Fred Barnes

The hot cause right now is prison reform, and even lots of conservatives are on board. The Heritage Foundation put out an article with this title: “How This Criminal Justice Reform Bill Could Make Our Neighborhoods Safer.” My reaction: Have supporters of the bipartisan reform bill now before the…

This is the saga of Jason Lewis. For a quarter-century, the Minnesota congressman was a talk-radio host. He started in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolis and did a spell in Charlotte before returning to the Twin Cities. I was a guest on his show a few times. As best I recall, they were frisky…

President Trump is in deeper political trouble than he thinks. And I’m not talking about whatever special counsel Robert Mueller has up his sleeve. Trump has real-life re-election trouble.

It would make dangerous and violent criminals eligible for early release.

What happens when the president's son and one of his closest allies spar over criminal justice reform?

In two phone chats after Democrats won the House in the midterm election, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and likely House speaker Nancy Pelosi broached the subject of bipartisanship—or as McConnell put it, “ways we might be able to find a way forward.”

Republicans lost the House but held the Senate in the midterm election. That puts Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell in the catbird seat.

The polarization of American politics has done its work and we now have an especially ugly example of where it leads. I’m referring to the fight over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a justice of the Supreme Court.

But don’t call Missouri’s Josh Hawley a ‘golden boy.’

We now know why President Obama had to struggle so hard to spur the economy and allow it to grow more than 2 percent a year. And that was the high-water mark. In the last quarter of his presidency, growth had slipped to 1.5 percent. Today it’s obvious what Obama’s problem was. He had the wrong…

In 1987, when Robert Bork met with Senator Edward Kennedy on the eve of his nomination as a justice of the Supreme Court, it was an awkward visit. Kennedy said his response would not be personal. He said that several times.

There’s a worse way to deal with members of a restive voting bloc than fight them. It’s called appeasement. And yes, that’s the one that Republicans chose to boost Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

We still don't have any corroborating witnesses to either of the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh.

Eyebrows were raised in Washington when President Trump responded to an allegation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The president didn’t mention the accuser. He said the Senate Judiciary Committee would go through “a process and hear everybody out [and] I’d like…

One of the most revealing moments in the Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kava­naugh involved Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). He said Republican justices overwhelmingly side with corporations and right-wing interests in cases before the High Court. And so does Kava­naugh in his votes on…

Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein made one of the worst decisions of the Trump administration when he named Robert Mueller “special counsel” to oversee the investigation of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia in the 2016 election.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee is no longer Senator Bipartisan.

Democrats have tried to block the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the FBI and its probe of the Trump presidential campaign. They have failed. And the Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the actions of the FBI on its own.

Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is an exception to the rule that committee chairs, male or female, are allowed to run things as they choose. Democrats, left-wing groups, and those who obsess about Trump won’t let him.

Politics is rarely edifying, much less elegant. And the mayhem over President Trump’s comments after meeting with Vladimir Putin and the response of his adversaries is an example of just how bad politics can get.

Democrats will go after him by fair means or foul. Mostly foul.

There’s a pretty good reason Brett Kavanaugh is likely to be President Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh appears to meet the president’s three criteria better than the other finalists.

Democrats will go to war against Trump’s court pick, without much hope of success.

In 2013, Charles Krauthammer was the featured speaker at The Weekly Standard “summit” at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado. His performance was scintillating. He surprised the crowd with his sense of humor. He took questions.

Here are five judges who could potentially replace the retiring Anthony Kennedy.

In February, then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson was informed by a North Korean envoy that Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un wanted to meet with President Trump. Tillerson favored accepting the invitation quickly. Trump didn’t.

We have President Trump to thank for the noisy and exciting midterm elections. If John Kasich were president, the sound of the campaign would be zzzzzzzzz. Trump’s aides must have forgotten to tell him presidents aren’t on the midterm ballot. With luck, they’ll keep it a secret.

If you’re tired of being overwhelmed by the presence of President Trump, you’ve come to the right place. The subject here is Gerald Ford, the so-called accidental president who took over when Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, and served until January 20, 1977.

Democrats are expecting a landslide in the midterm elections, and it’s lulled them to sleep on Capitol Hill. A case in point: Republicans have been using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to wipe out Obama-era regulations since the Trump presidency began. And Democrats, responding groggily, have…

President Obama’s legacy is rapidly vanishing. The decision by President Trump to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran is the biggest blow, but it’s only the latest. The elimination of the individual mandate and canceling the yearly bailout of insurance companies have left Obamacare in a…

The Senate majority leader is not depressed.

Can West Virginia Republicans take down Joe Manchin?

A rare left-right agreement in Washington: disliking the attorney general.

The Trump era has been tough on Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and no one has been tougher on her than President Trump himself, with his references to her as “Pocahontas.”

Larry Kudlow got blindsided in 2017 when President Trump was putting together his White House staff. He was a Trump loyalist, having announced his support at approximately the moment Trump announced his candidacy. And he and his partner Stephen Moore—both longtime advocates of supply-side, or…

Last September, the big hats in the political hierarchy of New York and New Jersey spent an hour at the White House with President Trump. They were seeking a pile of money to pay for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River connecting northern New Jersey and Manhattan.

For decades, Republicans have been stuck with the epithet “the stupid party,” and they’ve often deserved it. But there’s been a switch in the Trump era. Democrats now are the stupid party.

When I first encountered Jeff Bell, he was debating Bill Bradley, the Democratic candidate for Senate from New Jersey. Bell was the Republican candidate and the underdog to Bradley, a famous basketball star at Princeton and later for the New York Knicks. It was 1978.

There are many ways Republicans can lose control of the House and Senate in November. But there’s only one way they stand a good chance to hold both chambers. It’s to run on the tax cuts.

Shortly before Christmas, I got an email from the Washington Wizards basketball team. “You are in your 45th year with the Wizards!” it said. “We will be taking you and a guest on a trip to see your Wizards in Atlanta on January 27th.”

Santiago, Chile

For 37 years, efforts to open the remote Alaskan tundra known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil and natural gas got nowhere. It’s a barren, uninhabitable area that looks like the surface of an asteroid. But environmental groups and their Democratic allies treated it like a…

The optimism of Democrats about the midterm election is based on the assumption that political conditions won’t change between now and November 6. Indeed, some of them won’t.

Shocked by Donald Trump’s election, Democrats adopted a strategy of resistance that’s simple and blunt: Anything Trump is for, they’re against. It’s turned out to be one of the least successful strategies a political party has ever pursued. Yet Democrats have stuck to it.

Every Sunday evening, the press office at the Environmental Protection Agency receives emails from the New York Times and Politico asking for EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s public schedule for the coming week. The press office ignores the emails.

A job shuffle that would put Senator Tom Cotton in charge of the CIA is one of the worst ideas to come out of the Trump administration.

Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has a reputation for being fair-minded. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is a Democratic member of the committee who balked at the nomination of a Minnesota judge to a federal appeals court.

In a 1971 story (“Nora”), Washington novelist Ward Just wrote about a senator in trouble. “If you’re an architect or a lawyer and you get into trouble, you can resign and go practice somewhere else,” Just wrote. “If you’re a politician and get into trouble, that’s the end of it.”

There are many ways to judge a president—polls, approval ratings, legislative successes, foreign breakthroughs, memorable speeches, and historic moments. But there’s a better way than any of these, and Fred Greenstein, a professor of politics emeritus at Princeton University, has developed it.

Ed Gillespie ran a perfect campaign for an election that didn’t happen. Ralph Northam ran a sloppy campaign with the same election in mind. Northam won, no thanks to his own efforts, and will become governor of Virginia in January.

The doubts are gone now about Virginia: It really is a Democratic state. The election of Ralph Northam, a bland and ideologically fuzzy candidate, as governor is all the proof that was required.

Consider this imaginary situation: A new chief of staff can organize President Trump’s harum-scarum White House operation into a crack, disciplined, and loyal team, or he can stop the president from tweeting. eThe catch is he can do one of these but not both. Which should he choose?

The verdict in the corruption trial of Democratic senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey may come as early as this week. If Menendez is convicted of a felony, Democrats face big trouble.

When Steve Bannon became CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, Trump was far behind Hillary Clinton, according to Bannon. “We were 16 points down,” he said.

When Steve Bannon became CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, Trump was far behind Hillary Clinton, according to Bannon. “We were 16 points down,” he said.

Mark Herring, Virginia’s attorney general, wanted to run for governor this fall. But Terry McAuliffe, the current governor, thought otherwise. And his endorsement of lieutenant governor Ralph Northam for the Democratic nomination for governor sent a blunt message to Herring: forget it.

Mark Herring, Virginia’s attorney general, wanted to run for governor this fall. But Terry McAuliffe, the current governor, thought otherwise. And his endorsement of lieutenant governor Ralph Northam for the Democratic nomination for governor sent a blunt message to Herring: forget it.

The Republican party is divided into two groups these days. There’s the Trump faction and its rival, the elected leaders, GOP officials, and rank-and-file antagonists of Trump. The split is not ideological. For the most part, the two sides agree on cutting taxes, killing Obamacare, and building up…

The Republican drive to confirm federal judges has gained momentum from a series of actions by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They seem modest but are likely to speed up the confirmation of both appeals and district court judges—conservatives, for the most part.

If the president’s tax plan is enacted, it will go down in history as the Trump Tax Cut of 2017. And it should, for both the tax reductions and the strategy for enacting them reflect his personal intervention and desires.

In President Trump’s politics, “the overall impression matters more than the details,” writes Newt Gingrich in his book Understanding Trump. This is not only true and insightful, it also explains Trump’s conduct of late.

In President Trump’s politics, “the overall impression matters more than the details,” writes Newt Gingrich in his book Understanding Trump. This is not only true and insightful, it also explains Trump’s conduct of late.

In tax reform, the negotiators from the Trump administration and Congress who are thought to be in charge are called the Big 6 by Washington insiders. But there’s also a Big 4, a group of supply-side economists who are playing an influential role.

In tax reform, the negotiators from the Trump administration and Congress who are thought to be in charge are called the Big 6 by Washington insiders. But there’s also a Big 4, a group of supply-side economists who are playing an influential role.

Michael Cromartie, by his wits and his Christian faith, created something out of nothing, what investor Peter Thiel calls going from 0 to 1. And he became an important and influential figure in Washington, though that wasn’t his aim.

As Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and untold others ramp up their campaigns for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, they’re going to be in for a surprise. A candidate neither they nor the political class regard as a serious contender is ahead of them in organizing a well-financed and unique…

There are few people in this life who you are always, every time, happy to see. Mike Cromartie was one of those people. It wasn't just because he was a Christian, though that was a big part of it. If I hadn't known of Mike's faith, I would have quickly concluded he was a Christian anyway. He didn't…

President Trump and his Never Trump antagonists have found something they agree on. They both want to separate Trump from the Republican Party.

The classic books about presidential campaigns don’t fixate on chronology. They only use chronology—the run from primaries to conventions to debates to the election—to tell a bigger story, one that transcends the campaign.

President Trump played a surprisingly small role in the Republican primary for the Alabama Senate seat held by Jeff Sessions before he became attorney general.

A few thoughts about what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend:

On November 12, 2015, officials in New York and New Jersey thought they had struck it rich. They had arranged a 50-50 deal with the federal government in which the feds would pay for half the cost of a new tunnel under the Hudson River, the renovation of Penn Station, and a lot more.

On November 12, 2015, officials in New York and New Jersey thought they had struck it rich. They had arranged a 50-50 deal with the federal government in which the feds would pay for half the cost of a new tunnel under the Hudson River, the renovation of Penn Station, and a lot more.

We’ll soon learn the value of President Trump’s endorsement. In a bit of a surprise, he jumped into the unpleasant Alabama Senate race and put his stamp of approval on Republican Senator Luther Strange.

The failed Republican effort to kill Obamacare had a saving grace. It’s small but significant. We now know the chief cause of skyrocketing health-insurance premiums since Obamacare was activated in 2013. And it’s not the “essential benefits” everyone is forced to buy, though they’ve often been…

The failed Republican effort to kill Obamacare had a saving grace. It’s small but significant. We now know the chief cause of skyrocketing health-insurance premiums since Obamacare was activated in 2013. And it’s not the “essential benefits” everyone is forced to buy, though they’ve often been…

Some years ago, a group of newspaper reporters came up with a headline that could work with almost any story. Here’s what they agreed on: “They’re at it again.”

Some years ago, a group of newspaper reporters came up with a headline that could work with almost any story. Here’s what they agreed on: “They’re at it again.”

Josh Hawley is a rarity in politics. Elected attorney general of Missouri last November, he’s held that office for five months. Yet he’s already under extraordinary pressure from Republicans to run for the Senate in 2018.

Josh Hawley is a rarity in politics. Elected attorney general of Missouri last November, he’s held that office for five months. Yet he’s already under extraordinary pressure from Republicans to run for the Senate in 2018.

"I'm for the most conservative outcome that we can get,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told Politico’s Manu Raju last summer. House speaker John Boehner would agree with that goal. But critics to their right disagree. They are for the most conservative outcome they cannot get.

President Trump’s embrace of the conservative agenda has healed one rift in the Republican agenda. But he’s exacerbated another with his latest tweets, one featuring a video in which he clotheslines a “CNN” character, the other attacking MSNBC commentator Mika Brzezinski.

In April, Democrat Jon Ossoff got 48 percent of the vote in the special election to pick the new House member from Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District outside Atlanta. He came in first but was forced into a runoff with Republican Karen Handel, who got 20 percent to finish second. In the runoff,…

Six thoughts about Georgia’s 6th congressional district:

Is the deck being stacked against President Trump? It's beginning to look that way since a special counsel was appointed a few weeks ago to investigate possible ties between Trump—or any breathing body in his campaign last year—and the Russians.

Is the deck being stacked against President Trump? It's beginning to look that way since a special counsel was appointed a few weeks ago to investigate possible ties between Trump—or any breathing body in his campaign last year—and the Russians.

Ed Gillespie, the Republican hope for a revival in Virginia, squeaked out a narrow victory Tuesday night over a populist Corey Stewart to win the GOP nomination for governor.

President Trump has three rules for operating in the world of government and politics. Time learned of them from a White House official and describes them this way: "When you're right, you fight. Controversy elevates message. And never apologize."

President Trump may not realize it, but he needs House Republicans more than they need him. If they keep the House in next year's midterm election, Republicans can block Democrats from impeaching him. But if Democrats take over, Republican won't be able to prevent them from taking up impeachment.

President Trump has three rules for operating in the world of government and politics. Time learned of them from a White House official and describes them this way: "When you're right, you fight. Controversy elevates message. And never apologize."

President Trump is thinking about dispatching more troops to Afghanistan. Given his past insistence on withdrawing American forces, one might have expected this switcheroo to raise eyebrows in Washington and the media. Yet it hasn't.

Alexandria, Va.

Lionel Shriver is a novelist who is controversial in the literary world for her withering criticism of "cultural appropriation." It's the notion that if you belong to one ethnic, racial, or gender group, you're barred from writing fiction with characters from another group. If you're Asian, for…

Republicans are not dead yet. In the House, they are moving ahead briskly on tax reform. In the Senate, Republicans are talking privately in hopes of agreeing on how to repeal and replace Obamacare, the House having already passed its bill overhauling the health care system.

"Does anyone remember when Donald Trump wasn't president?" Senator Roy Blunt (D-Missouri) asked the audience recently at a Capitol Hill seminar sponsored by the law firm Baker-Hostettler.

President Trump sees himself as harassed and abused. True enough. Presidents often feel oppressed. But Trump is protected and defended in a way that he appears to take for granted. It comes from having both houses of Congress controlled by his own party.

For a symbolic issue, the Keystone pipeline has sure caused a lot of damage—to Canadian-American relations, to Democrats, to President Obama. And it feeds, underscores, or reflects a variety of political divisions, some of them quite bitter.

Among the swirling parts of the controversy over President Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey, there's one that matters most. It stands in the way of the naming of a special prosecutor, the creation of a bipartisan, joint House-Senate committee to investigate the Trump-Russia connection, or…

Asked why Virginia has become a Democratic state or at least is Democratic-leaning, former governor Jim Gilmore had a one-word answer: "Fairfax."

President Trump and the boys from Goldman Sachs have put together a dazzling tax reform plan. It has enough pro-growth incentives to energize the economy even after Congress eliminates some of them. But there's a problem: paying for it.

President Trump has changed his policies in his first 100 days in office more than any president in the post-World War II era—or perhaps any president ever. And for the most part the changes have been for the better.

President Trump has changed his policies in his first 100 days in office more than any president in the post-World War II era—or perhaps any president ever. And for the most part the changes have been for the better.

Neil Gorsuch's confirmation as a Supreme Court justice appeared all but certain after his smooth and appealing testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He came across as "almost too good," one of his backers said. He was the beneficiary of a well-financed effort by outside groups. And…

At 39, Tom Cotton is the youngest member of the Senate. He was elected from Arkansas in 2014 after two years in the House. And having served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry captain, he quickly emerged as an influential senator on military and foreign affairs.

IN LATE JULY, Bill Bennett, the former education secretary and drug czar, got a telephone call from the White House. Would he be interested in serving as special presidential envoy on Sudan, where Christians are persecuted and slavery thrives? The caller wasn’t Clay Johnson, President Bush’s…

The late columnist Robert Novak had a favorite saying about the GOP: “The only reason God created Republicans was to cut taxes." And the 1980s were a perfect world for doing so.

In a flash, Washington changed. With the collapse of their health care plan, the political power of President Trump and congressional Republicans took a hit. And since power is a zero-sum game, Democrats, the bureaucracy, liberal interest groups, and the media were big winners.

This is an updated version of an article that appears in the April 3, 2017, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Before Republicans captured Washington, the unyielding conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus were a nuisance. Now, with the GOP in control of the House, Senate, and White House, they’re a roadblock to success.

For decades, a favorite pastime of the Washington press corps has been to find "daylight" between the president and the vice president—a difference of opinion, a dislike, a secret irritation. But not any more.

For decades, a favorite pastime of the Washington press corps has been to find “daylight" between the president and the vice president—a difference of opinion, a dislike, a secret irritation. But not any more.

President Trump can go both ways. On February 24, he delivered a wild-and-woolly speech brimming with populist anger to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Four days later, he addressed a joint session of Congress in statesmanlike fashion and called for national unity and bipartisanship.

President Trump can go both ways. On February 24, he delivered a wild-and-woolly speech brimming with populist anger to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Four days later, he addressed a joint session of Congress in statesmanlike fashion and called for national unity and bipartisanship.

There are many claimants to the honor of having nudged Donald Trump over the top in the presidential election. But the folks with the best case are the National Rifle Association and the consultants who made their TV ads.

What happened to Common Core—that is, abolishing it? President Trump's promise to get rid of the controversial program of standards for elementary and secondary schools is gone from his speeches.

There are many claimants to the honor of having nudged Donald Trump over the top in the presidential election. But the folks with the best case are the National Rifle Association and the consultants who made their TV ads.

President Trump has been a strategic success and a tactical failure. That's the genteel way of putting it. The blunt way is that he's pushed ahead relentlessly on big conservative issues. But more than Democrats or the media, he's been his own worst enemy, a tactical bull in a china shop.

There's an untold story from the 2016 election that should encourage Democrats and worry Republicans. It happened in Houston, the nation's fourth largest city in population and the hometown of former President George H. W. Bush. To be precise it's Harris County, Texas—which consists mostly of…

Republican William Howell is retiring after 15 years as Speaker of the Virginia House, having thwarted much of the agenda of Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe.

President Trump has been a strategic success and a tactical failure. That’s the genteel way of putting it. The blunt way is that he's pushed ahead relentlessly on big conservative issues. But more than Democrats or the media, he's been his own worst enemy, a tactical bull in a china shop.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says President Trump's approval rating would be "10 to 15 points higher if he allowed himself to stay on message."

In 1993, the vast health care plan of the Clinton administration died without a vote being taken in Congress. Known as Hillarycare after its champion, the president’s wife, it left its mark on the new administration. In the midterm election of 1994, Democrats lost control of the House for the first…

When Donald Trump released his first list of potential Supreme Court nominees last May, Neil Gorsuch's name was not on it. The inner circle of Trump's advisers were aware of Gorsuch's lofty reputation as a judge. Still, they kept him off the list because they hadn't fully studied his judicial…

When Donald Trump released his first list of potential Supreme Court nominees last May, Neil Gorsuch’s name was not on it. The inner circle of Trump's advisers were aware of Gorsuch's lofty reputation as a judge. Still, they kept him off the list because they hadn't fully studied his judicial…

Tom Price, President Trump’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), has the distinction of being a better fit for the department he's been picked to lead than any other Trump cabinet nominee. But this hasn't helped Price gain Senate confirmation.

