A Disaster for the Gulf Coast, A Disaster for Obama
The oil spill is an environmental catastrophe for the Gulf Coast and a political disaster for Barack Obama. It is doing significant, and possibly irreparable, damage to his presidency. That may not be fully clear now, since Obama's approval ratings have certainly not collapsed during the span of this crisis. The deeper concern for the president, I think, is that what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now will accrete and soon metastasize, creating negative impressions that will be durable and difficult to undo. The oil spill calamity may become a metaphor for the Obama presidency. ...
Obama and 'Initial Error' on Diplomacy, Domestic Issues and Expectations
"When one begins with an initial error," Aristotle wrote in Book V of "The Politics," "it is inevitable that one should end badly." Almost 17 months into his presidency, things are going badly for President Barack Obama on multiple fronts. That is in part because he entered office with, and has governed based on, several initial errors. Among them are these: 1. Barack Obama entered office believing that when it came to international relations, opposition to America was largely the result of the personality and policies of his predecessor. Stalemates and conflicts were caused by the ...
Obama Needs to Come Clean on Job Offers to Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff
It's all coming together now. On Wednesday, we learned, in the words of The Denver Post, that: U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff acknowledged tonight that he discussed three possible jobs with the deputy chief of staff of the Obama administration -- all contingent upon a decision by Romanoff not to challenge U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. Romanoff said none of the jobs was formally offered, but said the only reason they were discussed with Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina was if Romanoff stayed out of the Senate race. "Mr. Messina also suggested three positions that might be available ...
Obama, the Thin-Skinned President
In their book "The Battle for America 2008," Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz wrote this: [Chief political aide David] Axelrod also warned that Obama's confessions of youthful drug use, described in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, would be used against him. "This is more than an unpleasant inconvenience," he wrote. "It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You ...
Republicans Should Repudiate Rand Paul's Civil Rights Stand
The best news Democrats received from Tuesday's election was not the victory of Mark Critz over Tim Burns in Pennsylvania's 12th District. It was the Senate primary victory in Kentucky of Republican Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul. The reason is that Democrats are going to take the views of the younger Paul, also a libertarian, and place them in bright neon lights. They understandably want him to become the face and intellectual representative of the modern GOP -- especially on matters of race. As much of the political world knows by now, Rand Paul has on several occasions indicated that he ...
Elena Kagan: No Friend of the Military
Elena Kagan may be a brilliant constitutional scholar and first-rate legal mind -- but if she is, she has done a mighty fine job of hiding her intellectual light under a bushel. She has left almost no paper trail and has made no significant, or even particularly notable, contributions to our understanding of law, legal theory, or the Constitution. She appears to have been a bright, able, and well-liked dean of Harvard Law School. But President Obama's claim that "Elena is widely regarded as one of the nation's foremost legal minds" is -- let's be generous here -- quite an overstatement. ...
Neuro-Imaging Redefines Mental Illness, Complicates Ideas of Free Will
The April 2010 issue of Scientific American includes an article by Thomas Insel, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who is the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. In "Faulty Circuits," Insel describes new findings in the neurocircuitry of mood disorders. Many illnesses previously defined as "mental" (like autism and schizophrenia) are now recognized to have a biological cause, according to Dr. Insel, but because mental disorders were not marked by conspicuous lesions in the brain, our understanding of them has lagged behind other areas like Parkinson's disease and stroke. ...
Obama's Big-Government Brand Spells Big Trouble for Democrats
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center is filled with bleak news for Democrats and the cause of liberalism. "By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days," according to an overview of the Pew survey. It finds "a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government – a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials." Let's examine some of the data and Pew's analysis of several institutions: ...
Laws Shape Values -- Witness Civil Rights Achievements
James Davison Hunter, author of a new book, "To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World," was recently the speaker at a conference on religion, politics, and public life, hosted by my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Michael Cromartie. Professor Hunter's motivation to write his book grew out of his understandable frustration with the disparity between his understanding of Christian faith and the form of engagement it has taken in politics over the years. And while he concedes that laws that prohibit discrimination against ...
Obama, Tax Increases and Debt Reduction: How GOP Can Avoid Political Trap
President Obama is in the early stages of setting a political trap for the GOP -- one he hopes will take one of his greatest weaknesses and turn it into a strength. The weakness Obama has is that he is viewed as fiscally reckless by much of the electorate, having engineered an unprecedented spending binge even before he passed into law a hugely expensive new entitlement program in health care. At a time when the deficit and debt are more potent political issues than ever, and when those who are viewed as responsible for them are more vulnerable than ever, Obama and Democrats in Congress are ...
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