Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow's agreeable demeanor and gentle sense of humor distinguish her from most of the hothead hosts that dominate prime-time news networks. Her “Rachel Maddow Show” is as zippy and entertaining as anything else on MSNBC, and though she's unabashedly liberal, she's first and foremost a policy wonk who loves a good, civil debateher interviews with libertarian Rand Paul remain some of the smartest cable conversations of the last several years. Maddow has hit the road to promote her first book, <i>Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power</i>, which takes past presidents (and sometimes the current one) to task for their overreaching military policies, but it's a safe bet that she'll use at least some of her stage time to weigh in on Wisconsin's volatile politics and the upcoming recall election.