Ronald Reagan loved Wash­ington but disliked the government. George W. Bush hated Washington but liked the government. Donald Trump loathes both Washington and the government.

That Donald Trump's inaugural speech was patriotic, nationalistic and populist – that was no surprise. What was unexpected, at least by me, was his call for government action. And not just what government can do to unleash the economy and incentivize Americans to work, save, and invest

Ronald Reagan loved Wash­ington but disliked the government. George W. Bush hated Washington but liked the government. Donald Trump loathes both Washington and the government.

Donald Trump is in the rare position of loathing the media and dominating them—simultaneously. What more could a president-elect want as he enters the White House? Not much.

Donald Trump is in the rare position of loathing the media and dominating them—simultaneously. What more could a president-elect want as he enters the White House? Not much.

From the moment Donald Trump picked Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next attorney general, it was clear what Democrats would need to defeat the Sessions nomination: a surprise witness. It was such a witness whose testimony led to the Senate's rejection of Sessions for a federal judgeship in 1986.

Democrats are addicted to Obamacare. It has performed poorly, alienated far more people than it has aided, and been a political disaster. Yet Democrats can’t shake it. In 2010, it was the issue that delivered the House to Republicans. In 2014, it gave them the Senate. In 2016, it was one of the…

When Donald Trump campaigned last spring in the Republican primaries, he touted his tax cuts in a special way. To give them credibility, he would declare proudly that economist Larry Kudlow loved them.

Of Donald Trump's most prominent allies in the presidential campaign, Jeff Sessions is the last one standing. Newt Gingrich is an outside adviser to Trump and occasional critic. Chris Christie works full-time as governor of New Jersey. Rudy Giuliani didn't get the position he wanted—secretary of…

Thomas Sowell is giving up his column. I can think of lots of columnists whose writing we wouldn't miss. Sowell isn't one of them. Every column he wrote in a quarter-century career as a columnist was eminently worth reading. I say this having read nearly every one of them.

Of Donald Trump’s most prominent allies in the presidential campaign, Jeff Sessions is the last one standing. Newt Gingrich is an outside adviser to Trump and occasional critic. Chris Christie works full-time as governor of New Jersey. Rudy Giuliani didn't get the position he wanted—secretary of…

Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections, but not much else over the past six years. They’ve captured the House and Senate. They now hold 31 governorships and 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers. What this means is pretty simple: There’s an emerging Republican majority.

Donald Trump issued a "Dear Pro-Life Leader" letter in September. "As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand," he said. And he was specific about what "I am committed to."

Donald Trump issued a “Dear Pro-Life Leader" letter in September. "As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand," he said. And he was specific about what "I am committed to."

There's an old saying that "personnel is policy" in filling the top positions in an administration. More precisely, if you want a policy to be pursued and protected, hire those most committed to it.

Shortly after his inauguration in 2009, President Obama invited Republican leaders in Congress to a White House meeting. The House members brought a proposal with ideas for stimulating the economy, then suffering through the Great Recession. In the meeting, Eric Cantor, then the House minority…

Liberals and the environmental left have gone into a tizzy over the selection of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt as Donald Trump's pick to head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

A certain type of American always got along well with Fidel Castro. Jesse Jackson was exactly that type—left-wing, ambitious, publicity-conscious. He and Castro could do business together. And in 1984, they did.

A certain type of American always got along well with Fidel Castro. Jesse Jackson was exactly that type—left-wing, ambitious, publicity-conscious. He and Castro could do business together. And in 1984, they did.

A majority of Americans—59 percent—want Donald Trump to stop tweeting and close his Twitter account now that he's been elected president. This is advice Trump is likely to ignore, and should.

A majority of Americans—59 percent—want Donald Trump to stop tweeting and close his Twitter account now that he's been elected president. This is advice Trump is likely to ignore, and should.

Alabama attorney general Luther Strange has decided to run for the Senate to succeed Jeff Sessions. President-elect Donald Trump has picked Sessions to be the U.S. Attorney General.

Republicans should have no trouble repealing the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obama­care. They can invoke the procedure known as reconciliation, which means only 51 votes in the Senate will be needed to kill the unpopular health insurance plan. Since there will be 52 Republicans in the new…

IN A PERFECT WORLD—heck, in a merely rational world—President Bush’s strategy for combating the economic downturn and battered stock market would be obvious: He’d use the huge Social Security surplus to cut taxes, stimulate the economy, and increase stock values. That surplus, after all, means the…

Republicans should have no trouble repealing the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obama­care. They can invoke the procedure known as reconciliation, which means only 51 votes in the Senate will be needed to kill the unpopular health insurance plan. Since there will be 52 Republicans in the new…

Donald Trump, like Ronald Reagan, becomes president as the head of the Republican party and leader of a political movement. For Reagan, joining the party with the conservative movement was painless. They fit nicely. For Trump, merging the party with his populist movement won't be as easy. But it's…

Rudy Giuliani is a close friend of Donald Trump and was one of his most ardent advocates in the presidential campaign. And now he is a finalist for secretary of state. But it would be a mistake to install him at State for two reasons.

Donald Trump, like Ronald Reagan, becomes president as the head of the Republican party and leader of a political movement. For Reagan, joining the party with the conservative movement was painless. They fit nicely. For Trump, merging the party with his populist movement won’t be as easy. But it's…

Donald Trump has done what Ronald Reagan did. He beat back a hostile press, smears by his opponent, outrage by foreign leaders, vast campaign spending by Wall Street and the wealthy one percent, and vows by actors and rock stars to leave the country if he was elected president.

There's a reason presidents are wary of campaigning actively to elect their successor. Presidents are the past. Presidential candidates are the future. Presidents can raise money and draw crowds at campaign events. But speeches? That's asking for trouble.

H.R. Gross worked alongside Ronald Reagan at radio station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1930s. Reagan did sports. Gross did news. But Gross’s tie to Reagan isn't his claim to fame.

No good deed goes unpunished, even if you are House speaker, third in line to the presidency, and didn't want the job in the first place.

No good deed goes unpunished, even if you are House speaker, third in line to the presidency, and didn’t want the job in the first place.

Donald Trump was down by six percentage points to Hillary Clinton two weeks ago, five last week, and three in the new Fox News poll in the presidential race. This isn't a surge. But Trump is gaining. And there's pattern behind it.

Brigadier General Joe Heck, U.S. Army Reserve, spent last week on active duty at the Pentagon. A doctor, he was assigned to the Joint Staff surgeon's office. In 2008, he was deployed to Iraq, where he ran an emergency room in a combat hospital outside Baghdad.

Brigadier General Joe Heck, U.S. Army Reserve, spent last week on active duty at the Pentagon. A doctor, he was assigned to the Joint Staff surgeon’s office. In 2008, he was deployed to Iraq, where he ran an emergency room in a combat hospital outside Baghdad.

Third presidential debates usually don't matter. And there's a reason. The candidate who's behind tries to avoid mistakes made in the earlier debates and sound more clear-minded and knowledgeable. The candidate who's ahead simply plays it safe.

Besides choosing the next president, voters have a second and equally important obligation on November 8. They must elect a strong and clear-minded Congress to protect the country against the extreme policies of both candidates. It will take a Republican Congress to do this.

Besides choosing the next president, voters have a second and equally important obligation on November 8. They must elect a strong and clear-minded Congress to protect the country against the extreme policies of both candidates. It will take a Republican Congress to do this.

Former President George W. Bush says every American citizen should vote in the presidential election, though he hasn't revealed whom he plans to vote for. But it won't be Donald Trump. We can be sure of that.

If Donald Trump had acted in the restrained and calm manner that Mike Pence did in the vice presidential debate, he might have won his debate with Hillary Clinton last week. At least he wouldn't have embarrassed himself, which is what happened in the clash with Clinton.

A footnote in a book about Ronald Reagan led Gene Kopelson to drop by the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in the fall of 2012. Kopelson is a physician, not an academically trained historian. But he had begun research on Reagan's presidential run in 1968, a campaign to which historians have…

When the first presidential debate in 1984 ended, I walked across the stage to shake Ronald Reagan’s hand. I had been one of three media questioners. Reagan looked stricken. He was fully aware how poorly he had done. Walter Mondale had outperformed him.

A footnote in a book about Ronald Reagan led Gene Kopelson to drop by the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in the fall of 2012. Kopelson is a physician, not an academically trained historian. But he had begun research on Reagan's presidential run in 1968, a campaign to which historians have…

Donald Trump must have neglected to watch the video of Ronald Reagan in his 1980 debate with President Carter. Had he copied the restrained and imperturbable approach of Reagan—or at least tried to—Trump could have benefitted enormously from last night's debate with Hillary Clinton. But he didn't.…

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Wash-ing-ton, addressed a local group in Fred-ericksburg, Virginia, last week and talked about Donald Trump’s chances of winning the state. A Trump supporter thought he was downplaying Trump's prospects and left in a huff,…

Donald Trump outlined his tax and economic plan in Detroit on August 8. He returned to it last week for the first time in five weeks. In between, he mentioned bits of it. But concentrate on it? Nope.

Donald Trump outlined his tax and economic plan in Detroit on August 8. He returned to it last week for the first time in five weeks. In between, he mentioned bits of it. But concentrate on it? Nope.

Thanks to Donald Trump’s critics, we know why he would have difficulty governing the country. He's inexperienced. He's hotheaded. He's narcissistic. But what about Hillary Clinton? If elected president, could she govern effectively?

Donald Trump, brilliantly but perhaps not intentionally, created a political moment to modify his position on immigration. He didn’t seize it.

Hillary Clinton has built-in advantages in the presidential race. The media's liberal bias that benefits her campaign has been on display for months. After her coast-to-coast fundraising whirl last week, Clinton's war chest is overflowing. She "is pushing the boundaries of fundraising further than…

The low point for Marco Rubio came on March 15 when he was trounced in the Republican presidential primary in Florida, his home state, by Donald Trump, 46 to 27 percent. At that point, it appeared Rubio would finish his Senate career at the end of the year and leave politics behind.

Hillary Clinton has built-in advantages in the presidential race. The media's liberal bias that benefits her campaign has been on display for months. After her coast-to-coast fundraising whirl last week, Clinton's war chest is overflowing. She "is pushing the boundaries of fundraising further than…

Donald Trump unleashed a new populist messenger on Wednesday night who declared Americans can defeat the establishment and the media just as the British people did in voting to leave the European Union.

If you want to see basketball played brilliantly, watch a video of the second quarter of the U.S.-Serbia game. It was the gold medal game and Serbia, having come close to beating the Americans earlier in the Olympics, was anything but a pushover.

John McLaughlin was a Jesuit priest, unsuccessful Senate candidate in Rhode Island, and White House aide to Richard Nixon. But he won't be remembered for any of that because he did something a lot bigger. He changed TV political commentary and made it faster, funnier, and far more watchable—in…

Donald Trump delivered a strong speech Monday on thwarting terrorists and crushing ISIS while cleverly disguising it as an address on national security policy.

Donald Trump's speech on the economy Monday puts him in a strong position on the issue on which Hillary Clinton is weakest and politically vulnerable.

ALL BUT HIDDEN in the middle of President Bush’s nationally televised speech last Thursday was a significant distinction about America’s war against terrorism. "This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with its decisive liberation of territory and its swift conclusion," Bush…

At a Kentucky rally in May, Hillary Clinton announced she would put her husband “in charge of revitalizing the economy, 'cause you know he knows how to do it. And especially in places like coal country and inner cities and other parts of the country that have really been left out."

The drive by Republican state attorneys general to block the overreach by the federal government into state affairs got a boost yesterday from the primary victory of Josh Hawley as Missouri AG. If elected, Hawley will add a state the growing movement of state attorneys general.

A program overseen by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of the "reset" with Russia wound up enhancing Russia's military technology and funneling millions of dollar to the Clinton Foundation, according to a new report by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and the Government…

The day after endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, Bernie Sanders was asked a question he didn’t welcome. Did he believe Clinton could be trusted to enact a left-wing agenda if elected? Sanders ducked. "Sorry, I'm not going to get into the trusted or not." The questioner wanted him "to…

In a congressional race in which Ted Cruz clashed with House Republican leaders, the former mayor of West Point, Georgia, captured the GOP primary Tuesday and is all but certain of winning the general election in November.

Politics is a team sport. Ronald Reagan understood that. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell treat politics as a team effort. Ted Cruz isn’t a team player.

Cleveland

Art Laffer is a famous economist, one of the brains behind President Ronald Reagan's supply-side tax cuts in 1981. But he was also a political adviser to Reagan and other presidential candidates. Based on history rather than polls or demographics, he insists Donald Trump will win the presidential…

Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to get this close to becoming president of the United States. Aaron Burr was corrupt, but his treason didn’t occur until after his presidential possibilities had dried up. Ulysses Grant was a great man whose administration was riddled with corruption,…

Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is based on two issues: immigration and trade. And there's a significant difference between the two. On immigration, Trump capitalized on existing opposition to illegal immigrants. But on trade, he not only created a wave of anger…

The FBI director's decision not to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton for mishandling highly classified information is a bump in the road for Donald Trump's campaign against her—a pretty big bump. It may halt Trump's gradual narrowing of her lead in the general election race, at least for the…

Drive over the Potomac River from Virginia into Washington across the 14th Street Bridge, and you can’t miss a large electric sign overhead. "SafeTrack Is Here," it says. "Rethink Your Commute." That's supposed to be helpful advice. Properly understood, it's a warning.

After the 9/11 attacks, politicians divided into two camps. The 9/12ers were the largest. They believed the world had changed and America faced a frightening new threat from Islamic terrorists. But there were plenty of 9/10ers. They were mostly liberals and Democrats who felt the world wasn’t much…

[img nocaption float="right" width="213" height="305" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]997[/img][img nocaption float="right" width="340" height="677" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]998[/img]Wings of Morning The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II by Thomas Childers…

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, congressional Democrats are likely to push her to move to the left and embrace much of the agenda of Bernie Sanders, her opponent for the presidential nomination. If Donald Trump wins, Republicans in Congress intend to be a check on him, pressing him to…

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, like many Republicans who support Donald Trump, is upset with Trump and the tack he's taken in the presidential campaign.

Donald Trump has achieved two things besides locking up the Republican presidential nomination. The first is widely acknowledged: He now has a real chance of beating Hillary Clinton. Sean Trende, the best of the big-picture political writers, puts the possibility Trump will win the presidency at 30…

Inside the Beltway and along the Washington-to-Boston corridor, #NeverTrump has won the hearts and minds of conservative intellectuals and the high-toned media. The dissenters—yes, there are some—make a lot less noise.

On February 13, Justice Antonin Scalia died at a hunting lodge in Texas. That same day, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made this announcement: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we…

Hillary Clinton sounds like Paul Ryan on the economy. She says she’s for "strong growth, fair growth, and long-term growth." She would abandon the slow-growth economics of President Obama and return us to those wonderful days in the 1990s when husband Bill was in charge. This is a different Hillary…

If you’re expecting Donald Trump to change now that he's the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, forget it. Trump says he can act presidential any time he wants to. But that time rarely comes. There's a reason for this. Trump equates being presidential with being boring. And boring isn't…

What happened to Ted Cruz? A month ago, he won the Wisconsin primary in a landslide and was poised to combat Donald Trump with a fresh burst of enthusiasm. Now he's out of the race and Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Differences between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump go beyond their personalities and opinions. One sprang up when Cruz last week named Carly Fiorina his vice presidential running mate, should he win the Republican presidential nomination. He couldn’t wait until the California primary in June, though…

An hour before polls closed in five states last night, Our Principles PAC declared that Donald Trump would sweep all five primaries. No worry, the anti-Trump outfit said. "The path to the nomination does not hinge" on any of these outcomes.

The presence of “Trojan horse" delegates—or "double agent" delegates, as Donald Trump calls them—is not a new phenomenon at a Republican convention. There were many at the last convention during which a presidential nomination was contested.

Is Donald Trump as good at making deals as he says? He’d better be or his chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination are likely to vanish before his eyes.

If you’re running for your party's presidential nomination, you'd better not rely on the notion that you have the best chance of being elected in the general election. The most compelling evidence at the moment is John Kasich's campaign—that is, its lack of success.

Ted Cruz's victory in the Wisconsin primary was a turning point in the Republican presidential race in more ways than one.

House speaker Paul Ryan is not running for president. That became clear several months after the 2012 election, in which Ryan was Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate. At two private dinners, a prominent Republican introduced Ryan to a bipartisan group of influential policy intellectuals…

Donald Trump was wise to decline to join a 13th and final Republican presidential debate. He has little new to say and not much that’s compelling or interesting. He began the 11th debate by calling Mitt Romney "a failed candidate" and "an embarrassment to everybody." And in his next-to-last…

We shouldn’t be surprised the Republican presidential race has come down to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This is a party in which half or more of its voters feel they've been betrayed by their leaders. Who else would they favor except the two candidates most at odds with the GOP brass?

In the 1980s and ’90s, Republicans attracted, then locked up, new groups of voters: the anti-abortion movement, the Reagan Democrats, the Christian right, and the pro-gun crowd. More recently, Republicans have won the support of practically everyone associated with the energy industry, especially…

When Donald Trump contacted him early in September 2014, Rick Santorum suspected Trump had something specific on his mind. He just didn’t know what it was. "I don't think Donald Trump does anything by accident," Santorum says. "He found an excuse to reach out to me."

Donald Trump tightened his grip on the Republican presidential nomination by dominating Super Tuesday. But his prospects of defeating Hillary Clinton in the general election are fraught with new trouble.

When Ronald Reagan ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, the top issue was the sour economy. Reagan’s solution was a 30 percent, across-the-board cut in individual income tax rates. As nominee, he stuck with the big tax-cut as his main message. And he followed through as…

Donald Trump, having won the Nevada caucuses, is now two primary victories from defeating his top two rivals and claiming the Republican presidential nomination.

Presidential campaigns are never perfect. Troubles occur. What is supposed to happen doesn't happen. There's an old saying that no one has ever become a better person for having run for president. That's about as close to a reliable expectation of presidential campaigns as there is.

There wasn't much to like in last night's Republican debate in Greenville, South Carolina. I doubt if many people came away from the two-hour squabble feeling better about the GOP or its presidential candidates.

Donald Trump got everything he wanted in New Hampshire primary—and a whole lot more. He's not only a stronger frontrunner in the Republican race than ever; he's now in the driver's seat on the road to the presidential nomination.

Ted Cruz put on a show when he won the Iowa caucuses. The impression was that of a rookie football player dancing in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. In the NFL, teammates stop an exuberant player from celebrating too long and being penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct. The stage at his…

By finishing third in last night’s Iowa caucuses, Marco Rubio joined Donald Trump and Ted Cruz as a candidate with a realistic chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination. Rubio pulled himself out of the pack of long-shot candidates and sure losers in the large GOP field – by itself,…

When a Republican leader went to vote in his Dallas neighborhood on May 1, 1976, he was in for a huge surprise. It was the day of the Republican presidential primary in Texas—Ronald Reagan versus President Gerald Ford—and a long line of voters extended outside the polling place. And he didn't…

When political strategist Karl Rove spoke in Washington last week, he was reluctant to talk about the 2016 presidential race. His most extensive comment to a packed crowd at the American Enterprise Institute was to say that the Republican nominee should emphasize “economic security" for everyone,…

Those happy days for Democrats and the media—when House Republicans were angry with each other and divided—are over. The archconservatives of the House Freedom Caucus are mostly on board with Speaker Paul Ryan. So is Heritage Action, the serious-minded group that wants the most conservative ideas…

Hillary Clinton says she comes from “the Clinton school of economics." It's her way of identifying with her husband, Bill Clinton, and suggesting that if elected president she would duplicate the economic success of his presidency.

Annapolis

Ted Cruz has as good a chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 as Donald Trump or Marco Rubio. But there are serious doubts whether he can win the general election.

At full tide, 9 of the 17 Republicans running for the 2016 presidential nomination were current or former governors. There was a perfectly good reason so many were in the race: Governors have an advantage with voters. They are executives who make real-life decisions, not just talk about doing so.…

When Hillary Clinton announced her opposition to the Keystone pipeline from Canada, she said climate change was the reason. In the first Democratic presidential debate (CNN), Martin O’Malley listed the greatest national security threats to America as nuclear Iran, ISIS, and “climate change, of…

It's inspiring when a leader meets a moment and takes charge. President Obama didn't come close to doing that Sunday night in his Oval Office speech.

Phoenix

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo died in 1976, but Hollywood still hasn’t gotten over its high regard for him. He is the subject of a new movie, Trumbo, that lionizes him as a passionate supporter of the First Amendment and free speech, a true patriot. But that defines Trumbo only in terms congenial to…

After Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) delivered his maiden speech on the Senate floor last week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a text of his address to every Republican senator. This was unusual. McConnell rarely does anything quite like this.

