Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished conservative policy intellectual who served as president of the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008. He contributed essays to The Weekly Standard on constitutional governance, regulatory reform, executive power, and tributes to fellow conservative thinkers. A former official in the Reagan administration, he is widely regarded as a leading figure in the American conservative policy movement.
Early morning on February 17, word was getting around that Michael Novak had passed away in his sleep, and email klatsches were forming. In mine, one of his close friends wrote that "the generosity of Michael's friendship allowed him to obscure the fact that he was among the few truly great men…
Early morning on February 17, word was getting around that Michael Novak had passed away in his sleep, and email klatsches were forming. In mine, one of his close friends wrote that “the generosity of Michael's friendship allowed him to obscure the fact that he was among the few truly great men…
President Trump may not be a full-spectrum deregulator in the Ronald Reagan tradition. He hasn’t had much to say about the Food and Drug Administration or Federal Communications Commission—two favorite targets of regulatory reformers—and he sometimes sounds like an antitrust activist. But he has…
American government has assumed a new form. The federal executive branch—the president, his political appointees, and the hundreds of agencies that report to them—has come to exercise lawmaking powers that were long the unquestioned preserve of Congress. For decades now, the executive has made law…
What difference will it make if the Republicans win the Senate and hold the House in November? The House can already block Democratic legislation Republicans do not like, and President Obama would still be able to veto Republican legislation he does not like. The Republicans are talking of a…
Obamacare may or may not survive its inauspicious beginnings. It has become dangerously unpopular and accident-prone and faces a minefield of difficulties. Still, the Obama administration has a plausible strategy: to titrate the program’s numerous taxes, subsidies, mandates, and restrictions so as…
It is important to understand that the fiscal cliff is a charade. There are, to be sure, many conscientious debt reformers working to avert our proclaimed year-end epic fall—along with many cynics who are using the occasion to advance pet projects that will make the debt problem worse. But all…