I spent the first 16 years of my career at The New Republic, an ideologically heterodox but center-left magazine centered on politics and based in Washington. In 2011, I made a change that I have never regretted for a single moment: I joined New York Magazine. After 13 wonderful years here, I am making another change: I am joining The Atlantic.
It felt a bit like moving to a different country — but a wonderful new country, with strange, fascinating customs of its own you come to appreciate through close and sustained exposure. New York is, well, New York. It is a national magazine, but its sensibility is very much rooted in America’s cultural capital rather than its political capital, where I’ve continued to live and work all along.
At New York, I’ve had the chance to work with people who see the world from a different perspective than mine, and to have my writing featured in a first-rate magazine alongside some of the best reporters, critics, and editors in the country. And while they have a diverse array of skills and interests, one thing I’ve found they all share is that nearly every one of them is much, much cooler than I am. One thing I have discovered from this experience is that, up close, cool people can be much nicer to the uncool than you might expect.
With the benefit of a talented and enthusiastic team of editors, I have been able to write hundreds of columns and features during this time that I look back on with pride. How Paul Ryan gulled the entire national press corps; the return of illiberal norms around race and gender; how Donald Trump was enabled by a broader rise of authoritarian thought on the American right; how the Democratic turn against Obama produced the failures of the Biden presidency; and obsessive daily coverage online of episodes like the debt-ceiling showdown under Obama and Donald Trump’s crusade to repeal Obamacare. To cite more than just a handful would devolve into (and perhaps already has devolved into) a tedious list.
Over the past 13 years I have watched the national political environment roll back and forth several times. When I began, Obama was beginning to beat back a reactionary national mood that treated him as a socialist naïf who was risking a Greece-like fiscal crisis with his free-spending ways. His reelection fostered an atmosphere of triumph (which I shared), which led to the hubris that a rising liberal tide in the electorate would free Democrats from the need to compromise their beliefs. Then came Trump, followed by the repudiation of Trump, followed by the repudiation of the repudiation of Trump.
Things change faster than you think. Keep that in mind when you listen to the current din of Trumpists beating their chests about their candidate squeezing out a margin of probably less than 2 percent in a global atmosphere of incumbent parties losing everywhere.
Meanwhile, though, Trump and his party continue to grow more illiberal and dangerous, which makes the risks of their power ever greater. Clear thinking and open debate are more vital than ever. I have tried my best to advocate for and to contribute to a culture of fearless, honest argument.
My time at New York went better than I could have possibly hoped. When I think about why I am making this change now, the phrase that keeps popping into my head is, “It’s time for me to go back to my home planet now.” As I leave with fondness, I hope and believe this magazine’s best days are still ahead of it, and so are mine.