The process of winnowing the Republican presidential field to a few candidates is beginning to take its toll, though the first actual voting won’t occur until February.

Paul Ryan was a waiter at Tortilla Coast, a Capitol Hill restaurant, when he first encountered Jack Kemp. Ryan had worked for Senator Bob Kasten (R-Wis.), who lost his race for reelection in 1992. Ryan was killing time in Washington before going to graduate school in economics.

Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and pal of the Clintons, has taken it on the chin again.

A tradition in the Senate required a newly elected member to wait a year or more before addressing his colleagues on the Senate floor.  But that practice has been absent from the Senate for decades—until today.

Republicans are in trouble. A significant bloc regards their congressional leaders—House speaker John Boehner, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and their underlings—as enemies. A quarter or more of grassroots Republicans think Donald Trump should be president. And to make things worse,…

What were they thinking?  I’m referring to the CNBC questioners in last night’s Republican presidential debate.  They started the 2-hour session by asking Donald Trump if he was conducting “a comic book version” of a campaign? Mike Huckabee was asked to rate Trump’s “moral authority” to be…

When you’ve been involved in presidential politics as long as Charlie Black, things get pretty simple. A good candidate is one who can communicate and isn’t mistake-prone. News coverage matters as much as ever. “The basic things don’t change,” he says.

In 1970, the year after Jack Kemp had retired as quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, he was elected to the House from a district covering the Buffalo suburbs. He was 35. His chief concern was the suffering of his Rust Belt constituents, beset by plant closings and high unemployment. In 1973, he…

Nearly everything that was expected to happen in the 2016 presidential race hasn’t, and many things that weren’t expected have. The rise of Donald Trump—even that he would run—was not predicted. Nor was the fall of Scott Walker or the weakness of Jeb Bush’s candidacy. Polls have proved to be…

Two days after George W. Bush was inaugurated as president in 2001, his brother Jeb sent him a nine-page letter on the subject of yielding federal power in favor of state control.  Jeb Bush was still in his first term as governor of Florida at the time, but he knew the ties between Washington and…

Some Republican presidential candidate was sure to come along with a credible tax reform plan to erase tax loopholes, preferences, and special breaks, broaden the tax base, and lower rates. Now Jeb Bush has done it. This marks a departure point in the GOP race.

John Boehner will step down as House Speaker on October 30. His announcement was not a total surprise, however, since he’d been expected to leave Congress as early as next year, or even sooner.

This was a debate I thought would never end. It lasted for three hours and seemed like longer. We even learned from each of the eleven Republican presidential candidates whose face should be on the $10 bill. No blood was spilled, metaphorically speaking. There were no losers.

Here’s what I’d like to hear from each of the Republican presidential candidates in tonight’s nationally televised debate:

Juneau, Alaska

Three of the Republican presidential candidates are sons of immigrants. Marco Rubio’s parents—his father a bartender, his mother a maid—came from Cuba. The parents of Bobby Jindal emigrated from India, his father an engineer, his mother a student who later earned two master’s degrees. Ted Cruz’s…

Listening to 29 adults talk about Donald Trump for 2 ½ hours probably isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, especially when the talkers are Trump supporters to one degree or another. But it can be illuminating.

The idea of writing a book about a presidential campaign that never happened had not occurred to Don Cogman. He had spent two years trying to get Mitch Daniels, then governor of Indiana, to run for president in 2012. His effort—and it was no small effort—had failed. Daniels had moved on, right out…

Republicans have been slow in recognizing the real damage Donald Trump is doing to their party.  The harm is not to the party’s image.  What Trump has done is exacerbate the increasingly bitter rift between the party’s leaders and its grass roots.  He’s made the GOP’s future dicey.

Hillary Clinton is a reflection. Whatever the left wing of the Democratic party embraces, she reflects. Not in toto, however. That would locate her too far to the left and jeopardize her quest for the presidency. She’s a partial reflection.

Last night’s debate in Cleveland won’t change the course of the Republican presidential race. But it’s likely to affect individual candidates and how they’re viewed. Some gained, some faltered, some were unaffected.

The original sin of President Obama, politically speaking, was pushing his health care plan through Congress with Democratic votes alone. For rejecting even a veneer of bipartisanship, he and Democrats have paid an enormous price.

Two political entities are in a state of panic. One is the leadership of the Republican party, suffering a fright attack over the visibility of Donald Trump as a Republican presidential candidate. The other is Hillary Clinton, whose Democratic presidential campaign plunges as she tries to appease…

That Donald Trump was supported by 24 percent of Republican voters in the Washington Post/ABC News poll on presidential candidates isn’t the most worrisome number for the GOP.  Even scarier is the devastating role that Trump would play as an independent or third party candidate.

Senate candidates aren’t as important as they used to be. Republican and Democratic presidential nominees have intruded. The outcome of Senate races in 2016 will be heavily affected, if not determined, by which party’s presidential candidate wins a state. This is especially true in tossup states.

"It was like an out-of-body experience,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says. He was talking about his congratulatory phone call from President Obama after Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) passed the Senate last week. “It was kind of fun.” McConnell enjoyed hearing the president castigate…

The best moment in Jeb Bush’s announcement speech last week wasn’t choreographed. As he spoke, a group of protesters rose from their seats. They wore T-shirts with “Legal Status Is Not Enough” emblazoned across the front and succeeded in interrupting Bush. The crowd yelled at the protesters as they…

When a CNN poll last week showed Hillary Clinton leading Rand Paul by a single percentage point (48-47) and only three points ahead of Marco Rubio (49-46) and Scott Walker (49-46), it was mildly shocking. In April, her lead over the three Republican presidential candidates had been in double…

The Democratic presidential candidates are a sad lot. Hillary Clinton is clumsily positioning herself inside the left wing of her party. She won’t take questions. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is 73, looks 10 years older, and says a 90 percent income-tax rate would be fine with him. Lincoln…

There was a time when Democrats were free traders and getting trade treaties through Congress was a snap. No more. In the last quarter-century—with most Democrats having slipped into the protectionist camp—winning ratification has become difficult. Today it takes a majority of Republicans to pass a…

There’s a small group of potential Republican presidential candidates you don’t hear much about, though they speak at events along with better-known candidates. They don’t have exploratory committees or campaign staffs. They’re one-man bands. But what they do have are impressive records. This group…

In 1974, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek criticized those who believed they could measure the real-world impact of economic theories with scientific precision. They were wrong, Hayek said in his Nobel lecture, entitled “The Pretence of Knowledge.” They didn’t have enough solid…

Middleburg, Va.

There were many horrendous moments for the American hostages held by Iranians for 444 days at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. One of the worst occurred when Iranian captors showed a hostage a photo of the school bus that took his son to and from school. If the hostage didn’t cooperate, his son’s…

Nashua, N.H.

Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter, has blown a big hole in the case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of lying to avoid blame for outing a CIA agent. Miller was a key witness in Libby’s trial, but in her new book she has repudiated her testimony.

In 1989, Gary Palmer founded the Alabama Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. By the time he resigned as its president last year, API had become a powerful force on state issues, everything from pensions to prison reform to politics. Palmer led the successful fight against a lottery—Alabama…

Just last week the White House boasted that President Obama is setting the agenda despite Republican control of the House and Senate. He’s in a stronger position now than before the midterm elections in November. “The White House is declaring victory over Washington,” according to Politico.

President Obama is headed for disaster in the nuclear deal with Iran. The nearly completed agreement, as best we know, would allow Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure intact and its centrifuges churning out enriched uranium. The mullahs would be free to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons in as…

President Obama’s legacy is in jeopardy. The fates of his main achievements—Obamacare, his amnesty for five million illegal immigrants, the Dodd-Frank financial institution reforms—are now in the hands of the federal courts.

Who could be against submitting a nuclear deal with Iran to Congress for approval? If you guessed Barack Obama, you’re right.

President Obama’s claim to have disapproved of gay marriage until he changed his mind in 2012 has been exposed as a lie. It was a small, politically expedient lie, but it got a lot of attention last week. Meanwhile a bigger lie hovers over the Obama presidency like an avenging angel, unseen and…

Democrats have moved to the left in the Obama era. And if the party’s base, President Obama, and Senator Elizabeth Warren have their way, they will move even further to the left in the next two years. Liberals will rejoice, but there’s a downside. The Democratic nominee will have a considerably…

If you skipped President Obama’s State of the Union address on TV last week, you missed something. It was long (61 minutes) and uninspiring. Yet as the Obama presidency enters its seventh year, the speech was revealing. Here are a few things we learned about Obama’s thinking.

We know that supply-side economics emphasizes serious cuts in tax rates and Keynesianism relies on massive amounts of government spending.  But how in the world does “middle class economics” work?  After President Obama cited it repeatedly in State of the Union speech, I waited and waited for him…

On domestic issues, President Obama rarely leads and doesn’t like to negotiate. In his first two years in office, he didn’t have to do either. He was spoiled by having overwhelming Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. And he hasn’t gotten over it yet.

There’s a lesson from President Obama’s first term that he should have learned long ago. It’s simple: On an issue that affects many millions of Americans, it’s best—even necessary—to have bipartisan support in Congress. Going forward in a purely partisan fashion is bound to cause national discord,…

Republican representative Mike Coffman of Colorado was the No. 1 target for defeat by House Democrats in 2014. Making matters worse, he had been gerrymandered out of his solidly Republican district and was opposed by the most impressive candidate Democrats could recruit. His future as a congressman…

From time to time there comes a moment when a president is expected to say something meaningful about an event that has just occurred. President Obama faced such a moment last week after Republicans swept the midterm elections and captured the Senate. He had nothing interesting, much less…

Republicans won 7 Democratic seats (so far!), lost none, and took control of the Senate. Harry Reid is history. Democrats thought for sure they’d add some governorships. Nope. They won one but lost 4, including the governor’s race in the bluest of blue states, Maryland. In the House, they lost at…

Democratic senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina was pounded last winter and spring in TV ads by conservative groups for having voted for Obamacare and echoed President Obama’s false claim that people could keep their current health insurance. “They had her on the ropes,” says Marc Rotterman, a…

Along with thousands of others, I got an email from Bill Clinton last week. “Hey there,” the former president began. He was raising money for the Democratic candidates. “There’s an election around the corner, so I’ve been traveling around the country to help Democrats who are standing up for the…

Some winning campaigns are late-breaking. The most famous is Ronald Reagan’s surge in the last two weeks of the 1980 presidential campaign. And some candidates are elected after being far behind. Mitch McConnell trailed Democratic senator Dee Huddleston by as much as 30 percentage points in 1984,…

Big ideas sometimes play a role in political campaigns, but not in this year’s midterm elections. Republican candidates concentrate on linking their opponents to President Obama and his policies. That’s it. Democrats are understandably wary of defending Obama. They go after Republicans on minor or…

Little Rock

Conway, Ark.

President Obama insists Republican opposition to his policies has forced him to boycott Congress and resort to governing by executive order. This is only partially true. Yes, Republicans strongly oppose his initiatives. But refusing to deal with Congress was Obama’s decision, his choice.

Republicans had Barry Goldwater. Democrats now have Elizabeth Warren. What do they have in common? Years back, he pointed the way for his party, and now she’s doing the same thing for hers.

When he’s in trouble, President Obama changes the subject to the economy. And in speech after speech, he utters some version of this line: “We know from our history, our economy does not grow from the top down, it grows from the middle up.”

Jeremiah A. Denton Jr. had three careers in the course of his 89 years. He was a Navy pilot. He was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for seven years and seven months. And he was a U.S. senator from Alabama.

Craig Shirley, a prominent biographer of Ronald Reagan, has accused historian Rick Perlstein of plagiarism in his new book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. Shirley has cited 45 instances in which he says Perlstein uses information and passages from his 2004 book,…

Google has not been kind to Rick Perry. Type in “Rick Perry gaffe” and you get 111,000 results. Google also offers “searches related to Rick Perry gaffe.” These include “Rick Perry drunk speech, Rick Perry oops, Rick Perry gaffe YouTube, Rick Perry gaffe debate .  .  . Rick Perry video, Rick Perry…

Republicans have distinct advantages in Senate races this year, including President Obama’s low job ratings, the number of vulnerable Democrats, and an unhappy national mood. But there’s another advantage: the generally high quality of their candidates. This wasn’t the case in 2010 and 2012, when…

The circumstances facing Israel have changed. Rockets fired from Gaza now reach deeper into the country, threatening two-thirds of Israel’s eight million people. Hamas, the terrorist group responsible for the surge in rocket attacks, has become a partner in the government of Palestinian Authority…

Palo Alto

Immigration reform is deader than ever in 2014 and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says President Obama is to blame.

Kevin McCarthy won the race to replace Eric Cantor as House majority leader in the blink of an eye. Less than 24 hours after Cantor’s defeat in a Republican primary in Virginia, McCarthy, the majority whip, had amassed enough pledges to be confident of winning the vote for a new Republican leader,…

"My goal was to get something done,” President Obama said at a Chicago fundraiser in May. Yet he’s pursuing a strategy that makes it nearly impossible to achieve that. He’s not acting in his own interest.

Eric Cantor is expected to announce his plan to resign as House majority leader today, probably at a meeting of all House Republicans. Cantor lost the GOP primary to David Brat, a little-known college professor, in Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District on Tuesday.

With their misleading talk about passing an immigration bill this year, Republican leaders are partly to blame for House majority leader Eric Cantor’s defeat at the hands of an unknown college professor.

The public’s judgment of President Obama is that his performance in office is not so great. Nearly every opinion poll shows that more Americans disapprove of how he’s doing his job than approve. Sometimes the gap between disapprove and approve is more than 10 percentage points.

Democrats think they are the party of the future. After a last hurrah for Republicans in this year’s midterm elections, Democrats will have a commanding majority at the polls as far as the eye can see. A rising tide of minority, young, female, and affluent liberal voters assures them of this. And…

Gary Palmer, who is seeking a House seat in Alabama, is a unique candidate. Until this year, he’d never run for political office. Yet he has a long and impressive record in politics. He was a walk-on for Bear Bryant’s University of Alabama football team – whoops, that’s not politics.

My first contact with Ken Tomlinson was a phone call. He was a top editor at Reader’s Digest, and I was a political reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He wanted me to write a piece on the least savory provisions of President Reagan’s tax-cut legislation. It must have been late 1981, after the bill had…

Ben Carson is warming to the idea of running for president. Since the famous brain surgeon retired last year from Johns Hopkins Hospital, he’s been speaking around the country to enthusiastic audiences. And they’ve affected his thinking about seeking national office.

A favorite saying of liberals not long ago was: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Hillary Clinton, then a senator, said it. It was on bumper stickers. John Kerry, also a senator, said in 2006, as violence engulfed Iraq, that dissent in wartime and support for a war are “two sides of the…

The Republican drive to capture the Senate in the 2014 midterm election got a significant boost Tuesday in North Carolina with the victory of house speaker Thom Tillis in the GOP Senate primary.  Tillis will face Democratic senator Kay Hagan in the November election.

The Romney strategy is back. Not the flawed campaign plan of Mitt Romney for the 2012 election, but the effort by President Obama and Democrats to malign Romney, even before he’d become the GOP nominee, as morally unfit for the presidency.

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the great editor of Reader’s Digest and later head of Voice of America and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, died last night at the Winchester Medical Center in Virginia, where he had been hospitalized for several days. He was 69. He lived in Middleburg, Virginia.

Raleigh, N.C. 

Arlington, Texas

Democrats are waiting. They’re waiting to see if Paul Broun is the Republican nominee for the Senate in Georgia. They’re waiting to see if challenger Matt Bevin and the Senate Conservatives Fund lacerate Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell sufficiently in Kentucky’s Republican primary to make…

President Obama is a gift to Republicans. His policies, his partisanship, his allegiance to liberal interest groups, his indecisiveness​—​they all have served Republicans well. Without Obama’s self-destructive presidency, Republicans would probably be somber today. Instead they are bursting with…

President Obama talks, talks, talks about jobs. The first 20 minutes of his State of the Union address in January was all about jobs. Immigration reform would “create jobs for everybody,” he said. His energy policy “is creating jobs.” Obama said he’s assigned Vice President Biden to make sure…

Texas attorney general Greg Abbott has a famous saying: “What I really do for fun is I go into the office [and] sue the Obama administration.” Abbott’s relentless struggle against an administration that routinely exceeds its authority and tramples on federalism made him the ringleader among the two…

We're a UVA family. My three daughters, two sons in law, and I are graduates of the University of Virginia. We have season tickets to UVA football and basketball games. We’re loyal UVA fans.

A White House official once noted that the problem with the national press corps is it can only keep one idea in its mind at a time. And while that’s often true, it’s not at the moment in regard to Republicans.

President Obama is more perceptive about the shortcomings of government than we thought. “We have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Wow!

In Washington, folks are celebrating a new bipartisan budget deal that saves us from another full round of reductions in federal spending mandated by the “sequester.” Far fewer are lamenting the dwindling of the sequester itself. As usual, Washington has things upside down.

President Obama is 5-for-5, but not in the way he’d prefer. In baseball, 5-for-5 signifies perfection. In Obama’s case, it means the opposite. On the five most important polling questions that measure a president’s success, he’s not only dropped significantly, but he’s now regarded negatively…

"There are some things I really believe in,” President Obama said last week. He was putting it mildly. Actually there are some things he really, really, really believes in—whether they work or not. Either way, he’s sticking with them. And Obama is one stubborn dude.

The legacy of President John F. Kennedy is a wondrous thing. Any president compared with Kennedy comes up short, even if his actual accomplishments were greater than JFK’s. Presidents in the modern era can never measure up to JFK in the public’s mind, period. Today, 50 years after JFK’s death, it’s…

When in trouble, presidents have ways to escape the hubbub, deflect attention from what’s causing the problem, and wait for the whole thing to pass. In 1974, as Watergate was engulfing his presidency, President Nixon traveled to Egypt. A million people lined the roads to see him. Nixon aides…

The least interesting thing that happened in the odd-year election was Chris Christie’s reelection as governor of New Jersey. It was like a football game between Alabama and Vassar: A Republican governor with extraordinary political skills and an impressive record in his first term crushes a…

Congress has rebuked President Obama. It may have come in a subtle or backhanded way and thus was ignored by the media. It may not have been intentional. But it was a rebuke nonetheless.

President Obama is facing the abyss. It’s that moment when a president’s plans are overwhelmed by his problems, and he’s relegated to playing defense for the rest of his White House term. Obama’s agenda already lingers near death. His poll numbers have slipped to new lows. His speeches are full of…

After the reelection of President Obama, House speaker John Boehner was disappointed, dispirited, and wary of a new round of clashes with the president. House Republicans had planned a fresh effort to repeal Obamacare, but, he told NBC News, “the election changes that.” He negotiated with Obama to…

It's amazing how little President Obama has learned about economics in his four and a half years in the White House. Growth, incentives, tax reform, tax increases, private investment, the middle class, a second great depression, the sequester—all these issues have one thing in common: Obama doesn’t…

When President Obama abruptly called off the bombing strike on Syria and decided to seek the approval of Congress, he surprised no one more than French president François Hollande. France, the only country set to join the United States in the raid, was left in the lurch. Hollande was humiliated and…

War presidents don’t quibble. They don’t leak. They don’t go AWOL. They aren’t dispirited or downbeat. They aren’t ambivalent about the mission. And most important of all, war presidents are never irresolute.

Sydney

The victory by hard-nosed conservative Tony Abbott and his Liberal party in Australia’s national election on Saturday may not have lessons for America.  But the center-right victory and ouster of the Labor party–it’s the liberal party–makes comparisons between what happened in Australia and…

Melbourne

With the death of Jack Germond at 85, the great triumvirate of political reporting is now gone. Germond, Robert Novak, and David Broder were the Clay, Calhoun, and Webster of political journalism with their columns and TV commentary, but mostly with their dogged reporting.

Tax reform is dead. President Obama killed it, with an assist from Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

At a dinner gathering in Washington last week, the members of Congress in attendance were asked if they think immigration reform will pass this year. The two Democrats said yes, the six Republicans no. 

Concern over surges of immigration by unfamiliar groups is a hardy perennial of American history: Scotch-Irish (1763-1775), Irish and Germans (1846-55), Ellis Island arrivals from Eastern and Southern Europe (1892-1914), Mexicans and other Latinos (1982-2007). That’s the list from Michael Barone,…

“As a country, we’re older and we’re wiser,” President Obama declared in a speech today in Galesburg, Illinois.  He’s certainly older.  But on the basis of this speech bristling with tired ideas he’s trotted out time and time again, Obama himself is anything but wiser.    

