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, is a follow-up to his previous books on the Bush administration. In the new book, Woodward says that the Bush administration has avoided telling the truth about the Iraq war to the public, to Congress, and to itself. Woodward is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and has been a newspaper reporter and editor for 35 years.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich's new book is The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina. Rich has been with the Times since 1980, when he was named chief theater critic.

Charlie Savage is based in Washington for the Boston Globe and recently wrote an investigative piece about the civil rights section of the Department of Justice, where he found that staffers with legal expertise are being replaced by conservatives with little experience but who promote right wing Christian values.

Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, talks about his new book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes a hard look at the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq.

For 17 years, former Vice President Al Gore has been on the forefront of warning against global warming. But in his new documentary, The Inconvenient Truth, he says that he "failed to get the message out." He's now getting the message out with his documentary and new book of the same name. The Washington Post calls the book "downright chilling." The documentary has been critically acclaimed.

The popular NBC White House drama The West Wing wraps up seven years on the air on Sunday night with a final episode. Our TV critic has a retrospective of the series, and we feature previous interviews with some of the actors.