Former New York Times Washington Correspondent Adam Clymer discusses his new book, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right.
Clymer argues that domination of the debate over the Panama Canal Treaties gave conservatives emotional appeal and helped build the foundation of the American conservative movement.
After the death of William Buckley, many pondered the origins of the modern conservative movement. But, most of this commentary emphasized the Reagan Administration's Cold War legacy, tax cuts, and market deregulation.
In Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch, Clymer tells the story of the Panama Canal throughout the Ford, Carter, and Reagan years, and explains how political divisions that surrounded it divided American politics for decades to come - New America Foundation
Bio
Steven C. Clemons
Steven Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America's interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America's democratic way of life. He is also a senior fellow at New America and previously served as executive vice president.
Publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note, Clemons is a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute and Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first executive director of the Nixon Center.
Prior to moving to Washington, Clemons served for seven years as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California, and he co-founded with Chalmers Johnson the Japan Policy Research Institute, of which he is still Director.
He is a member of the board of the Clarke Center at Dickinson College, a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pa., as well as an advisory board member of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. He is also a board member of the Global Policy Innovations Program at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and a member of the board of the Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund.
Clemons writes frequently on matters of foreign policy, defense, and international economic policy. His work has appeared in many of the major leading op-ed pages, journals, and magazines around the world.
Adam Clymer
Adam Clymer is a former Washington Correspondent at The New York Times and author of Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch.
Clymer is the winner of numerous awards, including the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress and the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association.