Can you name the attorney general of your state? I’m betting most folks can’t. There’s a reason. Campaigns for attorney general get scant media attention, causing voters to ignore down-ballot races. This is unfortunate, especially if you reside in a red state. Because in the past few years…

Republicans forged ahead in their effort to transform North Carolina into a reliably red state, with Gov. Pat McCrory and top legislature leaders agreeing Monday on a tax cut plan to boost economic growth and job creation.

Now that he’s not seeking another term as Texas governor, Rick Perry says he has a year to decide whether to run for president in 2016.  And he’ll be highly visible across the country while he’s making up his mind.

In his second term, President Obama won’t lead or compromise. But he still manages to find ways to keep the country divided.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) today agreed to be the lead sponsor of a Senate bill to ban abortion after an unborn child is 20 weeks old.  A similar measure passed the House last month and a state version is now being debated in the Texas legislature, where it is likely to be approved.

New York City

Paul Ryan has been pro-immigration since he worked for Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett two decades ago at Empower America, a now-defunct conservative think tank. When National Review ran a cover story, “Why Kemp and Bennett Are Wrong on Immigration” in 1994, Ryan wrote a 4,000-word rebuttal. It defended…

On immigration reform, Senator Marco Rubio is the indispensable man. If he bails, it fails.

Austin, Texas 

There is no curse on the second term of presidents. When presidents lose credibility, when trust vanishes and their word is no longer accepted, they have only themselves to blame. That was true for President Nixon, among many others, and now it’s true for President Obama.

In 1986, three million illegal immigrants in the United States were given the right to become citizens. It was a full-scale amnesty, created by a bipartisan majority in Congress and signed into law by President Reagan. It had one big flaw.

At his press conference last week, President Obama renewed his request for Republicans to negotiate a grand bargain with the White House on spending, taxes, and deficit reduction. Yet he knows Republican leaders in the House and Senate have already rejected the very idea of getting together with…

Dallas

Dallas, Texas

With President Obama, there’s always a catch. In the 2014 budget he announced last week, Obama proposed a more accurate way of calculating the inflation rate for annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security. It’s a technical change in pursuit of honesty and good government. And if adopted, it…

When Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to President Obama, spoke at a Politico event last week, he was asked what would constitute success in 2013 for the White House. One of his answers was making headway to “rebalance our economy.” The goal, he said, is an economy that’s “not top down.”

Gettysburg

President Obama’s outreach to congressional Republicans isn’t a minor tactical shift. It’s a course correction. Five days after denouncing Republicans as tools of “the well-off and well-connected,” he had dinner at the swanky Jefferson Hotel in Washington with a dozen GOP senators. Not only had…

Did I miss something? Or was the State of the Union Address delivered by President Obama last night unusually pedestrian, packed to the gills with clichés, promises, gimmicks, and endless talk of partnerships, goals, challenges, and commissions for which Washington is famous?

What is it about “compromise” that President Obama doesn’t understand? Is it that he and Democrats would have to give up something—perhaps numerous things—to reach an agreement with Republicans? Or is a bipartisan deal unappealing simply because Obama and Democrats would have to share the credit…

Paul Ryan is chairman of the House Budget Committee, an unofficial but influential member of the House Republican leadership, and a loyal ally of Speaker John Boehner. As such, he is counseling “prudence” in dealing with President Obama, which he defines as “choosing your fights wisely and not…

President Obama complained in a Saturday radio and Internet address that crucial issues are resolved in Washington only at the last possible moment. It was late December when he spoke, three days before the deadline on the fiscal cliff. A deal to avert automatic tax increases had yet to be reached.

In 2011, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was instrumental in guiding President Obama away from rejecting a deal with Republicans on increasing the debt limit. Geithner was almost alone, the adult in White House discussions on handling GOP demands. The president and his other advisers had political…

President Obama, take note.  Small business owners think Washington has become increasingly hostile in recent years to free enterprise and thus to job creation, a survey conducted last week found.  And his policies are part of the problem.

By choosing White House chief of staff Jacob Lew as his new treasury secretary, President Obama is bracing himself to battle congressional Republicans in 2013, not seeking bipartisan compromises with them.  If confirmed, Lew would succeed Tim Geithner in the treasury job.

With Republican Jim DeMint’s resignation from the Senate, Republicans now have a chance to take a bold and politically beneficial step by making Congressman Tim Scott the new senator from South Carolina.

First, the problem. In 2010, Republicans failed to capture winnable Democratic Senate seats in Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado. The reason: bad candidates. In 2012, Republicans pulled a repeat, losing two, perhaps three, Democratic seats that were poised to switch parties. The reason: bad candidates.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, says he “burst into laughter” Thursday when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner outlined the administration proposal for averting the fiscal cliff.  He wasn’t trying to embarrass Geithner, McConnell says, only responding candidly to his one-sided plan,…

In their obsession with stressing the economy and jobs in the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney and Republicans ignored or downplayed an array of compelling issues. This was a foolish mistake. They failed to exploit unpopular policies of President Obama’s first term and left unanswered charges that proved…

The last thing Republicans need is an identity crisis. The losses in the 2012 election shouldn’t be sugarcoated. President Obama’s reelection does mean Obamacare will go into effect, and another shot at capturing the Senate was squandered. But the election was a setback, not a catastrophe.

President Obama the self-proclaimed compromiser sounds the same as Obama the partisan politician running for reelection. At his press conference Wednesday, he harped on what had been a chief talking point of his campaign—raising taxes for the wealthy.

Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.  In 2010, they failed to win the Senate when it was theirs for the taking. Now they’ve lost the White House to President Obama, despite his poor record and the likelihood things won’t get any better in his second term.  And they failed…

Mitt Romney will win.  The tie in the polls goes to the challenger. Here’s why:

Joe Biden was forewarned. When he did a walk-through at the site of his debate with Paul Ryan, he asked if there might be double screens when the debate was broadcast. Yes, indeed, he was told, though it would be up to each TV network and cable channel whether to show both candidates at once on a…

Democratic hopes of capturing the House next Tuesday are long gone. And Democrats now could wind up actually losing seats.

President Obama comes to work, conducts a few conference calls on Hurricane Sandy, holds a press conference, and later travels to New Jersey to survey the damage caused by the storm. In doing so, he performs a job expected of him as president.

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, in its “vote election model,” is projecting that Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama 52 percent to 47 percent.  The poll also found that Romney has an even greater advantage among middle class voters, 52 percent to 45 percent.

Texarkana, Ark.

Mitt Romney’s aim was to present himself with the demeanor and grasp of foreign and national security issues of a president of the United States. He succeeded. President Obama sought to make Romney appear unqualified to be president and commander in chief. He failed. And that was the story of the…

On the Weekly Standard cruise to Bermuda in July, I received an unusual request. After dinner one evening, I was approached by Carrie Ann Stallings from Jackson, Mississippi. She was on the ship with her husband, Alan.

About the only talking point Joe Biden didn’t repeat in his debate with Paul Ryan was the one lionizing President Obama for having saved the country from another Great Depression. Biden used it in his speech at the Democratic convention, as did others, and it remains a hardy perennial of Obama…

Too bad for President Obama that he saved his aggressive performance for his second debate with Mitt Romney. If he had done as well in the first debate, the presidential race might look different today.

The Time cover story last week was headlined “The Mormon Identity.” The cover, featuring Mitt Romney in a stained-glass window, said in smaller type, “What Mitt Romney’s faith tells us about his vision and values.” Newsweek had President Obama on the cover, identifying him as “The Democrats’…

You don’t win a nationally televised debate by being rude and obnoxious.  You don’t win by interrupting your opponent time after time after time or by being a blowhard.  You don’t win with facial expressions, especially smirks or fake laughs, or by pretending to be utterly exasperated with what…

Bellevue, Wash.

Apologists for President Obama’s weak performance in Wednesday night’s debate have found a scapegoat. It’s Jim Lehrer, the PBS anchor who served as moderator. The charge?  He let Mitt Romney run amok—that is, talk more—by not enforcing the time limits on speaking.  

Mitt Romney was on offense. President Obama was on defense. And when you’re on offense in a presidential debate—and aren’t mean-spirited or harsh—you prevail. Which Romney did in a 90-minute performance that I suspect even some of his advisers didn’t know he was capable of.

Denver

President Obama is outside the ideological mainstream, viewed as very liberal by an electorate that’s moderate or somewhat conservative. His domestic policies are unpopular, notably his health care law, economic stimulus, and spending plans. His foreign policy initiatives—curbing Iran’s nuclear…

President Obama has had four years to fix the economy, and it’s not his fault he’s failed so far. He’s tried very hard, and he’s made some headway. But the task is so great that no one, not even FDR or Bill Clinton, could have done any better than he has. Thus, on effort and good intentions alone,…

For Democrats, the issue of abortion is a hardy perennial. They turn to it in hope of persuading voters that Republicans, in their opposition to abortion, are extremists and antiwoman.

In his fondest dreams, President Obama couldn’t have imagined getting any more from Bill Clinton than he did last night at the Democratic convention. Rather than pull Obama toward his centrist policies, Clinton embraced Obama’s hyper-liberalism—at least for one night.

Democrat Tammy Baldwin is running for the Senate in Wisconsin, but a TV ad criticizing her opens with a smiling House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on the screen. Democrat Joe Donnelly is his party’s Senate candidate in Indiana. An ad targeting him quotes Donnelly as saying “he’s not worried about…

Tampa

Tampa

Paul Ryan has an army. It’s also known as the House Republican freshmen, 87 strong and dedicated to the proposition that conservative reform is not only possible but achievable, so long as Mitt Romney is elected president.

Support for Republican Todd Akin’s decision to stay in the Missouri Senate race has cratered and so has his favorability.  Those findings come from two new polls conducted after Akin created a firestorm with his comment about “legitimate rape.”

In 2010, the Alabama legislature went Republican for the first time in 136 years. In 2011, Republicans won the Mississippi statehouse and Louisiana’s legislature—for both, a first since Reconstruction. That leaves Arkansas as the Holdout State.

President Obama is creative. He’s given up on a palpable falsehood about the Romney-Ryan plan to reform Medicare. But he’s retained a few old canards and trotted out a new one.

President Obama and the Democrats have been ambushed. They blindly walked into the political trap Republicans set for them on Medicare.

Jerusalem

Next to Mitt Romney picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, the best thing that happened over the weekend was the USA basketball team capturing the gold medal at the London Olympics.

Mitt Romney, the cautious candidate, wary of being specific, and counting on the bad economy to defeat President Obama – forget all that! The Romney who picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate is an entirely different person. He’s prepared to take the fight to Obama on the biggest…

Warsaw, Poland

Warsaw, Poland

Warsaw, Poland  

Gdansk

Jerusalem

Before the United States had a president or a constitution, it had the Treaty of Marrakech with Morocco. That diplomatic pact has the distinction of being the longest standing treaty between America and another country. Tomorrow, July 18, marks the 225th anniversary of its ratification.

For three weeks in May, Republican super-PACs took turns attacking Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in TV ads. Republicans hadn’t held their primary​—​it’s not until August 7​—​but McCaskill wound up trailing all three of the GOP candidates in polls. Now McCaskill, unnerved, is struggling to…

With the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare, the issue now shifts to the elected branches of government and raises this question: Will the intense opposition dissipate or will it lead to a fervent new effort to repeal the liberal health care law?

When I interviewed President Reagan in the Oval Office in 1987, I took with me a photograph of him with two dozen women at the Presidio of Monterey in California 50 years earlier. My mother, the presidio commander’s daughter, was one of the women. I wanted Reagan to autograph the photograph, and he…

President Obama has been touted by friends and family as the smartest man ever to sit in the White House. Perhaps. Yet he surely is the slowest learner to gain the presidency and probably the most intellectually inflexible. Obama is not only presiding over the most sluggish economic recovery in 80…

Are the media beginning to catch on to President Obama? The answer is a tentative yes. This doesn’t mean the press is softening its hostility to Mitt Romney. Heaven forbid! But at least for now Obama is getting razzed by the very people who used to uphold and defend him.

In his State of the Union speech in 2011, President Obama referred to “small business” five times and alluded to it seven more. Progress in America is measured, he said, “by the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise.” In this year’s…

By the time he took office in 2009, President Obama had fashioned a reputation as an idealist committed to reforming the way business is done in Washington. But as president, he’s allowed this reputation to fritter away. And what’s left of it is now being destroyed by his harsh and misguided…

The White House, Democrats, and sympathetic elements of the media have been remarkably successful in establishing this idea: that President Obama, a pragmatist at heart, has sought to accommodate congressional Republicans time after time, only to be spurned by a party bent on rejecting his policies…

President Obama is breaking new ground in his campaign for reelection. He is going where incumbent presidents have never gone before. He is doing things for which President George W. Bush would have been pilloried. And Obama is doing all this in plain view.

I don’t remember when I first heard from Chuck Colson. Most likely it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Nor do I recall whether he called or sent a letter. But I was flattered he had bothered to get in touch with me. That I remember. 

Does President Obama have the foggiest idea how jobs are created in America? There’s not much evidence he does, beyond lip service to the helpfulness of the private sector.

It looked so easy when the bipartisan JOBS Act cleared the Senate (73-26) and the House (380-41) and was signed into law by President Obama last week. But passage of a strong bill wasn’t a snap. Only the maneuvering of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell kept the measure from being delayed,…

The folks at General Motors are blessed with more foresight than you might have suspected. They were prepared when Vice President Joe Biden wanted to address a United Auto Workers rally at the GM plant in Toledo, Ohio, that manufactures transmissions. Sorry, they informed the vice president’s…

The media specialize in spotting political blunders, miscues, and lost battles by Republicans. And reporters and commentators have found a lot of them in the past year. The fight over the debt limit increase, the refusal to reach agreement with President Obama on a “grand bargain” to cut the…

Mitt Romney is close to finishing off his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, talk of a brokered GOP convention in August, and the prospect of a new candidate suddenly entering the contest.

Jack Kemp, the Republican congressman from Buffalo, met with Ronald Reagan at the Airport Marriott in Los Angeles in early January 1980. Kemp, an enthusiastic supporter of supply-side economics, had authored the Kemp-Roth tax cut to reduce income tax rates by 30 percent across the board. He was…

Mitt Romney is leading the league in gaffes. We know this because the media are counting. The Week lists his “9 worst clueless-rich-man gaffes.” The Wall Street Journal trumps that with “Romney’s Top 10 Wealth Gaffes.” The Christian Science Monitor refers to the “Mitt Romney gaffe monster.”

Mitt Romney didn’t achieve the knockout punch he wanted on Super Tuesday, but winning five of the 10 contests was no small feat. With his haul of delegates, he continued his march to the Republican presidential nomination.

After three years of the Obama presidency, the economy is growing, but only slowly (1.7 percent in 2011). And Obama is threatened with the prospect of fewer Americans holding jobs on Election Day in November than were employed on the day he was inaugurated in 2009. At the moment, he’s roughly one…

After months and months of campaigning, Mitt Romney is finally sounding like a conservative. It took the strong challenge by Rick Santorum in Romney’s home state of Michigan to produce this transformation. But it worked as Romney overcame a double-digit Santorum lead to win yesterday’s Michigan…

President Obama’s budget for 2013 is pure Obama. How do we know? Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, was once asked how to become a budget expert. “You have to read the budget,” he said. To know Obama, it’s similar. You have to read the speeches and look over the budgets. 

A year ago, Republican capture of the Senate in the 2012 election was regarded as close to a sure thing. The political direction of the country had shifted in favor of Republicans. Democrats faced the unenviable task of defending 23 seats, Republicans only 10. And 8 of the GOP seats were safely in…

When Heritage Action, the new lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, scored the votes of House Republicans last year, a furor erupted. Republicans were incensed because their votes on a number of small, nice-sounding issues were counted, often reducing their conservative rating. A classic example…

For the first time in decades, union power is under serious threat. Indiana is on the verge of becoming the 23rd state to enact a right-to-work law, liberating workers from being forced to join a union. New Hampshire may also adopt some form of right-to-work. Murmurs about a national right-to-work…

Mitt Romney’s challenges aren’t over yet. Sorry to say that after his impressive defeat of Newt Gingrich in the Florida presidential primary. He’s improved as a candidate, but he needs to get better before facing President Obama (assuming he captures the GOP nomination).

Jeb Bush’s decision not to endorse Mitt Romney before Tuesday primary raises three possibilities about the former Florida governor’s role in the 2012 presidential election.       

The Senate often goes into recess. This year it’s going a step further. It’s going into hibernation.

There's one mention of Newt Gingrich in The Reagan Diaries. It's in Chapter 3, which covers 1983. Page 123 in the book:

There were some nice patriotic touches, a passel of small proposals, and old ideas like soaking the rich in President Obama’s State of the Union Address. But mostly the speech consisted of an effort to make a big deal out of not much.

The Republican death wish is back. It’s the habit of Republicans to do something crazy or stupid that diminishes their election prospects. Think of Watergate in the 1970s. In the 2006 midterm elections, the disclosure of Florida congressman Mark Foley’s flirtation with Capitol pages turned a defeat…

Mitt Romney needs a big idea. And it’s not the one he cited at the beginning of his speech after his humiliating loss to Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina primary Saturday. Executive experience matters, Romney said. He has it and Gingrich, like President Obama, doesn’t.

In a pinch, Newt Gingrich resorts to his specialty: attacking the media. He did it again Thursday night in the Republican presidential debate in North Charleston, South Carolina. And the audience responded enthusiastically to his angry denunciation of CNN moderator John King for making his former…

President Obama’s rejection of a pipeline to bring more Canadian oil to the United States is enormously revealing. He sided with the environmental lobby, a major Democratic interest group, over the majority of Americans who favor the job-creating pipeline. And that’s not all.

Salem, N.H.

Mitt Romney’s victory in New Hampshire was every bit as significant as it appeared. History is now on Romney’s side: Every candidate who has won the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary has captured his party’s presidential nomination.

Merrimack, N.H.

In the Iowa caucuses, winning isn’t enough. Mitt Romney narrowly defeated Rick Santorum in the first contest in the Republican presidential race, yet his prospects of capturing the nomination were scarcely improved.

We now know what President Obama plans for 2012. He’s not going to lead. He doesn’t intend to govern. Work with Congress to deal with critical national problems such as slow economic growth, high unemployment, and exploding debt? Forget it. Obama is devoting the year to running for reelection.

When Senator Paul Simon of Illinois was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, one of his first stops was in the backyard of a residence in Wartburg, Iowa. About 100 people had assembled to hear him. The first question: What’s up in Namibia?

The thrill is gone. Enthusiasm fired by the Republican sweep in the 2010 election has faded as fear of blowing the opportunity to defeat President Obama in 2012 has grown. Republican control of the House has produced tense relations between GOP leaders (plus many members) and conservative groups…

The great novelist John Updike once said he’d gotten to know so many writers over his years in the literary world that it limited the books he agreed to review. He didn’t feel comfortable criticizing the books of friends or acquaintances.  Updike said this, by the way, in a conversation with Nieman…

President Obama has a trait that Republicans should appreciate. He’s utterly transparent. His motives are anything but hidden. No matter what he says, it’s abundantly clear that he has one thing in mind these days: getting reelected.

Republicans are paying a high price for allowing their presidential race to be dominated by nationally televised debates. The GOP candidates have reduced themselves to supplicants whose weak points are probed by media questioners. Meanwhile, they’ve given President Obama a free pass to set the…

Newt Gingrich has adopted an anti-free market argument—a favorite of the political left—to criticize Mitt Romney. Gingrich accused his rival of making money by “bankrupting companies and laying off employees” in his years at Bain Capital.

Baton Rouge

Before you dismiss Newt Gingrich for having too much “baggage” to win the Republican presidential nomination, much less the presidency, consider this:

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey and Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to President Reagan, have joined Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign as members of his national security advisory team.

By his own account, President Obama is the champion and protector of the little guy. He said last week he wants no one left “in a second-class status in this United States of America.” He’s “determined” to “make sure that nobody out there is going bankrupt just because somebody in their family is…

Opponents of abortion are rarely interviewed on television these days. “It’s much harder to get on TV than it used to be,” says Charmaine Yoest, who heads Americans United for Life. Bookers of guests for news shows tell her, “We don’t want to talk about abortion. We’re tired of it.”

It’s not just the Occupy Wall Street rabble who are promoting unorthodox ideas (to put it kindly) about our economic plight and how to create jobs. They have friends in Washington. A few examples:

In its fight with the state over immigration, President Obama’s Justice Department is treating Alabama as if it hasn’t changed since the ugly segregationist days of the 1960s.

