Andrew romano newsweek biography of donald

Before immigrants can become U.S. citizens, they have to pass an official test.

Recently, Newsweek magazine gave that same test to 1,000 Americans - and only 62 percent of them passed.

Read the Newsweek story

Twenty-nine percent of them didn't know the vice-president's name (Joe Biden) and 73 percent had no idea what the U.S. was fighting against during the Cold War (communism).

Newsweek Senior Writer Andrew Romano discussed the results on "The Early Show."

Co-anchor Erica Hill noted 23 percent of respondents didn't know what Martin Luther King Jr. did (fought for civil rights). Thirty-three percent, she said, didn't know when the Declaration of Independence was adopted (July 4, 1776). And only 37 percent knew there are nine justices on the Supreme Court.

Why don't people know these facts about their country?

Romano said, "There are a couple reasons when you talk to experts. One of the big ones is income inequality. We're one of the most unequal societies in the developed world. And when people don't have a lot of money, there is a difficulty getting a good education, there's a lack of opportunity and a lack of knowledge. That's one of the reasons why we don't do as well as northern European countries."

Hill asked, "So it's really a question of access?"

"It is," Romano said. "It's a big problem. We also have a very complicated system of government, much more complicated than some of these European countries. You have elections constantly for every imaginable office, you've got overlapping federal and state bureaucracies, and people kind of give up. They can't get their head around the whole thing."

Hill pointed out, "This isn't really a problem of -- or an issue, rather, a stupidity, it's more an issue of ignorance."

"That's exactly correct," Romano said. "There's a thing called deliberative polling that a professor at Stanford does. He gets people together in the room, polls them blind on a big issue, they have their opinions, they have their differe

Andrew Romano writes about politics as a National Correspondent for Yahoo News and you can imagine the intensity of his life the past four years, and especially the last few months. That's what pays the bills. 

He's also written for Apartamento, Monocle, and T magazine and I'm fairly certain if writing about design (particularly houses, particularly modernist ones from the last century) could add up financially he'd opt to do that full-time. "Design" is what first put him on my radar years ago, and it's his pictures and words about the subject (especially, again, when about mid-century houses) which he regularly posts on IG which have made him a VIF (very important follow) for me. I’m hoping some enterprising publisher sees this interview and gets him a multi-book deal with the idea he mentions...

There are no additional questions and/or comments from me in this week's interview, as Andrew gave such lovely little stand-alone jewels-of-answers, along with multiple links, that you barely need even read the questions. Nothing additional from me now as well so you, too, can (and will) enjoy Andrew. -Wes Del Val

WDV: What are your current thoughts and feelings on physical books in your life compared to at any other time in the past? 

AR: Sadly, the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve objectified books. 

As a kid I cottoned to language: reading at the dinner table, pretending to be a poet, majoring in American literature. I never really cared what my books looked like. I cared what was in them. 

But the technology that took off after I was a teenager in the ‘90s has of course liberated words from the printed page, and that in turn has forced books to justify their physicality. Like, why can’t this be a site or a feed or a post or a podcast or whatever? Why does it have to be a thing? 

That trend has certainly paralleled and probably influenced my own relationship with books. The books I have aro

[Andrew Romano was named Senior Writer in December 2008.]

Since winning the Republican senate primary in Delaware last month, Christine O’Donnell has not had trouble getting noticed. When the Tea Party icon admitted to “dabbl[ing] into witchcraft” as a youngster, the press went wild. When she revealed that she was “not a witch” after all, the response was rabid. O’Donnell has fudged her academic credentials, defaulted on her mortgage, sued a former employer, and campaigned against masturbation, and her efforts have been rewarded with round-the-clock coverage. Yet few observers seem to have given her views on the United States Constitution the same level of consideration. Which is too bad, because O’Donnell’s Tea Party take on our founding text is as unusual as her stance on autoeroticism. Except that it could actually have consequences.

Last month, the candidate spoke to 2,000 right-wing activists at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. She wore a black suit and pearls, and swept on stage to the sound of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Most of the speech was unremarkable: a laundry list of conservative platitudes. But near the end she veered into stranger—and more revealing—territory. O’Donnell once told voters that her “No. 1” qualification for the Senate is an eight-day course she took at a conservative think tank in 2002. Now she was revisiting its subject: the Constitution.

The Founders’ masterpiece, O’Donnell said, isn’t just a legal document; it’s a “covenant” based on “divine principles.” For decades, she continued, the agents of “anti-Americanism” who dominate “the D.C. cocktail crowd” have disrespected the hallowed document. But now, finally, in the “darker days” of the Obama administration, “the Constitution is making a comeback.” Like the “chosen people of Israel,” who “cycle[d] through periods of blessing and suffering,” the Tea Party has rediscovered America’s version