After 9/11, Americans wanted one thing from Washington: to prevent future terrorist attacks. President George W. Bush, the CIA and other hard-working officials delivered. For their trouble, a handful of those individuals now have reason to fear that they may be ruined.
The balance between the executive and legislative branches in writing laws has changed over the centuries. In the 19th century, Sen. Stephen Douglas wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act, with President Franklin Pierce just an interested bystander.
Few aspects of American politics are as ridiculous and dangerous as the right-wing urge to substitute macho posturing for foreign policy. That irrepressible habit surfaces constantly now that President Obama is in the Oval Office, most recently when he shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, a smiling moment that provoked calls for impeachment among the most deranged conservatives.
How far will the Obama administration move to assert regulatory control over key sectors of the economy? Are we moving away from democratic capitalism and toward some sort of corporatist state-directed economy? That could be the biggest stock market and economic-growth issue facing us today.
Last week, the Obama administration declined to cite China for currency manipulation despite the fact that most experts -- including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during his confirmation testimony -- do not deny the obvious currency-rate fixing by China.
History is written by many people, but those who write government school textbooks tend to hold disproportionate sway.
Watch out. Everywhere you look, the talking heads are going to be talking about Barack Obama's first hundred days.
Republican politicians are afraid of their base. Very afraid. Press folks have categorized the April 15 TEA parties -- TEA for "Taxed Enough Already" -- as anti-President Barack Obama, anti-government and even "anti-CNN." But it is GOP leaders who are scared senseless (for want of a better word) by the protests.
The hardest group to sell on national health reform is those who don't desperately need it.
As Barack Obama finishes up his second major foreign tour, a pattern in his approach to foreign policy seems to be emerging.
Last Wednesday, conservatives held coast-to-coast "TEA parties" designed to send the message to Washington and state governments that the partiers feel "taxed enough already." The exercise struck me as more than a little out of touch with the political realities of President Barack Obama's
Listen to Texas Gov. Rick Perry. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."
The importance of partisanship in contemporary American politics is widely recognized. Among the public as well as political leaders, party divisions run deep and it is increasingly clear that the arrival of a new President in Washington has done little to change that fundamental reality.
Barack Obama showed considerable vote-getting ability in last fall's presidential election, with a clear-cut win in both popular and electoral votes. But when it came to presidential coattails, his were of the same modest length of many of his immediate predecessors.
This has been a month of forward leaps in the campaign for gay-marriage -- or so it is said. The Iowa Supreme Court struck down a ban on same-sex marriage, providing a toehold in the heartland.
Beware of geeks bearing formulas. That's the lesson most of us have learned from the financial crisis. The "quants" who devised the risk models that induced so many financial institutions to buy mortgage-backed securities thought they had reduced risk down to zero.
Is bailout nation about to strike again? Sure looks like it. According to a bunch of front-page news stories, life-insurance companies are about to get TARPed. This is nuts.
On April 7, the Department of Homeland Security distributed a counterterrorism assessment to local law-enforcement types entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The nine-page paper has many on the right questioning what is going on in Washington.
If conservative leaders no longer even try to offer serious solutions to national problems, nobody should underestimate their capacity or their will to mobilize angry Americans.
Our view of Pakistan's role in the war in Afghanistan has undergone an ominous but necessary series of shifts. At the outset of the war, in October 2001, Pakistan correctly was seen as a necessary ally -- both politically and geographically -- as it was the primary conduit for our entry and lines of communication into Afghanistan.