President Obama spent 75 excruciating minutes at a White House press conference last week touting his “jobs” bill and accusing Republicans in Congress of blocking an economic resurgence. He took questions from nine reporters and delivered long and tedious answers. Two days earlier, by the way, New…

Another Republican presidential debate, another forceful performance by Mitt Romney. The subject was the economy, jobs, and finance—Romney’s strong suits—and he made the most of it, having more to say on those subjects and saying it more cogently than the other seven candidates.

Both President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain went to graduate school. Obama got a degree at Harvard Law School. Cain did his graduate work at Purdue and Burger King University. That doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the difference between Obama and Cain, but it…

President Obama’s plan for taxes and spending has been hailed by the media as “populist.” A more accurate word to describe his agenda is “reactionary.” It won’t, to use Obama’s catchphrase, “win the future.” It probably won’t even win the past.

It’s come to this: The president touted for his brainpower, idealism, and global esteem has been reduced to leading captive audiences in chants of “Pass this bill,” a measure that Republicans loathe, Democrats regard warily, and Congress is un-likely to approve even in truncated form.

Nashua, New Hampshire

If a debate more than four months before the first vote is cast can influence the outcome of a presidential nomination race, the debate last night among eight Republicans should aid Mitt Romney’s candidacy. Seldom has there been as clear a winner.

'The simplest question,” Dick Cheney writes in his memoir In My Time, “is the most important one.” He mentions this in the context of asking how many American nukes were aimed at Kiev during the Cold War. For President Obama, with job growth stuck near zero, the simplest question is a domestic one.…

As a rule, the press is the scourge of presidents. They’re expected to endure unending scrutiny, mistrust, and badgering—plus hostility if they’re Republicans—by a hectoring herd of reporters and commentators in the mainstream media. But there’s an exception to the rule: President Obama.

President Obama’s support for raising income taxes on high earners is more than a talking point. It’s an obsession. In negotiations in July over a $4 trillion “grand bargain” on deficit reduction, the president proposed the tax hike as part of an agreement with Republicans. It was a clumsy mistake…

For House speaker John Boehner, Tea Party Republicans weren’t the problem as he sought support for a package of spending cuts attached to an increase in the debt limit. The biggest impediment to a House majority was Republicans fearful a primary opponent would use a vote to boost the debt limit…

We’ve learned a lot from the fight to attach spending cuts to the debt limit increase. Here are five of the lessons:

The path to ratification by Congress was greased after President Obama renegotiated trade treaties with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Obama would supply Democratic votes.  Republicans were already on board, President Bush having put together the treaties in the first place. It had the look of…

What would President Reagan do in the debt limit battle? That’s unknowable, but we do know what his goal would be: get the best deal possible under the circumstances. Reagan never let the perfect or the unattainable keep him from achieving the good.

President Obama portrays himself as the nonpartisan adult in the room in the struggle over raising the debt limit. In his nationally televised speech Monday, he placed himself above Washington’s “three-ring circus,” as someone who has “put politics aside” and is desperate for a bipartisan…

House speaker John Boehner’s new plan to cut spending while raising the debt limit faces two obstacles. It must win the votes of most of the 240 Republicans in the House. And the plan, or something like it, needs to be accepted by Senate majority leader Harry Reid. At the moment, overcoming the…

Soon after Mitch McConnell joined the debt limit talks, his suspicions grew. An agreement with President Obama on raising the limit by $2.4 trillion​—​and tied to serious spending cuts​—​looked impossible. The more he heard from Obama and his aides in the private sessions at the White House, the…

At Barack Obama’s White House, the presidency and the president’s reelection campaign have merged. Totally. In the past, presidents have exploited their office to boost their reelection prospects. But never like this.

Republicans are looking with new interest at the House seat in New York of Democrat Maurice Hinchey, buoyed by the entry in the 2012 race of Tom Engel, described by a GOP strategist as “a good candidate with resources.”

Recall the old saying: Be careful what you wish for. In the struggle over raising the debt limit, it applies to President Obama as well as to congressional Republicans.

Senate Republicans mounted a bold offensive today against President Obama’s effort to force them to accept a tax hike as part of a bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell challenged President Obama’s claim to support trillions in serious spending cuts as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling – cuts the president says show he’s ready to anger Democrats to get a deal.

The fiscal crisis, President Obama declared at a White House press conference today, consists of two problems: the deficit and debt.  Spending? That’s something he’d like to see more of, only House Republicans won’t let him.

Streamlining our patent process? Yes, that was one of the remedies President Obama offered Friday in response to news the unemployment reached 9.2 percent in June and job growth was pitiful.

Streamlining our patent process? Yes, that was one of the remedies President Obama offered Friday in response to news the unemployment reached 9.2 percent in June and job growth was pitiful.

How far will President Obama go to advance the interests of organized labor? Awfully far. We know this not only from the effort to keep Boeing from building a plane in a right-to-work state, South Carolina, but also from the way Delta Airlines is being railroaded into recognizing unions its…

Imagine the reaction if President Obama and congressional Democrats had released a sweeping health care bill, drafted in closed-door meetings, and demanded its approval by Congress immediately. There would have been national outrage over the secrecy, lack of time for public hearings, and the…

We’ve had strong presidents and weak presidents, skillful presidents and incompetent presidents, mediocre presidents and just plain poor presidents. Barack Obama stands alone as the first president who simply declines to lead.

Even as they bask in good political news—Weinergate, President Obama’s ineptitude on the economy—Republicans are headed for trouble. The reason is the gap between what grassroots Republicans want and what Republicans in Washington can deliver.

The Obama administration is 0-for-3 in meeting economic expectations. In 2009, President Obama and his advisers believed the bountiful stimulus package would give the economy a strong jolt. It didn’t, and still hasn’t. In 2010, Obama declared Recovery Summer and predicted a surge in employment. The…

The problem was the wife. Aides to Newt Gingrich have resigned from his presidential campaign in protest of what they felt was a takeover by Callista Gingrich, the candidate’s wife since 2000.

It’s anybody's guess whether Sarah Palin will run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. If she does, she’s likely to benefit from a highly favorable documentary that highlights the part of her career least known to most Americans.

It was no accident that Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, spoke first. Senate Republicans had adopted a division of labor for their session at the White House last week with President Obama. Eleven of them addressed the president, touching on spending cuts and raising the debt limit.

Who’s the most powerful conservative leader in the Americas, north and south? That may sound like a trick question, but it’s not. The answer is Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister who triumphed last week in an election that all but destroyed two opposition parties, the Liberals and the Bloc…

The weakening of the dollar since 2008 has added 56.5 cents to the price of gasoline, the congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) has found. The average price of gasoline would be $3.40 per gallon, instead of the current average price nationally of nearly $4, if the dollar hadn’t declined.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will vote against increasing the debt limit unless President Obama agrees to spending cuts and long term reforms that satisfy the bond market, as well as foreign investors, and “astonish the American people.”

Will the killing of Osama bin Laden boost President Obama’s chances of reelection? That’s unknowable at this point. But what is clear as a result of the terrorist leader’s death is that things will get easier for Obama’s foreign policy over the next few months.

Paul Ryan, architect of the Republican budget for 2012, sat in the front row at George Washington University as President Obama delivered his thoughts on the deficit, debt, and Ryan’s spending plan. The White House had seated him there, directly in front of the president.

Paul Ryan’s dissection of Obama- --care at the White House health care summit on February 25, 2010, elevated him to a stature in Washington rare for a House member. The summit dawdled along for seven hours. Six riveting minutes of analysis delivered by Ryan, as President Obama listened a few seats…

I’m not a movie critic and I read Atlas Shrugged decades ago when I was in the Army. So it wasn’t exactly fresh in my mind when I attended a special screening in Washington this week of the film version of the novel by Ayn Rand. I had low expectations. But it turns out to be a terrific movie.

President Obama always lets you down. Just when you think he’s ready to deliver a lofty speech chocked with specifics on handling the spending and debt emergency, he offers up a hyper-partisan attack on the leading Republican proposal, gives practically no details of his own plan, and then…

Ted Cruz, a conservative popular among Tea Party activists, has raised more than $1 million this year in his bid for the Republican nomination to succeed three-term Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is retiring in 2012.

President Obama isn’t quite in hibernation. But he’s saying less, proposing less, appearing in public less, doing less, interacting with Congress less, plugging his health care plan less, and singling out a Republican demon less. It took two years and the harsh rejection of a midterm election for…

Social Security’s looming deficit can be handled, for the time being, by adjusting benefits a tad downward. Medicaid’s runaway spending can be restrained by giving state governors more flexibility in administering the program. These are modest solutions. Medicare is different. It needs a big…

Let me bore you with some numbers. Employment dipped to 137,960,000 in December 2009. That may seem like a lot of Americans with jobs, but it happened to be the low point in the recession that began before President Obama took office the prior January.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) is the most important organization in Washington you’ve never heard of. Its new leader is a former wrestling champion, and he’s one reason its influence is surging.

Of all the developments worth following these days, from the vigorous Republican insurgency to the apathetic Obama presidency, I’d like to add another: the relationship between the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and Republican freshman Allen West of Florida.

Larry Summers, the just-departed White House economic adviser, says today’s credit crunch has a new culprit. “In the early days of the crisis, there was clearly a problem with lenders being unable to lend even to creditworthy borrowers,” he says in an interview in The International Economy…

During the lame duck session of Congress in December, Democrats sought to take advantage of their large majorities on Capitol Hill one final time before the Republican takeover of the House. Earlier, they had packed a 2011 budget with enough pork and earmarks to increase discretionary spending to…

There may be people in journalism who will be missed more than David Broder, the great political writer for the Washington Post who died today at 81. But off the top of my head I can’t think of any.

President Obama’s controversial plan for a high-speed rail system took a hit Tuesday as the top California member of Congress, House majority whip Kevin McCarthy, voiced strong opposition to building a new rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

For most Americans—make that most of mankind—the car is an instrument of mobility, flexibility, and speed. Yet officials in Washington, transportation experts, state and local functionaries, planners, and transit officials are puzzled why their efforts to lure people from their cars continue to…

Disconnect 

A New York Times/CBS News poll never lets you down.  Today’s survey features a skewed sample (36 percent Democratic, 26 percent Republican), tricky questions, and an emphasis on results likely to thrill liberals and Democrats.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is forgotten but not gone. It’s housed, quietly and temporarily, in the Treasury Department as it prepares to become an official, stand-alone federal agency on July 21. The CFPB is hiring. It already has an acting director, an enforcement chief, and a…

The Bush administration trilogy was supposed to arrive in this order: President Bush’s book first, then Vice President Cheney’s, and finally Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s. But Cheney, because of heart trouble, couldn’t finish on time. So Rumsfeld stepped forward last week with Known and…

Let’s be candid about President Obama’s budget. It’s pathetic. The country faces a worsening debt crisis and Obama has not come to play. He kissed off the crisis in his State of the Union address last month. And now his plan for spending over the next 10 years doesn’t come close to dealing with the…

For Republicans, losing Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona is a bit like the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan retired. Not only is Kyl the MVP among Republican senators, but he also makes the other senators look good and perform better. I can’t think of a member of Congress who will be missed more than…

If the House were composed solely of independents, it would pass the same conservative legislation as Republicans on Obamacare, the individual mandate, purchasing health insurance across state lines, spending, offshore oil drilling, and Social Security reform.

Here’s what Republican Fred Upton of Michigan, erstwhile moderate, frequently accused of being a RINO, sometimes faulted for being too friendly to Democrats, said last week to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which he is the new chairman:

President Obama is a minimalist. Confronted by a public that has rejected his policies and voted for a Republican landslide in last November’s election, Obama has offered the bare minimum, or less, to accommodate the new public mood.

“Investment,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell noted, is a code word when uttered by President Obama and Democrats. It means, he said on Fox News Sunday, “we want to spend.” Indeed, that’s what Obama and Democrats most want to do.

In General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, President Obama may not have picked the worst possible corporate executive to head his new panel on job creation. But Immelt is pretty close.

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama delivered a powerful argument Friday for deep cuts in federal spending to avert an economic downturn far worse than the sharp recession of 2008 and 2009.

When Republicans officially take over the House of Representatives today, a small group will begin playing an influential role. It’s not the tea parties (which aren’t small). Nor is it establishment Republicans. It’s the meager Republican class of 2006.

The vehemence of the opposition to President Obama’s overhaul of health care has spawned an assortment of strategies for killing it. The newest and most ambitious would create a health care compact among the states and use it to switch control of health care programs from the federal government to…

Republican senator Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri surely gave more farewell addresses – a half dozen, by my count – than anyone else who departed from Congress in 2010. He called them “legacy speeches.” They got little media attention, but his address on national security and intelligence…

Elections have consequences, and in Alabama the consequences have come quickly and decisively.

Let’s stipulate that President Obama is one smart dude. Everyone says so. “Obama is one of the most articulate and intelligent men ever to have been president,” historian Alan Brinkley wrote recently in Democracy. Soon-to-be House speaker John Boehner agrees. “I think he’s engaging,” Boehner said…

President Obama, Democrats, and the reliably complaisant media have declared the lame duck session of Congress a triumph for the beleaguered president. Yes, he did better than expected. But mainly he was just plain lucky.

President Obama has done more favors, more often, for organized labor than any other president, outpacing even FDR and Harry Truman in the lightning speed with which he has rushed to fulfill the union agenda. Calling Obama pro-union is putting it mildly.

Palo Alto

Why do the potential Republican presidential candidates (with one exception) seem so old, dull, and uninteresting? There are a few simple answers. Most of the candidates are a generation older than most of the new Republican luminaries, compared with whom they are indeed duller and less…

Birmingham

Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, the favorite to be the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has come under attack by some conservatives as a mushy RINO (Republican In Name Only). But take a look at what his agenda as chairman would be. It’s anything but what a RINO would…

Have you heard about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s “tabletop speech” at the National Bike Summit? Probably not, but it’s legendary in pro-bicycle, anti-car circles. LaHood got a wild standing ovation in March when he climbed on a table in a congressional hearing room, touted his…

With their landslide victory in the midterm election, Republicans rearranged the nation’s political landscape.  They strengthened their position in the Midwest, gained a foothold in the Northeast, and practically drove Democrats out of the South.

Democrats face a rough election day. There’s almost no chance they’ll keep control of the House. And they could lose the Senate as well, not to mention governors’ seats. My prediction is Republican pickups of 60 House, 10 Senate, and eight governor’s seats.

The original sin of President Obama and Democrats was their belief in the theory that smashing victories by their party in the 2006 and 2008 elections represented a political realignment that would leave them in power in Washington for decades to come.

Wilmington, Delaware

NPR’s firing of Juan Williams tells you more about NPR than it does about Juan. What a stupid thing to do! You’d think the folks at NPR would be delighted: He’s a strong, mostly liberal voice on the most popular cable news channel in the country. But I suspect that was outweighed by their hatred of…

The four causes of what’s likely to be a landslide defeat for Democrats in the midterm election are now locked in place. All that’s left for Democrats in the final three weeks of the campaign is to trash Republicans, stir their base to vote, and pray.

If all goes well for Republicans in the midterm elections, they’ll capture the House and maybe the Senate, having revealed few specifics of what they might do in the next Congress. This makes sense. It’s the Chris Christie strategy.

Youngstown, Ohio

The conventional wisdom in the political community is that Republicans will probably win the House in the midterm election but fall short of capturing the Senate.  Maybe, but Republicans have at least a 50-50 shot at taking the Senate, too.

Langhorne, Pennsylvania 

President Obama has fallen into the John Boehner trap. By attacking Boehner last week—emphatically, repeatedly, and by name—the president made himself look desperate. And by treating Boehner as practically an equal, Obama elevated him. Boehner was delighted. Obama had helped him fill the leadership…

Mike Castle might have been a wonderful general election candidate in the Delaware Senate race.  But he ran a terrible campaign in the Republican primary, which is why he lost to Christine O’Donnell, a Tea Party favorite.

We are now seeing the beginning of the political equivalent of the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. This time, it’s not British troops escaping Nazi German forces.  It’s Democrats evacuating Obamaland, desperate to avoid identification with President Obama with their re-election (or election) on…

There’s a phrase that never crosses President Obama’s lips, even as he prepares to propose new tax cuts for small business.  The phrase:  permanent, across-the-board cuts in marginal tax rates for the wealthy.

There’s a practice among many conservatives of love-bombing liberals who take a few steps in their direction. On the whole, it’s a good practice. The idea is that positive feedback will encourage liberals to move further toward embracing policies that conservatives like. And sometimes that happens.

Jerusalem

Worried the Obama administration won’t do enough to spur the economic rejuvenation of the Gulf region, a new organization of state and local officials and businessmen is seeking to have federal funds that might be spent elsewhere redirected to states suffering from the oil spill and a series of…

The Democratic strategy in the 2010 election is simple: Change the subject. And given the subject on everyone’s mind, who can blame them? That subject is the economy and related matters like spending, the deficit, debt, and President Obama. These are the last things Democrats want to talk about.

For Republicans, poll numbers have never looked better prior to a midterm election than they do today. “You’ve got to pinch yourself every time you look at the data,” says pollster Neil Newhouse. A Republican victory “could be bigger than anyone thinks.”

President Obama is under water in public opinion polls, judged more unfavorably than favorably. He now pops up in Republican campaign ads that link Democratic candidates to his unpopular administration. And a growing list of Democrats would rather he stay away while they are running for office this…

Orlando

Republicans were on a roll in Colorado. Now they’re not. After losing badly to Democrats in 2004, 2006, and 2008, Republicans were optimistic about winning the governorship, a Senate seat, one to three House pickups, and any number of state legislative seats in the midterm elections in November.…

The economic recovery, to the extent there’s been one, has stalled. Unemployment remains stubbornly above 9 percent and may go higher. The housing crisis endures. What is President Obama’s remedy? More jobless benefits, more money for governors to pay Medicaid bills, more funds for teachers and…

Tim Scott is the most heralded Republican House candidate this year, and for good reason.  He’s likeable, experienced in politics at the local and state level, a self-described “bleeding heart conservative” of the Jack Kemp school, and the champion of an economic program he describes as “under the…

Denver

For Republicans, the Road Map authored by congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is the most important proposal in domestic policy since Ronald Reagan embraced supply side economics in the 1980 presidential campaign. It’s not only the freshest, boldest, and most comprehensive Republican thinking, it’s…

Columbia, Missouri

Ratification of the new nuclear arms treaty with the Russians may not be as easy as the White House, Senate Democrats, and the media appear to expect.  The pact, called the New START agreement, faces early trouble in the Senate – serious trouble.

The bad news for Democrats keeps pouring in. Now it comes from Wal-Mart moms -- women with children under 18 who shop at Wal-Mart.  They tend to be Democrats and more of them than not voted for President Obama in 2008.  But they’re leaning Republican this year.  And despite the happy economic talk…

Dino Rossi is the 10th man. Republicans need to pick up 10 Democratic seats in the midterm election to take control of the Senate. And they probably can’t do it without Rossi, a top-tier challenger in Washington to three-term Democrat Patty Murray. If he wins, Republicans have a realistic chance of…

Republicans may have a better chance of winning the Senate than the House in the midterm election in November.  And their prospects for taking over the Senate appear to be getting better by the day.  At least that’s what polls indicate.  But politics can be fickle and poll numbers fleeting.  So…

In the famous first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency in 1933, legislation creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the National Recovery Administration sailed through Congress. So did sweeping initiatives dealing with unemployment,…

Conservatives came in first in Thursday’s election in Great Britain, but it’s their failure to win a majority that Republicans should examine for the lessons it teaches.  If the GOP listens, they’ll improve their chance of winning control of Congress in the congressional midterm election on…

The model for lowballing the cost of a health care program to get it through Congress was none other than LBJ.  He did it to pass Medicare. It's a tactic that President Obama learned well. Without it, no ObamaCare. NPR recalled the LBJ story last year as the health care fight heated up.

I met Michael Cromartie in 1985 at Windy Gap, a Christian retreat in North Carolina. As a recent convert, I was there to talk about the only religious subject about which I knew anything: how I happened to become a Christian in my 30s after having been blasé about religion for years. Mike was way…

The same thread runs through Governor Rick Perry’s smashing defeat of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary in Texas, the elections of Republican Governors Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Chris Christie of New Jersey last fall, and the Senate victory of Republican Scott…

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has a few ideas – pretty good ones, actually – about how a Republican candidate should run a campaign for the presidency. But guess what?  He says he doesn’t intend to run. “I don’t plan to do it, don’t expect to do it, and I really don’t want to do it,” Daniels says.

The media has treated Team USA’s victory over Canada in hockey at the winter Olympics as a great upset.  But that’s not true.  It wasn’t an upset at all.  The American hockey team is very good and its 5-3 win over Canada on Sunday night should have been no surprise.

