Polls show that most Americans wanted the United States to withdraw from Iraq. Barack Obama did indeed withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, not troubling to negotiate a readily negotiable status of forces agreement that would have left a contingent of American soldiers there.
President Obama evidently was caught by surprise by the scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
So, apparently, was VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, who evidently took at face value the corrupt VA statistics -- and who, after a distinguished military career, resigned last week.
One who was probably not taken by surprise is longtime Yale Law Professor Peter Schuck, who identified the problems at the VA before the scandal broke in his recently published book, "Why Government Fails So Often and How It Can Do Better."
Last week I set out a 2016 nightmare scenario for Republicans -- not one that seems likely, but one that can be extrapolated from current polling.
The opinion pages, economic journals and liberal websites are atwitter (a-Twitter?) these days over French economist Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century." Left-wingers cite Piketty's statistics showing growing wealth inequality -- though some have been challenged by the Financial Times -- in support of Piketty's policy response, huge taxes on high incomes and accumulated wealth.
One suspects that many of his fans have another agenda in mind. They'd like to gull a majority of the 99 percent to vote for parties that would put their friends in control of an engorged state apparatus.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, (www.washingtonexaminer.com), where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The 2016 presidential election is shaping up as another close race, like the last four. From 2000 to 2012, both major parties' nominees received between 45 and 53 percent of the vote.
Gummit don't work good. That conclusion, often that inelegantly expressed, seems to be more and more common, not only in the United States but around the world.
LONDON -- British politics has a familiar look to Americans, with a center-right Conservative Party and a center-left Labour Party resembling America's Republicans and Democrats.
Britain's parliamentary system, however, presents a contrast with the U.S. Constitution on the surface. A prime minister whose party has a majority in the House of Commons can pass any law he or she likes, since members of Parliament almost always vote on party lines.
In recent times, British and American politics have often flowed in parallel currents.
Demography is destiny, we are often told, and rightly -- up to a point. The American electorate is made up of multiple identifiable segments, defined in various ways, by race and ethnicity, by age cohort, by region and religiosity (or lack thereof), by economic status and interest.
Over time, some segments become larger and some smaller. Some prove to be politically crucial, given the political alignments of the time. Others become irrelevant as they lose cohesion and identity.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, (www.washingtonexaminer.com), where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Results of Tuesday's primaries, particularly the victory of state House Speaker Thom Tillis in North Carolina's Republican Senate primary, are being hailed -- or decried -- as a victory for the Republican establishment over the Tea Party movement.
There's something to that. Tillis benefited from support from Karl Rove's American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and endorsements by Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.
Second-term presidencies are an opportunity for bipartisan compromise. The institutional stars are in alignment to address long-range problems not amenable in other circumstances.
The president is barred from running for a third term and thus does not have to worry about his next campaign. In Congress, members of the president's party, with some reason to fear losses in the off-year election, may be willing to compromise before their bargaining leverage weakens.
For a president who hasn't enjoyed many foreign policy successes lately, Barack Obama did pretty well on his just completed trip to Asia.
In Japan, he reiterated in no uncertain terms the American defense commitment, including on the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which China also claims and calls the Diaoyus.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, (www.washingtonexaminer.com), where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
French economist Thomas Piketty's book "Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century" has been inspiring a lot of comment and controversy. The English translation published last month zipped to No. 1 on amazon.com.
It has given a lift to economists on the Left who have cheered on Barack Obama's flagging attempts to make income inequality a voting issue. They have hailed it as "truly superb" and "extraordinarily important."
Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, (www.washingtonexaminer.com), where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Have the Republicans become the white man's party? Are the depth and bitterness of Republicans' opposition to Barack Obama and his administration the product of racism?
Those are questions you hear in the clash of political argument, and you will hear plenty of answers in the affirmative if you click onto MSNBC or salon.com with any regularity.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, (www.washingtonexaminer.com), where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Last week, masked men in camouflage garb with no insignia, dressed and equipped like Russian special forces, started taking over police stations and other government buildings in the Donets basin in Eastern Ukraine. They appeared to be working in tandem with local militias in defying the Ukrainian government.
This week, the Ukrainian government has responded by sending in military forces to counter these actions. There has been shooting and violence. But Ukraine's military doesn't seem capable of asserting control.
An economist serving on a second-term president's Council of Economic Advisers might expect to weigh in on fundamental issues, restructuring the tax system or making entitlement programs sustainable over the long term. Barack Obama once talked of addressing such issues, and Republican leaders such as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are doing so.
Forty years is roughly the length of a working lifetime -- and long enough for history to have taken some unexpected turns. And to have proved that long-term forecasts based on extrapolations of existing trends usually end up wide of the mark.
The list of failed prophecies from the 1970s is rather long. The conventional wisdom of the time was more than usually unreliable.
If you've been following events in Ukraine closely, you may have seen maps, available at electoralgeography.com, showing how the ethnic Russian areas voted heavily for one candidate and the ethnic Ukrainian areas for another.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1830, he was struck by how many Americans were participating in voluntary associations. It was quite a contrast with his native France, where power was centralized in Paris and people did not trust each other enough to join in voluntary groups.
Tocqueville might have a different impression should he, utilizing time travel, visit the America of 2030. Or so I conclude on reading the recently released Pew Research Center report on the attitudes and behavior of America's Millennial generation.
America's two major political parties are inevitably coalitions, forced by the winner-take-all Electoral College and the need of candidates in single-member congressional districts to amass 50 percent of the vote, or nearly that, to win election.
