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.
Commentary by Michael Barone
Most Recent Releases
October 29, 2008
October 25, 2008
A Reality Check on Obama's Wish List By Michael Barone
What will an Obama administration and a Congress with increased Democratic majorities do? That's a relevant question, given the Democrats' leads in the polls. And it's a little hard to answer, given the financial crisis that has been raging and the recession that seems to be ahead.
October 18, 2008
Can Joe the Plumber Turn it Around? By Michael Barone
Can Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber from Ohio, change the course of this campaign? That’s one question that was raised at the third presidential debate.
October 11, 2008
The Coming Obama Thugocracy By Michael Barone
"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face." Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people's faces. They seem determined to shut people up.
October 4, 2008
The Year of Campaign Chaos By Michael Barone
Politics ordinarily has a certain predictability. Yet presidential politics this year has often seemed to resemble what science writer James Gleick described in his book "Chaos."
September 27, 2008
Are We at an Inflection Point? By Michael Barone
You can sum up much of 20th century history by saying that in the 1930s Americans decided that markets didn't work and government did, and that in the 1970s Americans decided that government didn't work and markets did.
September 20, 2008
The Old Economic Rule Doesn't Work By Michael Barone
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the 500-point plunge of the Dow, the government takeover of AIG -- all these have got the presidential candidates talking about the economy. But both Barack Obama and John McCain have been vague about their solutions. And for good reason.
September 13, 2008
McCain Flies His Campaign Past Obama By Michael Barone
John McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. In his selection of Sarah Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days: He has gotten inside Barack Obama's OODA loop.
September 6, 2008
The Battle of the Party Themes By Michael Barone
The national conventions are political shows staged to influence voters. Soon, we can measure the bounce that the two tickets have received from their gatherings.
August 30, 2008
Outrageous Vulnerabilities By Michael Barone
As this is written, with a deadline looming, I have not heard Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field and have not learned who is John McCain's choice for vice president.
August 23, 2008
The Chosen Obama Narrative By Michael Barone
Once upon a time, the two parties' national conventions chose presidential nominees. Now, they are television shows that try to establish a narrative -- one that links the long-since-determined nominee's life story with the ongoing history of the nation, one that shows how this one man is perfectly positioned to lead America to a better future. The hope is that the nominee will get a bounce in the polls.
August 16, 2008
Echoes of Berlin By Michael Barone
Last week, the two erstwhile communist superpowers were in the spotlight. Starting on Aug. 8, China staged the Olympics -- an event on the schedule for years. Also on Aug. 8, Russia invaded the independent republic of Georgia -- which apparently caught our government flatfooted.
August 10, 2008
The Ghosts of Political Leanings By Michael Barone
To understand changes in the political map, we naturally tend to look for contemporary explanations. But American political alignments are not written on an empty slate. Beginnings matter, and the civic personalities of states tend to reflect the cultural folkways of their first settlers.
August 2, 2008
Polls Continue to Show an Unstable Presidential Campaign By Michael Barone
Just when you think you've got the presidential race figured out, something comes along to upend your carefully wrought conclusions.
July 26, 2008
A Step Back From Enviro Lunacy By Michael Barone
Sometimes public opinion doesn't flow smoothly; it shifts sharply when a tipping point is reached. Case in point: gas prices. $3 a gallon gas didn't change anybody's mind about energy issues. $4 a gallon gas did.
July 19, 2008
Ghosts of 1976 in Today's Campaign By Michael Barone
Looking back over the last 40 years, the presidential campaign that most closely resembles this year's is the contest between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976. The Republicans were the incumbent presidential party that year, as they are now, but the Democrats had a big advantage in party identification -- on the order of 49 percent to 26 percent then, far more than today.
July 12, 2008
We're Not Leaving By Michael Barone
Sixty years ago this month, the top story in campaign year 1948 was not the big poll lead of Republican nominee Thomas Dewey or the plight of President Harry Truman. It was the Berlin airlift.
July 5, 2008
Obama's Candidacy is a Test By Michael Barone
"They're going to try to make you afraid of me," Barack Obama told the audience at a Jacksonville fundraiser last month. "He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?" Obama was doing here by inference what many of his supporters do more explicitly.
June 28, 2008
Why Veeps Now Matter By Michael Barone
"Not Exactly a Crime" is the title of a book on America's vice presidents published in 1972 -- a year before Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign for actually committing a crime.
June 21, 2008
The Facts in Iraq Are Changing By Michael Barone
As we enter the second half of the campaign year, facts are undermining the Democratic narrative that has dominated our politics since about the time Hurricane Katrina rolled into the Gulf coast -- most importantly, the facts about Iraq.