Austin, Texas

Did Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, who insists he favors more bipartisanship in Washington, schedule the announcement of his retirement to give his party a distinctly partisan advantage in picking a candidate to run for his seat?  It sure looks like he did exactly that.

How the mighty have fallen! Only seven or eight months ago, President Obama and congressional Democrats were on their way to remaking America along liberal lines and positioning themselves for decades of political dominance. Their lopsided majorities in the House and Senate, plus the White House,…

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t claim to have developed an economic stimulus plan of his own. But he does favor a cluster of proposals that, when packaged together, are a simple, sensible program for rejuvenating the economy.

Scott Brown’s victory spoils a popular myth. I’m not referring to the one about Teddy Kennedy as an indomitable force in Massachusetts, even from the grave. Yes, the Kennedy myth was rendered inoperative. But so was the fable about a death struggle pitting tea party populists and angry…

Haven’t we heard that speech before, practically every word of it?  Maybe it was a year ago when President Obama first addressed Congress.  Maybe it was during the campaign.  Maybe it was at one of those town halls?  Maybe Obama can’t help himself.  His speeches just insist on sounding the same.

In the new movie The Young Victoria, the mother of Victoria and her chief overseer meet with the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, to discuss what role they’ll play now that Victoria has become queen of England.  They’ve waged a fierce struggle to retain control over Victoria.  Suddenly Melbourne…

President Obama is a slow learner. For all his brainpower, he’s saddled himself with three ideas about the economy and job creation that aren’t working, either substantively or politically. And he appears to be too ideologically rigid or stubborn to consider the evidence and jettison the failed…

The impact of Republican Scott Brown’s capture of the Massachusetts Senate seat held for decades by Teddy Kennedy will be both immediate and powerful.  It’s safe to say no single Senate election in recent memory is as important as this one.

Never have so many procedural corners been cut, accounting tricks played, and sweetheart deals arranged in an effort to pass legislation so unpopular with the American people.  I’m talking about the Democratic health care bill--ObamaCare--and the desperate but oh-so-clever steps taken in hopes of…

The good news for Republicans in 2010 is they’re ahead in 6 races for Senate seats now held by Democrats and lead or are tied in 6 open seats where Republicans are retiring. In the House, Republicans figure to win a minimum of 20 seats, as things now stand. They’re a good bet to have a majority of…

Appointed Senator Paul Kirk will lose his vote in the Senate after Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts of a new senator and cannot be the 60th vote for Democratic health care legislation, according to Republican attorneys.

Republican takeover of the Senate is no longer impossible in 2010.  If Scott Brown wins in the special election Tuesday for the Senate in Massachusetts, it would mean Republicans would have to net 10 seats to take control.  If he loses, 11 would be needed.

Obamacare is in trouble in the House.  Passage of whatever compromise health care bill is agreed on by White House, Senate, and House negotiators had been taken for granted in the House – until now.

With Obama taking a good shellacking after breaking his pledge to put health care negotiations on C-Span, it's worth recalling that Fred Barnes's warning in December 2008 about the trouble ahead:

The title of the legislation is innocent enough: the Free Flow of Information Act. The motivation behind it is a seemingly worthy one. It would give anyone in the media a shield--special protection--against being forced to reveal the names of confidential sources of information. And the result…

President Obama is a master of the "narrative." That's the fancy new word in the political lexicon for a storyline that makes a politician look good. Last year, Obama was the candidate of hope and change who would cure Washington of its bad habits. Now he has a presidential narrative. It goes like…

Ben Smith reports on the recent reversals in the fight for "marriage equality": "It is a historical inevitability, if for no other reason than the old people will eventually die, and the young people are overwhelmingly in favor of it," said David Mixner, a veteran gay rights activist. To which I…

That "broad agreement" on health reform announced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has one especially striking feature. It isn't very broad. In fact, it's breathtakingly narrow. As my colleague William Kristol noted, it lacks the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate. That means Reid can't get 60…

President Obama will receive his Nobel Peace Prize on December 10 in Oslo, Norway. This is a problem for Obama, and maybe for the rest of us as well.

President Obama's speech on Afghanistan was disappointing. Yes, the policy is right: more troops, a counter-insurgency strategy, a stronger alliance with Pakistan. But the personal commitment of the president to pursue the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda until they are defeated was not there.…

You can't fight a successful war unless the commander-in-chief is fully committed to it. So President Obama's chief task in his speech Tuesday night on Afghanistan is to make it absolutely clear that he is. This won't be easy. Obama comes from the antiwar wing of the Democratic party that opposes…

Back in February, President Obama met with a group of CEOs in the White House, seeking their support for his economic stimulus package. One of his chief targets was Jim Owens, the head of Caterpillar in Peoria, Illinois. The day after the session in Washington, the president flew to Peoria to speak…

Democratic health care reform--Obamacare, that is--in either its House or Senate form is unpopular both in general and in most of its particulars. Not only that, it's become ever more unpopular as Obama has drawn more public attention to it. Yet the operating assumption of the president and…

Has a president ever been less successful on a trip overseas than President Obama has on his eight-day excursion to Asia? I've been covering presidents since Gerald Ford and I can't think of one.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is in trouble again, and this time he may not be able to save his job. You'll recall that his confirmation was threatened by revelations of cheating on his income taxes. Now he's accused of paying billions too much for the bailout of AIG and allowing the insurance…

Republican conservatives and moderates are at each other's throats. Tea party populists are furious at President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and aren't crazy about Republicans either. Democrats haven't got a clue. There's talk of a third party. The economy is stagnant as unemployment, now…

The easy life is about to end for President Obama. For the first time, he can't defer or delegate or depend on the media to bail him out. He has to stand and fight for the policy that defines his presidency--liberal health care reform. And the fight won't be pleasant.

By electing governors of Virginia and New Jersey, Republicans have demonstrated that two trends suggested in recent opinion polls are for real. The first is that Republicans have pulled off a remarkable comeback after disastrous election defeats in 2006 and 2008. The second is that they now have a…

Since the 19th century, there have been calls for America to adopt a parliamentary form of government -- you know, like Britain or Canada. Woodrow Wilson, in his days as an academic, favored this. More recently, liberal intellectuals and activists have recommended we move to a parliamentary system.…

Ft. McMurray, Alberta

George Will suggested last week that President Obama's self-referential speech on behalf of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics may lead to his being known as the "vain" president. Maybe, but worse things have been said about a president and probably will be if Obama declines to send substantially…

Ignore anyone who says Republicans have no chance of winning 40 seats in next year's midterm elections and grabbing control of the House of Representatives. A landslide of that dimension is quite possible. All it would take is for current political trends to continue. If that happens, Republicans…

President Obama's dithering over what to do in Afghanistan has renewed interest in Lewis Sorley's powerful, revisionist book on the Vietnam war, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. Sorley's and another book, Lessons in Disaster by Gordon…

Medicare Advantage (MA) is the crown jewel of government health care programs. It allows seniors to choose a health insurance plan that fits their needs. It gives them extra benefits, including eyeglasses and hearing aids, and pays for preventive care such as physical exams. Under MA, seniors don't…

Now is the time for the mainstream media to show it's not totally in President Obama's pocket. The Washington press corps will never fault Obama for pushing hyper-liberal policies in a moderate-to-conservative country. Ideological criticism by the press is reserved for Republican presidents. But…

Give President Obama credit for persistence. And stubbornness. And lack of imagination. He declared again last week that his health care plan "will slow the growth of health care costs for our families and our businesses and our government." And this historic achievement will be accompanied by a…

This is the poll number that drives supporters of Obamacare crazy: Eighty-nine percent of Americans in a June 2008 ABC News/USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation survey said they were satisfied with their health care. Put another way, more than 270 million Americans (I'm including kids) are reasonably…

There are three President Obamas. There's the Obama who defers, the one who dithers, and the one who's out of touch. The Obama presidencies have one thing in common. They're all weak.

President Obama's speech to Congress last night can be summed up rather easily. It was 40 minutes of boilerplate followed by a socko, emotional finish exploiting the death of Senator Teddy Kennedy. Which leads to this question: was Obama's finishing kick sufficient to achieve his goal of…

For what it's worth, I have five questions I'm looking for President Obama to answer in his health-care speech tonight. The idea is to determine if Obama is serious about moderate, preferably incremental reform the American public wants or is still seeking reform that delights Nancy Pelosi, Harry…

We've always suspected that fear of angering trial lawyers was the only reason President Obama refused to embrace tort reform as a crucial part of achieving his goal of reduced health care costs. Now we know for sure. A moment of candor by Howard Dean, the former chairman of the DNC and an…

Robert Novak was a world-famous columnist when I met him in 1974. I was a reporter for the Evening Star newspaper in Washington. We were covering a trip to Delaware by Vice President Gerald Ford, who was a few months away from succeeding Richard Nixon as president. The Watergate scandal was raging,…

Organized labor has all but given up on what was once its top priority. No, I'm not referring to card check. It's section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act that's no longer being targeted by the AFL-CIO. If that provision sounds arcane, it's not. It allows states to enact right-to-work laws that are…

Between July 20 and July 30, President Obama was a busy man, barely out of the public eye while campaigning furiously for his health care initiative. He did four town hall events, spoke at two hospitals, delivered a radio address, was interviewed on two network TV news shows, and held a prime time…

1931-2009 Robert Novak terrified Washington. Elected and appointed officials, Democrats and Republicans, lobbyists and self-styled defenders of the "public interest" -- few were comfortable when Novak had them in his sights. Nor should they have been. The reason was simple: Bob Novak didn't play…

Robert Novak terrified Washington. Elected and appointed officials, Democrats and Republicans, lobbyists and self-styled defenders of the "public interest" -- few were comfortable when Novak had them in his sights. Nor should they have been. The reason was simple: Bob Novak didn't play political…

Watch out for Plan B. It's President Obama's fallback position on health care reform. It's Obamacare without the most controversial part, the creation of a government-run, "public" health insurance plan open to all comers at cut rate. And Plan B is something that Obama and the health insurance…

Is President Obama an economic illiterate? Harsh as that sounds, there's growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. Yet, as we saw at last week's presidential press conference, he's undeterred from holding forth, with seeming…

President Obama is ushering in an era of politicized capitalism. Since he took office, corporate heads and business executives more and more look to Washington as the wellspring of financial success. And politicians and government officials have much to offer them: grants, loans, loan guarantees,…

It's conventional wisdom now that Obama's health care initiative is in deep trouble. But that's wrong. It's in deep, deep, deep trouble. Again contrary to Washington wisdom, neither the cost of ObamaCare nor the squabble among congressional Democrats is the main reason. The biggest problem is…

President Obama made several trenchant points in his press conference last night. He offered a reason for public skepticism about his plan for health-care reform. Americans "haven't seen a lot of laws coming out of Washington lately that helped them," Obama said. Too true. What's they've seen, most…

First President Bush, then President Obama poured billions into General Motors and Chrysler to keep the companies alive but barely breathing. That was just for starters. Next came Obama's creation of an Auto Task Force to oversee the auto companies. To head the task force, the president picked…

Forget about Sarah Palin as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and probably ever. She may have no interest in seeking the GOP nomination. But if she does, her chances of winning the nomination have been minimized by her decision to resign as governor of Alaska. She's knocked out one of…

Rejecting "false choices" is a favorite rhetorical device of President Obama. His speeches are littered with examples. A half-dozen times, he's repudiated "the false choice between our security and our ideals." He's dismissed "the false choice between sound science and moral values." He's not only…

1) Obama's made the least out of his strong opening statement on Iran. Having used the word "condemn" -- for the first time -- and "appalling" as well, the president followed up mostly with mush. He ducked the question on whether Iranian diplomats are still invited to July 4 celebrations at…

Is President Obama anti-business? The obvious answer is yes. Yet he insists he's a free-market guy who hates "meddling in the private sector" but has been forced to. So in deciding whether he's anti-business, let's be fair and judge Obama by nonideological and nonpartisan standards. I have four…

"As I've often said, in the short term, as we transition to renewable energy," President Obama stated in April, "we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas. .  .  . We still need more oil, we still need more gas. If we've got some here in the United States that we can…

Let's stipulate that President Obama is a wonderful speaker, vigorous in promoting his policies and even eloquent at times. But there's a problem: He's not persuasive. Obama is effective at marketing himself. His 64 percent job approval (Gallup poll) is a reflection of this. But in building public…

Like a troubled bank, President Obama is overleveraged. When a bank makes risky loans and many of them default, the bank goes bankrupt (or gets bailed out). When a first-term president adopts risky policies and many of them fail, his prospects for sustained public approval and reelection diminish.

Enter Robert George. A professor of politics (and a lot more) at Princeton--he holds an endowed chair once held by Woodrow Wilson--George wants to bring intellectual vigor to the Republican party and the conservative movement, especially on social issues like pornography and marriage. "We need to…

Don't count Sonia Sotomayor as one of the justices of the Supreme Court quite yet. Yes, the odds of her winning confirmation as the first Hispanic woman on the court are almost prohibitive, especially since Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the Senate. But the odds are 90 percent, maybe 95…

When I was a boy, maybe eight or nine, my father took me aside to show me a baseball. I'd seen the ball before. It had been sitting on his dresser for as long as I could remember. But I'd never taken it off the dresser for a closer look or even given it a second thought.

Meg Whitman is the most interesting person in American politics and, potentially, a formidable Republican leader at the national level. At age 52 and a year after stepping down as CEO of eBay, she's running for governor of California. Like Ronald Reagan, she's a well-known star from another…

While insisting "we need to focus on the future," President Obama devoted much of his speech on terrorist detainees today to denouncing the policies of President Bush's administration. He faulted everyone in Washington for "pointing fingers at one another," yet pointed his own finger frequently,…

Republican leaders in Congress have created something called the National Council for a New America (NCNA). It describes itself as "not a Republican-only forum" but one that seeks to "engage people in a discussion to meet common challenges and build a stronger country through common-sense ideas."…

Strong job approval, higher personal ratings"--that's pollster Andrew Kohut's assessment of President Obama at roughly the 100-day point. "A bravura performance," wrote David Broder of the Washingon Post. The president's flacks take the Muhammad Ali approach: Obama is The Greatest. What comes to my…

Jack Kemp was a speaker in search of an audience. But unlike most of Washington, including the city's journalists, Kemp had something important to say. He may have been embarrassed about his academic background--he was a physical education major at Occidental College in California--but the truth…

As isolated as Republicans appear to be in Washington, they often find allies in the struggle to keep the federal government from becoming the command-and-control center of American life. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have stymied organized labor's drive for legislation…

In football, it's called misdirection. When the ball is snapped, offensive linemen pull from the line of scrimmage and head to the right or left. A running back takes off in the same direction. But it's a deception. The play, a run or a pass, actually goes in the other direction. It's a clever…

Once the House passed a 90 percent tax on AIG bonuses, a mad rush was on in the Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid went to the Senate floor to propose a quick vote on similar legislation. A single senator could object, delaying a vote for weeks. But fear of siding with reviled AIG executives…

You don't have to be an old Washington hand to spot the telltale signs of a presidency and an administration in serious trouble. There's nothing new about these clues. The inability to get their stories straight--that's a hardy perennial of high-level officials caught in the vise of political…

President Obama insists he's a free-market guy. But you have to wonder whether he understands how a free economy really works. His policies and his words--especially what he said at his press conference this week--suggest his sense of what makes economies grow and how people are affected by…

President Obama is famous for building up straw men, then knocking them down. You know, on the one hand, some would have government do nothing at all to help the economy, on the other, there's his plan. This is a transparent (and crude) rhetorical device, but that didn't stop Obama from trotting…

President Obama must be irked. The media and other Obama allies like Warren Buffett are on his case for the first time, insisting he's in too big a hurry to enact his entire domestic agenda. Obama should slow down, they say. He should prioritize. He should focus on reviving the economy and nothing…

President Obama isn't riding as high as he thinks. He's popular, though no more than is usual for a new president. His party is in charge on Capitol Hill, but its command of the Senate is fraying. And just last week, the faint outlines of a center-right coalition in opposition to Obama's…

Now that Barack Obama has been president for seven weeks, we've learned a few more things about him. Like every president, Obama has quirks. Or maybe we should call them characteristics or tendencies that we hadn't expected. Here are a five of them:

When Barack Obama met with TV anchors at a White House lunch last week, he assured them he likes being president. "And it turns out I'm very good at it," he added. Well, not exactly. What Obama is actually very good at is campaigning. He did it for two years as a presidential candidate, and it's…

President Obama is only doing what the voters asked for. That's how he defends his budget with trillions in new spending and few offsetting cuts in old spending. "It's the change I promised as a candidate for president," he said in his radio address last weekend. "It is the change people voted for…

Unions spur unemployment, and "there is no question" about it. "High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy." That is the unvarnished conclusion of one of the country's most admired economists. From 1970 to 1985, a…

It only seems like Barack Obama has been president forever. Actually, as of today, he's been in office for exactly one month. Granted, with 47 months to go in his term, it's too soon to render a verdict on the Obama presidency. But surely a few early reflections on the Obama Revolution in…

John McCain is on to something. No stimulus bill--that is, no "economic recovery" package at all--"is better" than President Obama's bill, McCain says. Sure, he'd prefer his own alternative. At $445 billion, it would cost roughly half Obama's bill. And Republican senators unanimously voted for it.…

What did we learn from the last week's unanimous rejection of the Democratic stimulus package by House Republicans? We learned President Obama, who ardently wooed Republicans, is more charming than he is persuasive. We learned Republicans, though they can't win a vote, can win an argument. We…

In 1994, congressional Republicans carried laminated copies of their Contract With America (tax cuts, term limits, etc.) in their pockets. They may now want to laminate President Obama's inaugural address and carry it around.

Barack Obama is the apostle of hope. But he also arouses the flipside of hope--fear. And while the fear he stirs may turn out to be unfounded, it's not irrational. People don't know who Obama really is or where his ideological center of gravity rests, to the extent it rests anywhere. He was a…

IT WAS FAR FROM THE best speech Barack Obama has ever delivered. As an inaugural address, it won't be mentioned in the same breath as inaugural speeches by Presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt (Franklin), Kennedy, or Reagan. And Obama uncharacteristically rushed through the speech as if he was impatient…

The postmortems on the presidency of George W. Bush are all wrong. The liberal line is that Bush dangerously weakened America's position in the world and rushed to the aid of the rich and powerful as income inequality worsened. That is twaddle. Conservatives--okay, not all of them--have only been a…

BARACK OBAMA'S FIRST test as president isn't his inaugural address. As talented a writer and orator as Obama is, the speech should be a snap. His big test is the economic stimulus package that Congress is expected to pass within a few weeks. The starting point for Congress is an old-fashioned,…

It's not quite right to say President Bush owes Scooter Libby a pardon. Having commuted Libby's sentence to 30 months in jail (but not his $250,000 fine), the president has no special obligation to follow up now with a full pardon before he leaves office next Tuesday. Nor does Libby's role as a…

Vice President Dick Cheney believes he hasn't "fundamentally changed" since he came to Washington 40 years ago. Only his job has changed. As vice president, he doesn't talk freely to the press about what he's doing. And he's been deeply involved in shaping controversial policies aimed at making…

Barack Obama is an awfully good politician but not much of an economist. His model for lifting America out of its economic slump is President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The trouble with FDR's policy, however, is that it didn't come close to reviving the economy and restoring it to…

NOW WE KNOW how President Bush reads so many books. It's a "discipline deal," the president says. "I don't watch TV," he says. And he reads every morning while doing an hour of exercise and on the many long flights aboard Air Force One.

Except for the distraction (or worse) caused by the Blagojevich scandal, President-elect Barack Obama has had a wonderful transition. His cabinet picks have been widely praised. His press conferences have been short, orderly, and mostly sweet. And the excitement over his inauguration as America's…

West Point, Georgia

When Mel Martinez reached Jeb Bush last week to tell him that Martinez would shortly announce his decision not to run for reelection to the Senate, Bush expressed no particular interest in succeeding him in Washington. It was early in the morning, and Bush was working out on an exercise machine.…

Barack Obama wants to give the economy a jolt. So far, though, the biggest jolt we've seen is the one the economy has given to Obama. That jolt, in the form of a plummeting stock market, upset Obama's desire for a leisurely transition. It made him virtually America's acting president.

Republicans are doing what they usually do after losing an election, debating the future of the party and perhaps the future of conservatism as well. A struggle between traditional conservatives and a younger group of reformers will be decisive. That's one theory. Another focuses on George W. Bush.…

Republicans have a big problem. Nope, it's not figuring out how to rebuild their party after consecutive defeats in national elections (that's easy). Nor is it finding new leaders in Congress (also easy) or latching onto fresh ideas that might improve the Republican brand (easiest of all). The…

For Republicans, losing the White House and watching Democrats pile up bigger majorities in the Senate and House was bad enough. But there was another painful downside to the 2008 election. Republicans have been practically driven out of an entire section of the country: the Northeast.

