Card Check: Good for Unions, Bad for America By Michael Barone
The Obama administration's budget is full of proposals that threaten to weaken our staggering economy.
Commentary by Michael Barone
Most Recent Releases
March 21, 2009
March 14, 2009
Criticism Shows Obama Is Losing Focus By Michael Barone
We've been hearing a lot of criticism of Barack Obama in recent days from pro-Obama corners -- from celebrity investor Warren Buffett, from moderate conservative columnist David Brooks, from one of the Democratic Party's deepest thinkers, William Galston -- all along the same lines.
March 7, 2009
Crushing Those Animal Spirits By Michael Barone
"Animal spirits," said John Maynard Keynes, are the essential spring of capitalism. We depend on the animal spirits of investors, high earners and entrepreneurs for a growing economy.
February 28, 2009
Liberals Turning Blind Eye to Human Rights By Michael Barone
On the last day of her trip to East Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke briefly of the place of human rights in American policy toward China. "Our pressing on those issues" -- issues she didn't identify any more fully -- "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."
February 21, 2009
Count on the Constitution By Michael Barone
All of America was watching Barack Obama on Jan. 20 as he promised to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." But few thought that, within a month, controversy would arise over the Constitution's census clause.
February 14, 2009
The Real Lessons of the Great Depression By Michael Barone
"Not since the Great Depression." "Not since the 1930s." You hear those phrases a lot these days, and with some reason. As Congress prepares to pass the Democratic stimulus package, it may be worthwhile to look back at Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and consider how well it worked as policy -- and politically.
February 7, 2009
Calm and Cool on a No Good, Very Bad Day By Michael Barone
Tuesday, Feb. 3, was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Barack Obama.
January 31, 2009
The GOP Should Go Upscale By Michael Barone
There's a debate going on in some Republican circles over which groups of the electorate the party should target.
January 24, 2009
The Obama-Kennedy Connection By Michael Barone
Last Tuesday, for the 22nd time in 220 years, Americans saw the peaceful post-election transfer of power from one political party to another. In our great outdoor national ceremony, scheduled for some reason on a day that is as likely as any other to be the coldest of the year, Barack Obama took the oath as our 44thth president and spoke to the nation for 19 minutes in a speech that was far more somber than the mood of the crowd of 2 million on the Mall.
January 17, 2009
Is a Change in Migration Patterns at Hand? By Michael Barone
Evidence keeps accumulating that the tide of immigration is ebbing. Tough enforcement laws passed by states like Arizona and Oklahoma and localities like Prince William County, Va., have reportedly spurred Latino immigrants to move elsewhere.
January 3, 2009
No Permanent Majorities in America By Michael Barone
As we approach the change from a Republican to a Democratic administration, I have been thinking about the differences in the basic character of our two historic parties -- the oldest and third oldest free political parties in the world (number two, at least by my count, is the British Conservative Party).
December 27, 2008
Obama May Be an Aloof President By Michael Barone
Barack Obama and his family are vacationing in his native Hawaii, far from the wintry snows of Chicago -- and far from almost every other American politician.
December 20, 2008
Expectations of Hope and Change By Michael Barone
A new generation is coming to the White House. Barack Obama, born in 1961, is technically a baby boomer. But his early years were straight out of Generation X -- abandoned by his father and, for a time, his mother; experimentation with drugs; a sense of drifting.
December 14, 2008
Chicago Politics Stains Obama By Michael Barone
I have not seen it recorded whether John F. Kennedy, after he was elected president in 1960, held conversations with Massachusetts Gov. Foster Furcolo as to who would be appointed to fill his seat in the Senate.
December 6, 2008
Message From Georgia: This Too Shall Pass By Michael Barone
The world doesn't stand still. Case in point: the Georgia runoff election last week made necessary because Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss failed, barely, to win an absolute majority on Nov. 4. In that contest, Chambliss led Democratic challenger Jim Martin by 3 percent. In the runoff, he won by 14.8 percent. Same candidates, very different result.
November 29, 2008
Managing Risk in an Unstable World By Michael Barone
How can we reduce risk for individuals? That's a natural question when a financial crisis has vaporized trillions of dollars of personal wealth in residential real estate and financial instruments.
November 22, 2008
The Limits of Success -- and Failure By Michael Barone
We Americans are blessed with a history that teaches that things work out right. Our first president set the precedent of relinquishing power he could have had for life and returning to his farm. Two of our greatest presidents were struck down, Abraham Lincoln by an assassin and Franklin Roosevelt by grave illness, at a moment of transcendent victory.
November 15, 2008
Detroit Automakers a Relic of the Past By Michael Barone
Barack Obama has noted, carefully and correctly, that we have only one president at a time. Yet on at least one issue he has taken the lead and nudged the man who will soon be his predecessor in a direction that he might not have taken without prompting.
November 8, 2008
Triumph of Temperament, Not Policy By Michael Barone
The Democrats' victory -- and Barack Obama's -- was overdetermined and underdelivered.
October 29, 2008
Obama's New New Deal No Better Than the Old One By Michael Barone
With victory in sight, Barack Obama's supporters are predicting that he will give us a new New Deal. To see what that might mean, let's look back on the original New Deal.