Lorne Michaels is the longtime executive producer of Saturday Night Live. Sarah Palin appeared on SNL in mid-October, after which Michaels noted, "Her politics aren't my politics." But that wasn't all he said. "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated," Michaels told EW.com. "I watched the…

Was the 2008 presidential campaign the greatest ever? The conventional wisdom in the political community and the media seems to be congealing around that idea. David Broder, the political columnist of the Washington Post, thinks the 2008 race was best he's ever covered. Was it really that good? I…

Elon, North Carolina

Liberals--or I could say Democrats, since the terms are now synonymous--are fun to watch because they're so un-self aware. They switch positions on a dime whenever it serves their political purposes and always consider themselves to be standing on the high moral ground. Of course that's where they…

John McCain trails Barack Obama and shows no signs, at the moment anyway, of propelling himself into the lead. Democrats lead in eight Senate seats currently held by Republicans and are close in three others. In the House, Republicans once thought they'd lose only 5 to 10 seats. Now things look…

Sarah Palin's scintillating success in last week's vice presidential debate with Joe Biden has made her an enormous asset (again) to John McCain's bid for the presidency. Now McCain must decide how to maximize her role in the campaign. Anything short of bringing her front and center makes no sense.

A presidential debate at its best gives voters a glimpse of a candidate's personality, quick-wittedness, likeability, sense of humor, judgment, basic honesty, knowledge, even character. If the debate is a success, voters get a sense of whether they'd be comfortable with the candidate in the White…

A presidential debate at its best gives voters a glimpse of a candidate's personality, quick-wittedness, likeability, sense of humor, judgment, basic honesty, knowledge, even character. If the debate is a success, voters get a sense of whether they'd be comfortable with the candidate in the White…

John McCain, restless and emotional, couldn't resist the temptation to join the battle to rescue our financial markets and save the economy. It was the biggest and most important fight around, bigger and more important than his campaign scrap with Barack Obama. Being engaged in the action--in the…

The moment when Sarah Palin knew she was winning last night's debate with her vice presidential opponent Joe Biden came after the subject had turned to nuclear weapons. Palin had talked about nukes as a deterrent and said it was important to keep them out of the hands of dictators who are enemies…

The moment when Sarah Palin knew she was winning last night's debate with her vice presidential opponent Joe Biden came after the subject had turned to nuclear weapons. Palin had talked about nukes as a deterrent and said it was important to keep them out of the hands of dictators who are enemies…

It took Conservatives in Great Britain a decade to restore their party's good name. It is taking Republicans a far shorter time--perhaps only two years--to begin a significant comeback. Who's responsible? For sure, John McCain and Sarah Palin have played major roles. But so has a Republican who was…

Winning isn't enough. To gain from a presidential debate, there must be sound bites that appear on TV day after day and show your opponent in an unfavorable or embarrassing light. John McCain was better than Barack Obama in their first presidential debate last night. But the debate produced no…

There aren't many outfits as arrogant, self-important, and aggrandizing as the unelected Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), sponsor of tonight's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. When John McCain said Wednesday the debate might have to be delayed so he could work on the financial…

Conservatives are rushing to crown Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the new Ronald Reagan. And indeed there are similarities. Like Reagan, Palin has a dazzling star quality and an appeal to voters outside the conservative orbit. But there's another likeness to Reagan that conservatives may find a bit…

LIBERAL COLUMNISTS AND the mainstream media have been unusually tolerant of Barack Obama's exaggerated claims of major legislative accomplishments. Just this week, Obama said his proposal was the "basis" for the economic stimulus package that was enacted last winter, a claim even Democrats regard…

St. Paul

IT'S WIDELY ACCEPTED now that Barack Obama would be better off if he'd picked Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate instead of Joe Biden. Obama had his reasons, particularly his discomfort with her as his actual vice president if he's elected. Still, Obama sacrificed a stronger…

Now that Sarah Palin's religion is an object of intense scrutiny, the media finds itself, for the umpteenth time, applying a double standard. Her belief that the universe is no accident but was created by God and her habit of praying have been noted and dissected in the mainstream media. So have…

St. Paul

St. Paul That was easy. Sarah Palin delivered what may have been the most important speech ever by a vice presidential candidate and made it look like she'd been performing on the national political stage for years. And she made John McCain look good for having picked her as his running mate.Yet,…

St. Paul

The prevailing view in the mainstream media is that Sarah Palin doesn't have a prayer of luring female voters for Hillary Clinton to the John McCain-Palin ticket. Gerald Seib disputed this notion in his excellent column in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday. And the numbers in the latest Journal/NBC…

Why is Joe Lieberman speaking at the Republican convention tonight? Simple. John McCain asked him to. Lieberman, the independent Democratic senator from Connecticut, long ago endorsed McCain for the presidency over his own party's nominee, Barack Obama. But speaking to thousands of excited…

St. Paul

Denver

Denver

Millennial Makeover

IF YOU WEREN'T overcome with excitement as the American basketball team won the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, you should have been. The Americans played as spectacular a brand of basketball as the world has ever seen--and played it at breakneck speed. So the question now is: Who was better,…

PRIMARY ELECTIONS AMONG challengers for a House seat held by the other party aren't normally of great political interest. But the race for the Republican nomination in a New Hampshire district is an exception. The reason: Jennifer Horn, a conservative talk radio host, is running. She's the first…

THE AMERICAN BASKETBALL team at the Beijing Olympics is being treated shabbily by the media. I've had trouble finding when their games were being played and which NBC channel was televising them. Yet this is one of the greatest teams ever assembled in any sport. It's only a slight exaggeration--and…

Jonathan Coors was outnumbered when he met with Colorado governor Bill Ritter Jr. last April. Ritter wasn't alone in his office. The governor's secretary of labor and chief of staff were there, along with several business leaders opposed to the effort by Coors to put a right-to-work referendum on…

London

Denver

Tony Snow, who died Saturday morning at the age of 53, was that rare individual in Washington, a big shot who didn't act like a big shot. He succeeded brilliantly in both journalism and politics, yet barely changed at all in the nearly quarter century I knew him. The reason, I suspect, was that…

THE EDITOR OF A MAGAZINE where I once worked had some half-serious advice for any writer working on a story about a politician. Don't interview the pol, he said. You might like him (or her), and that would ruin the piece.

Democrats John Conyers, John Dingell, and Charles Rangel were in the wilderness from 1994 to 2006, the years of Republican rule of the House of Representatives. They endured the shame of being in the minority. Then Democrats regained control of the House, and, at age 77, Conyers became chairman of…

Barack Obama's tack to the center is quite clever for three reasons (and maybe more, but three is all I could think of). One, it may cause moderate and centrist voters to feel more comfortable about voting for him. That's the big one. Two, he's better off being attacked by John McCain as a…

Bob Corker's introduction to the nation and to politicians in Washington was not auspicious. In his race against Democratic representative Harold Ford for an open Senate seat in Tennessee in 2006, the Republican National Committee aired a TV ad featuring a white woman who says she "met Harold at…

For years now, John McCain has warned of the peril to America in sending $400 billion a year to foreign countries in return for oil. He's been loud and relentless on the subject--and wise. "It's a national security issue," he declared last week at a town hall meeting in New York City. Much of the…

BARACK OBAMA PUNCTUATED his opposition last week to offshore drilling for oil and natural gas with a clever jab at John McCain. "The politics may have changed, but the facts have not," he quipped. A few days earlier, McCain had called for lifting the moratorium on exploration and drilling off the…

Not many polls bring good news to Republicans, but a new survey by John Zogby certainly has. Zogby found that 74 percent of likely voters favor drilling for oil and gas offshore in coastal waters. Here's the breakdown of those who support drilling: 90 percent of Republicans, 58 percent of…

Republicans finally have a winning argument on a big issue, and they'd better make the most of it. It starts with high gasoline prices--the single most infuriating issue to voters these days--but doesn't end there.

The emergence of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee has changed the most important criterion in selecting a vice presidential running mate, notably for John McCain. This has given two Republicans in particular a serious shot at being picked: deputy House Republican whip Eric Cantor…

THE EMERGENCE OF Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee has changed the most important criterion in selecting a vice presidential running mate, notably for John McCain. This has given two Republicans in particular a serious shot at being picked: deputy House Republican whip Eric Cantor…

Barack Obama was thrown off guard by John McCain's proposal for them to appear together at 10 town hall meetings this summer before the party conventions. Or maybe his initial response was merely disingenuous. Obama has insisted for months now that the campaign should be civil and friendly and…

BARACK OBAMA HAS DEFEATED Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination--but with a new and unwelcome twist. He hasn't succeeded in ridding himself of Clinton (or her husband Bill). She refuses to go away, much less concede.

The story of the Democratic Congress is this: So much to do, so little done. Issues of importance are crying out for attention. The alarms are largely ignored. The list of big issues is long and includes immigration, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care and health insurance in general,…

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, the Mr. Magoo of American politics, stumbled onto the truth last week. He discovered the law of supply and demand. "We want to put [more oil] on the market to increase supply and lower prices," Reid said. "With oil and gas prices continuing to break record highs…

THE LAST PERSON BARACK OBAMA wants as his vice presidential running mate is Hillary Clinton. But could she, with key assistance from her husband, former President Bill Clinton, force her way onto an Obama ticket? The answer: don't bet on it.

First, the good news. Conservatives won a sweeping victory in an enormously important election the week before last. Unfortunately, it happened in England, where Boris Johnson won the race for mayor of London and Conservatives trounced Labour all across the country. Now, the bad news. Prospects for…

The NOTION THAT BARACK Obama should pick Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate is crazy. She passes the first test of a veep selection: she's a plausible president. But she fails the second. She doesn't qualify as a partner on the Democratic ticket (and possibly in the White House)…

E.J. Dionne's column in the Washington Post asked this question about Barack Obama: "Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy?" In the New Republic online, John Judis wondered if Obama might be "the next" George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee who lost in a landslide. Both are…

On the eve of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to Washington last week, a British pollster suggested Brown's meetings with presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain would be more important than his talks with President Bush. The president is "irrelevant," the…

FORGET DELEGATES AND the popular vote for the Democratic presidential nomination. The most important thing Hillary Clinton gained by winning the Pennsylvania primary yesterday was a better argument--indeed, a much better argument.

The McCain campaign was offended last week, mightily offended. Democratic senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said McCain didn't care about the people he dropped bombs on during the Vietnam war. "You have to care about the lives of people," said Rockefeller, who supports Barack Obama for…

YOU ONLY HAD TO watch last night's Democratic presidential debate to understand why Hillary Clinton stays in the race. She's losing the nomination fight to Barack Obama in both the delegate count and the popular vote. But if bad things happen to her in a debate or while campaigning, she'll be no…

During an appearance in Philadelphia last month, Hillary Clinton introduced a controversial couple as part of her presidential campaign. She defended them as victims of smear attacks. "Valerie and Joe have had their patriotism questioned," she insisted. "They have been maligned as un-American…

John McCain is one lucky fellow. Of course you can make your own luck, as the saying goes. That's what McCain did with great courage to survive five-and-a-half years at the Hanoi Hilton. And he made his own luck again by advocating a surge of troops in Iraq that later proved to be successful.

My view is, the more grandchildren, the better. I have six with a seventh due in April. And I assume there are more to come. My daughter Grace just had her first child in February--a boy named Paul--and my son Freddy is only now finishing college at Auburn and isn't married yet.

When John McCain begins his search for a vice presidential running mate, he'll quickly come upon a sad fact. He wants a candidate who will be seen as a plausible president. That's criterion number one. He also wants someone who won't subtract from his campaign in any serious way. That's criterion…

SOME PEOPLE THRIVE on adversity, but most of them are not politicians seeking high office. The Clintons, first Bill and now Hillary, are the exception. Three times in the Democratic presidential race Hillary Clinton has suffered shattering losses that threatened to destroy her candidacy. And three…

NOW THAT HE'S WON the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has some serious tasks ahead of him. Wooing conservatives and raising money are the least of it. Telling his life story to the country and making speeches on big issues, while Democrats continue their nomination struggle, won't…

WHEN VOTERS IN OHIO go to the polls today, they will have heard over and over again from Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that their state's economic troubles are caused by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other trade treaties.

For decades, Democrats have been the coalition party. They brought together groups of people who differed on ideology and in social status. Republicans, at least since 1980, have been the consensus party. They rallied behind the standard positions of conservatism, differing only (and then mildly)…

A year ago, when neither the war nor political reconciliation was going well, the Bush administration reluctantly agreed to 18 benchmarks for judging progress in Iraq. And the Democratic Congress eagerly wrote the benchmarks into law, also requiring the administration to report back in July and…

Republicans and Barack Obama are far apart ideologically, but they have a common enemy: Hillary Clinton. This explains why many Republicans look kindly on Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Republicans have two goals in the 2008 race. One is to retain the presidency. The other…

The story from California last week was bound to alarm conservatives. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed John McCain for president at a solar technology plant. Rudy Giuliani, who's also backing McCain, joined the lovefest as an uninvited but very welcome guest. And McCain talked about the…

Now that John McCain is the presumptive - don't you hate that word! - Republican presidential nominee, the big question is who will be his vice presidential running mate. At the moment, that's unknowable, because McCain himself doesn't know whom he might pick. But here's what we do know: it won't…

Now that John McCain is the presumptive - don't you hate that word! - Republican presidential nominee, the big question is who will be his vice presidential running mate. At the moment, that's unknowable, because McCain himself doesn't know whom he might pick. But here's what we do know: it won't…

You don't have to pay attention to every state on Super Tuesday. Some are more important than others. So concentrate on those and you'll get a pretty good understanding of what the results mean for the presidential races in both parties. On the Democratic side, three states stand out in my mind:…

You don't have to pay attention to every state on Super Tuesday. Some are more important than others. So concentrate on those and you'll get a pretty good understanding of what the results mean for the presidential races in both parties. On the Democratic side, three states stand out in my mind:…

The date: December 13, 2006. The location: a windowless conference room in the Pentagon known as the Tank. It was an inauspicious place for President Bush to confront the last major obstacle to the most important decision of his second term, perhaps of his entire presidency. And the president chose…

IS THAT WHAT we were waiting for? A nearly two-hour debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama devoted to issues on which they basically agree. Well, that's what we got. The low point came when Clinton insisted they were having "such a great time" in the debate and Obama said, "Absolutely." If…

WE NOW KNOW WHAT is far and away the top priority for George W. Bush in the final year of his presidency. It's not curbing earmarks or strengthening his No Child Left Behind education program. It's Iraq.

Barack Obama made quite a splash with his comment last week likening himself to Ronald Reagan. Who'd have guessed such a thought had crossed his mind? "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way Richard Nixon did not and a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama said. Then he suggested…

The match is almost perfect. As the surge in Iraq has succeeded, the presidential campaign of John McCain has risen from the ashes. This is no coincidence, and the message is simple and unmistakable. The surge is now a powerful force in American politics. In the jargon of the 2008 presidential…

IT TOOK A WHILE--for the duration of the Iowa campaign, to be exact--but the Clintons have figured out the most productive way to use former President Bill Clinton in Hillary Clinton's campaign. Their division of labor is very simple: he criticizes Barack Obama while she mostly stays positive. It…

It took a while - for the duration of the Iowa campaign, to be exact - but the Clintons have figured out the most effective way to use former President Bill Clinton in Hillary Clinton's campaign. Their division of labor is very simple: he criticizes Barack Obama while she mostly stays positive. It…

It took a while - for the duration of the Iowa campaign, to be exact - but the Clintons have figured out the most effective way to use former President Bill Clinton in Hillary Clinton's campaign. Their division of labor is very simple: he criticizes Barack Obama while she mostly stays positive. It…

Mitt Romney had a light home field advantage in the Michigan primary since he grew up in Detroit and his dad was a three-term governor. But that's not why he won. Romney defeated John McCain because the economy is emerging as the overriding issue in the 2008 presidential race, and Romney's message…

Mitt Romney had a light home field advantage in the Michigan primary since he grew up in Detroit and his dad was a three-term governor. But that's not why he won. Romney defeated John McCain because the economy is emerging as the overriding issue in the 2008 presidential race, and Romney's message…

MITT ROMNEY HAD A light home field advantage in the Michigan primary since he grew up in Detroit and his dad was a three-term governor. But that's not why he won. Romney defeated John McCain because the economy is emerging as the overriding issue in the 2008 presidential race, and Romney's message…

Des Moines

I had hoped Brit Hume's first question of Ron Paul in tonight's Republican presidential debate on Fox News would be this: "Where were you last Sunday night, Congressman Paul? We saw your supporters running around outside the studio in New Hampshire with cops chasing after them. We missed you in the…

I had hoped Brit Hume's first question of Ron Paul in tonight's Republican presidential debate on Fox News would be this: "Where were you last Sunday night, Congressman Paul? We saw your supporters running around outside the studio in New Hampshire with cops chasing after them. We missed you in the…

THAT WAS QUICK. The Clinton era was over for a grand total of five days. It was nice while it lasted--from the Iowa caucuses to the New Hampshire primary. But now Bill and Hillary are back in full force, with Bill doing the dirty work of trashing Barack Obama and Hillary stressing how much she…

That was quick. The Clinton era was over for a grand total of five days. It was nice while it lasted - from the Iowa caucuses to the New Hampshire primary. But now Bill and Hillary are back in full force, with Bill doing the dirty work of trashing Barack Obama and Hillary stressing how much she…

That was quick. The Clinton era was over for a grand total of five days. It was nice while it lasted - from the Iowa caucuses to the New Hampshire primary. But now Bill and Hillary are back in full force, with Bill doing the dirty work of trashing Barack Obama and Hillary stressing how much she…

One thing we've learned about Hillary Clinton, her husband, and the entire Clinton campaign team is that they're sore losers. Not that anyone should be surprised by this. But how you respond to a defeat is a test of a presidential candidate. Respond poorly and you suffer. Nobody likes a sore loser.…

One thing we've learned about Hillary Clinton, her husband, and the entire Clinton campaign team is that they're sore losers. Not that anyone should be surprised by this. But how you respond to a defeat is a test of a presidential candidate. Respond poorly and you suffer. Nobody likes a sore loser.…

THERE'S A TRUTH THE Democratic presidential candidates can't handle: the success of the "surge" in Iraq. The addition of American troops and the adoption of a new strategy of protecting the civilian population has now dramatically reduced the level of violence in Baghdad and pacified other parts of…

Des Moines, Iowa

Mitt Romney is often accused of being a mechanical candidate, a guy whose looks are perfect and who has thought about every issue and has standardized statements on each one. But he does have a sense of humor that sometimes breaks through, as it did today--caucus day--in Iowa after Mke Huckabee's…

Mitt Romney is often accused of being a mechanical candidate, a guy whose looks are perfect and who has thought about every issue and has standardized statements on each one. But he does have a sense of humor that sometimes breaks through, as it did today--caucus day--in Iowa after Mke Huckabee's…

THE POPULAR NOTION about Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee is that they're soaring in the 2008 presidential race because they're candidates of change. And indeed that's true. But it's a particular kind of change that is key to their appeal. They might be called the "take it easy" candidates.

Inman, South Carolina

An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings attached. Think about this a moment. Last winter, after Democrats captured the Senate and House, it seemed likely they'd succeed in limiting or ending the Iraq…

An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings attached. Think about this a moment. Last winter, after Democrats captured the Senate and House, it seemed likely they'd succeed in limiting or ending the Iraq…

When Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona learned on the Sunday after Thanksgiving that Senate Republican whip Trent Lott would announce his retirement the next day, he moved swiftly. It was mid-afternoon. By the end of the evening, he had 20 of the 25 votes needed to succeed Lott as the number two…

Debates normally don't amount to much in presidential primaries, but this year they've been important. Without debates, Mike Huckabee would still be a no-name and John McCain wouldn't be rallying from his low point last summer. Even so, the moderator of today's Des Moines Register debate in Iowa…

Debates normally don't amount to much in presidential primaries, but this year they've been important. Without debates, Mike Huckabee would still be a no-name and John McCain wouldn't be rallying from his low point last summer. Even so, the moderator of today's Des Moines Register debate in Iowa…

The first time I spoke to a pro-life group--it was the summer of 1993--I expected Illinois congressman Henry Hyde to be there. I was speaking in Milwaukee at National Right to Life's annual convention and my assumption was that when a major anti-abortion group gathered, Hyde's presence was…

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mitt Romney didn't take a huge risk in giving a speech about his Mormon faith today. The flip side is that he doesn't have a lot to gain from it. But there should be no mistake about this: He made the most of the opportunity the speech gave him. It was a very…

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mitt Romney didn't take a huge risk in giving a speech about his Mormon faith today. The flip side is that he doesn't have a lot to gain from it. But there should be no mistake about this: He made the most of the opportunity the speech gave him. It was a very…

The safest of all assumptions in Washington is that year after year federal spending will rise. Over the past 25 years, spending increased 84 percent in real, inflation-adjusted terms as the population of the United States rose 30 percent. Spending per capita grew 41 percent. And though President…

When the CNN-You Tube debate among Republican presidential candidates began with a guy named Chris Nandor playing a guitar and singing, my wife Barbara exclaimed, "This is humiliating. This is really bad." Of course she was right. And then things got worse. This debate not only was mortifying to…

When the CNN-You Tube debate among Republican presidential candidates began with a guy named Chris Nandor playing a guitar and singing, my wife Barbara exclaimed, "This is humiliating. This is really bad." Of course she was right. And then things got worse. This debate not only was mortifying to…

PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS the presidency is still "a joyous experience" for him. "People ask if I would do it again. I would." And one reason for his upbeat mood in talking to a dozen journalists Wednesday is progress in Iraq, including revenue sharing by the central government with the provinces.…

The new 30-second ad that Mike Huckabee has put on the air in Iowa represents a quite remarkable step in presidential politics. Maybe my memory betrays me, but I don't recall a major presidential candidate who made such an unabashed, unambiguous appeal for support on the basis of religious faith.…

The new 30-second ad that Mike Huckabee has put on the air in Iowa represents a quite remarkable step in presidential politics. Maybe my memory betrays me, but I don't recall a major presidential candidate who made such an unabashed, unambiguous appeal for support on the basis of religious faith.…

MITT.ByMejia.1.jpg Sculpture by Herman Mejia

I think it was that great Democratic wit Gene McCarthy who described journalists and reporters as blackbirds on a telephone wire. When one flies to the telephone wire across the street, they all do. There's also a non-bird name for this phenomenon. It's called herd journalism. And just this week…

I think it was that great Democratic wit Gene McCarthy who described journalists and reporters as blackbirds on a telephone wire. When one flies to the telephone wire across the street, they all do. There's also a non-bird name for this phenomenon. It's called herd journalism. And just this week…

Republicans lost the governorship of Kentucky and the state senate in Virginia last week. But the elections were not as bad as they looked for Republicans. Knocked down and trampled on by Democrats in 2006, Republicans are at least back on their feet in 2007.

Republicans, though still traumatized by their resounding defeat in the 2006 election, are growing convinced they can win the White House again in 2008. They believe things are beginning to turn their way. The war in Iraq is being won. The Democratic Congress is so unpopular that even House Speaker…

Ron Paul has been a striking presence in the Republican presidential debates. One result is he's raised an unimaginable amount of money--$5.1 million in the third quarter--for an obscure congressman from Texas. Another is he's jumped to fourth place (7.4 percent) in a New Hampshire primary poll.…

There's more than a hint of a double standard in the response of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to the criticism of her at the MSNBC debate on Tuesday night. The campaign quickly put together a video called 'the politics of piling on' that shows the male candidates focusing ominously on…

There's more than a hint of a double standard in the response of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to the criticism of her at the MSNBC debate on Tuesday night. The campaign quickly put together a video called 'the politics of piling on' that shows the male candidates focusing ominously on…

Editor's note: For more on the campaign, go to Campaignstandard.com.

President Bush and congressional Republicans shouldn't worry about political fallout from blocking the Democratic legislation to expand the children's health insurance program known as S-chip. They have a good argument against it that most Americans will buy and a credible alternative. So there's…

President Bush and congressional Republicans shouldn't worry about political fallout from blocking the Democratic legislation to expand the children's health insurance program known as S-chip. They have a good argument against it that most Americans will buy and a credible alternative. So there's…

Last February, Senator Hillary Clinton proposed to cap the number of American troops in Iraq at their level on January 1, 2007--roughly 140,000--and begin a withdrawal within 90 days.

Thomas DeFrank was a young reporter for Newsweek when he encountered Gerald Ford for the first time. Ford was vice president at the time. The two became friends, a phenomenon that was rare in those days and is all but extinct today as a wall of distrust divides politicians and the press. DeFrank…

Thomas DeFrank was a young reporter for Newsweek when he encountered Gerald Ford for the first time. Ford was vice president at the time. The two became friends, a phenomenon that was rare in those days and is all but extinct today as a wall of distrust divides politicians and the press. DeFrank…

Rudy Giuliani has a problem. It's bigger than he imagines and could doom his presidential prospects. The problem is his pro-choice position on abortion. It's one he cannot finesse by simply saying he "would keep the balance exactly where it is now." That means abortion would remain legal, limited…

Editor's note: For more on the campaign, go to Campaignstandard.com.

Rudy Giuliani's position on abortion is evolving in a pro-life direction. Addressing an audience of social and religious conservatives, Giuliani made two new points: as president, he would veto any bill increasing the number of abortions, and he would support any "reasonable suggestion" to reduce…

Rudy Giuliani's position on abortion is evolving in a pro-life direction. Addressing an audience of social and religious conservatives, Giuliani made two new points: as president, he would veto any bill increasing the number of abortions, and he would support any "reasonable suggestion" to reduce…

Democratic outfits like MoveOn.org and other antiwar groups have been pounding Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell all year because of his support for President Bush's Iraq policy and his skill in thwarting Democratic efforts to end the war and pass liberal legislation. TV ads zinging…

Democratic outfits like MoveOn.org and other antiwar groups have been pounding Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell all year because of his support for President Bush's Iraq policy and his skill in thwarting Democratic efforts to end the war and pass liberal legislation. TV ads zinging…

The political direction in Washington is shifting. The White House, in a defensive crouch for much of 2007, is beginning to go on offense. The Democratic Congress is increasingly on defense. If this trend continues, the dreary prospects for Republicans in the 2008 election may improve. Look what's…

The political direction in Washington is shifting. The White House, in a defensive crouch for much of 2007, is beginning to go on offense. The Democratic Congress is increasingly on defense. If this trend continues, the dreary prospects for Republicans in the 2008 election may improve. Look what's…

Do Republicans really favor the expansion of S-chip by 2-to-1? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says so every time she makes her pitch for what I call S-chip-plus. It would extend S-chip, the federal program begun in 1997 to give health insurance to poor children not covered by Medicaid, into the middle…

Do Republicans really favor the expansion of S-chip by 2-to-1? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says so every time she makes her pitch for what I call S-chip-plus. It would extend S-chip, the federal program begun in 1997 to give health insurance to poor children not covered by Medicaid, into the middle…

Rahm Emanuel, the chief intimidator for House Democrats, didn't go for subtlety. Republicans who oppose expansion of the S-chip program will be denying "10 million American children their health care," he told Major Garrett of Fox News. Chuck Schumer, his counterpart in the Senate, took the…

First impressions are supposed to be 90 percent of politics. If that's the case, Fred Thompson should have a decent shot at the Republican presidential nomination. The impression he created in Tuesday's Republican debate in Detroit wasn't that of a dominant figure or a replica of Ronald Reagan. But…

First impressions are supposed to be 90 percent of politics. If that's the case, Fred Thompson should have a decent shot at the Republican presidential nomination. The impression he created in Tuesday's Republican debate in Detroit wasn't that of a dominant figure or a replica of Ronald Reagan. But…

Nancy Pelosi has gotten better. She calls Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "a master virtuoso legislator," but as Reid's counterpart in the House she's just being polite. It's clear now that she's the star of the Democratic congressional leadership. Reid is a klutz and she isn't. Pelosi has gotten…

Nancy Pelosi has gotten better. She calls Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "a master virtuoso legislator," but as Reid's counterpart in the House she's just being polite. It's clear now that she's the star of the Democratic congressional leadership. Reid is a klutz and she isn't. Pelosi has gotten…

You've heard the analogy. A national mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance is just like the requirement that drivers buy auto insurance. Mitt Romney, for one, cited the analogy in touting his health care plan as governor of Massachusetts several years ago. An aide to Senator Hillary…

Has Hillary Clinton all but locked up the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination? You'd think so from the gravity with which the media treats polls showing her well ahead of Barack Obama. The lead story on page one of the Washington Post on Wednesday was headlined: "Clinton Widens Lead in Poll".…

Has Hillary Clinton all but locked up the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination? You'd think so from the gravity with which the media treats polls showing her well ahead of Barack Obama. The lead story on page one of the Washington Post on Wednesday was headlined: "Clinton Widens Lead in Poll".…

A few weeks after Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia was elected to a second term in the House of Representatives in 2002, he got a phone call from Roy Blunt, the Republican whip and third-ranking member of the House leadership. Cantor figured his wish had come true and he was getting a seat on the…

House minority leader John Boehner of Ohio and Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina have labored long and hard to make an issue out of Democratic phoniness in supposedly cleaning up the dubious practice of earmarks. Remember earmarks? Those are the items of special…

House minority leader John Boehner of Ohio and Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina have labored long and hard to make an issue out of Democratic phoniness in supposedly cleaning up the dubious practice of earmarks. Remember earmarks? Those are the items of special…

Editor's note: For more on the campaign go to CampaignStandard.com.

Republicans are demoralized about the 2008 election and they ought to be. By a significant margin, more voters now identify themselves as Democrats. And not only are Democrats raising more money, the party's presidential candidates are generating considerably more enthusiasm than Republican…

Republicans are demoralized about the 2008 election and they ought to be. By a significant margin, more voters now identify themselves as Democrats. And not only are Democrats raising more money, the party's presidential candidates are generating considerably more enthusiasm than Republican…

When congressional leaders met with President Bush last week at the White House, the Republicans were upbeat, the Democrats far less buoyant. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a more imposing figure than her Senate colleague, Majority Leader Harry Reid, took the lead in criticizing President Bush's Iraq…

THERE'S SOMETHING NOT quite right about the 2008 presidential race. While some of the candidates are lame, that's not the trouble. What's wrong is the structure of the campaign, as boring or beside the point as that may sound. There are too many candidates, too many debates, and way too many…

You didn't see it on TV. Because when Mitt Romney was talking during last week's Republican presidential debate on Fox News, the camera was on him, not John McCain. But McCain was sending a message. He looked at Romney with disdain and rolled his eyes at nearly everything Romney said. The message…

Republicans are so intent on pushing scandal-plagued members of Congress out of office and far from the media spotlight that the entire party--from the White House to congressional leaders to the Republican National Committee to various campaign committees--was instantly united last week in the…

Durham, New Hampshire

In his mind's eye, Jon Voight can see the scene unfolding. Tall, self-assured Alger Hiss is waiting in the witness room to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when a short, overweight man wearing a rumpled suit enters the room. It's Whittaker Chambers, who has accused…

IT'S NOT PARTICULARLY visible at the moment, but there is a road to political recovery for Republicans. Chances are they won't get far enough down it to recapture the House or Senate or even hold the White House in 2008. But they might.

AS EVERY REPUBLICAN knows, Democrats are short-sighted in their views on national security, pursuing antiwar arguments that are bound to come back and haunt them politically. This was the case with the clamor among Democrats to pull out of Vietnam and may be the case now as well with their calls…

KARL ROVE IS the first to admit it: he's become a myth, a man from whom political magic is expected. Last fall, for instance, Republicans around the country and even in the White House waited for Rove to devise a campaign strategy that would keep Republicans from losing the House and Senate and…

A unique chapter in White House history came to a conclusion last week. Call it the Wehner era, as in Peter Wehner, the director of the office of strategic initiatives. The title is misleading. Wehner ran a one-man think tank inside the White House (with a few young research assistants) that…

Greenville, South Carolina

The biggest surprise in Washington in 2007 is who's turned out to be the strongest force in town. It's not Democrats, though they control the House and the Senate. It's not a bipartisan alliance of moderates, who often imagine themselves as pivotal but never are. And it's certainly not a…

FOR HILLARY CLINTON, the presidency is not in the bag. Even winning the Democratic presidential nomination is considerably less than a sure thing. But of the 18 Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, Clinton is the most likely to be the next president. And she did nothing last night in…

White House officials were pushing the line last week that President Bush would soon take a positive new tack in defending the war in Iraq. He'd talk about what Iraq would look like after the "surge" of American troops in Baghdad had succeeded and the soldiers were beginning to come home. Peter…

IF REPUBLICAN SENATORS abandon President Bush on Iraq in September, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell won't be leading the stampede. Not that he had ever planned to. But McConnell had talked earlier about his expectation that Bush would adopt "a new direction" in Iraq in September, one that…

Juneau

The what-ifs in the sudden death of immigration reform are intriguing. What if Senate majority leader Harry Reid hadn't pulled the immigration bill from the floor when it was close to passage in early June? What if Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona had come…

THE IMMIGRATION BILL is dead, but the immigration issue is alive. And since the thundering herd that opposed the bill offers only stiffer border enforcement as an alternative, it's left to advocates to come up with a better (and less narrow) measure. I don't mean better in some theoretical or…

SOMETIMES DIPLOMATS should abandon their diplomacy, negotiators their talks, world leaders their calls for aggressive pursuit of a grand solution. And now is such a time in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. For the foreseeable future, no diplomacy will work, no talks will be…

THE BUZZ IN WASHINGTON this week is all about Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his speech Monday night about Iraq. Lugar isn't ordinarily a topic of lively conversation--except when he bails on President Bush on the "surge" in…

In the good old days when Republicans ruled Congress, their instructions for President Bush were: no vetoes, especially of spending bills. Republican leaders--House speaker Denny Hastert, for one--made it clear a Bush veto would cause ill will on Capitol Hill. So over a six-year period the…

Where was Barack Obama? The moment was perfect last week for the Illinois senator and champion of bipartisanship to step forward and help save the compromise immigration bill from a premature death. All he needed to do was switch his vote to oppose an amendment whose passage was going to shatter…

A SIMPLE DISTINCTION explains why President Bush is unlikely to alter the outcome of the Senate debate on immigration reform, his visit to a Senate Republican luncheon yesterday notwithstanding. Despite his relatively low presidential approval rating, Bush has plenty of power. There's the veto and…

Conservatives are sometimes blind to what's in their own best interest. This is especially true on immigration, all the more so on the narrower matter of the bipartisan immigration reform bill now before the Senate. The bill gives conservatives a large chunk of what they've wanted for years, plus…

THERE WAS A MOMENT in Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate that must have caused a massive sigh of disappointment among the media. It came when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney declined to attack Arizona senator John McCain on immigration. The day before, McCain had criticized…

Don't listen to Teddy Kennedy. If you belong to the small band of conservative brothers inclined to support immigration reform, the Massachusetts senator is on your side. But what he says is likely to make you anxious, vexed, or even crazed. At times, Kennedy makes the compromise immigration bill…

In 2006, with Republicans in control of the Senate, an immigration bill that was anathema to most Republicans passed the Senate by a filibuster-proof margin. Now, oddly enough, with Democrats in charge, the Senate is likely to approve an immigration bill--call it Kyl-Kennedy--that from a Republican…

Columbia, SC

CAN PRESIDENT BUSH RECOVER? It matters enormously in the 2008 election--particularly in the presidential race--whether he does or not. Either way, recovery or no recovery, the president will have a powerful impact on the outcome. If he fails to lift himself out of the political doldrums, his…

NOW THAT I think about it, there was something noteworthy that occurred at last week's Republican presidential debate. My initial take was the race for the 2008 nomination was unchanged, and indeed it was. But when you compare what was said at the Republican debate with what Democratic presidential…

The showdown at the White House Correspondents' dinner was more emotional and lasted longer than was first reported. It started when Laurie David introduced herself to Karl Rove. He knew who she was--Hollywood's leading Bush-hater and a producer of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's film on global…

REMEMBER THE FIRST or even the second or third debate among Republican presidential candidates in 2000? I don't, except George Bush's insistence--I think it was in Iowa--that Jesus Christ was the political philosopher who'd influenced him the most. Recall anything that happened in the endless…

Senator John McCain's speech last week on winning in Iraq earned high marks, at least from conservatives. One result was an immediate fourfold increase in McCain's online fundraising, though he'd made no special appeal. Another was that his once close ties to the mainstream media continued to fray,…

STEVE HAYWARD is no Al Gore. The former vice president's film about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, delighted environmentalists and won an Academy Award. Hayward's rebuttal of Gore's warning about a coming climate catastrophe won't thrill either the environmental crowd or Hollywood's liberal…

THE PRESS has erupted in full riot mode, making wild and angry charges, running down the street smashing windows, and exuding intolerance and vengefulness and ideological bias. Or so it seems. The target of the media riot is Senator John McCain, once the hero of mainstream press. But McCain has now…

Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, took time out from his speech to the Leadership Program of the Rockies on February 24 to conduct a straw poll. His audience, assembled at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, consisted of 300 conservatives, the elite of the state's Republican party. Luntz…

SOMETHING GETS INTO political leaders when they take over Congress. It makes them think they can run Washington and the government from Capitol Hill. So they overreach, but it never works. Republicans tried it in 1995 and were slapped down by President Clinton in the fight over the budget and a…

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has a theory about divided government. It's this: When one party holds the White House, and the other holds one or both houses of Congress, the chances of passing landmark legislation improve dramatically. McConnell cites two examples. The first is the passage…

When President Bush, at the tail end of his Latin American trip last week, got around to commenting on the controversy over eight fired U.S. attorneys, he was calm, reasonable, and even a bit apologetic. Little good it did him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Bush administration was…

The White House staff reflects the president. This is obvious to the point of being a truism. Yet it needs to be remembered in the context of a Bush presidency smacked by Scooter Libby's felony conviction, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, and the overblown flap over the firing of eight…

As the saying goes in Washington, when you're not on offense, you're on defense. This isn't so bad if you play good defense, as congressional Republicans and the White House have been doing. As a result the outlook for Republicans and conservatives isn't as bleak as it seemed right after last…

The sudden embrace of social conservatism by top Republican presidential candidates has been widely misunderstood. It's been portrayed, particularly in the media, as political pandering of the first order-and nothing more. True, there's a large element of pandering when a candidate switches…

The White House, an aide to President Bush says, is "ratcheting up the rhetoric" against congressional Democrats who seek to restrict the president's ability to send more troops to Iraq. The president is sending Democrats a clear signal that their worst fear may come to pass. If they persist in…

What prompted Senate majority leader Harry Reid to think he could outmaneuver Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell on which Iraq war resolutions would be voted on is anybody's guess. Reid never had a chance, and he lost badly. The media played the story as a simple case of Republicans, led by…

The idea has gotten around that Republicans lost the 2006 election because they weren't conservative enough. At National Review's conservative summit, Jeb Bush, the ex-Florida governor, said as much: "Sadly, in Washington, Republicans have lost their way. We have become timid." He said Republicans…

No one knows the tragic story of America in Vietnam better than Jim Webb, first as a Marine, then as a writer. So the newly elected Democratic senator from Virginia--a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq--wants to keep Vietnam out of the debate over Iraq. "As much as possible, we need to keep this…

SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON is waging two presidential campaigns at once. She is running for the Democratic presidential nomination while keeping a sharp eye on the general election campaign against the Republican presidential nominee, whoever that turns out to be. Senator Clinton wants to run as a…

Defeated politicians usually slip quietly into obscurity. But Republicans Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, and Bob Ehrlich, the ex-governor of Maryland, won't be among them. Nor have they become lobbyists or signed up for a work-free perch at some Washington institution. And they…

There's a simple reason the Washington establishment, Democrats, and the press hate President Bush's new strategy in Iraq: He spurned their advice. He ordered a troop increase, not the first phase of a withdrawal. He didn't echo Democrats like Senator Joe Biden and suggest the war in Iraq is lost.…

You can't govern from Capitol Hill. Newt Gingrich, as Republican House speaker, tried after the landslide of 1994 and failed. Yet Democrats, with their "100 hours" agenda in the House and 10 legislative "priorities" in the Senate, act as if they can run Washington. House speaker Nancy Pelosi and…

President Bush has it backwards. No, not on Iraq, where he understands the foolishness of calls for retreat and the urgent need to deploy more troops, secure Baghdad, and achieve victory. Bush's wrong headedness is on a matter of domestic policy.

GERALD FORD WAS an underappreciated president. His greatest feat, leading America out of the traumas of Watergate and Vietnam, has routinely been viewed as an important but hardly towering achievement. But it was no small accomplishment. It was not something that any politician who stepped into the…

It turns out you only have to attend a White House Christmas party to find out where President Bush is headed on Iraq. One guest who shook hands with Bush in the receiving line told him, "Don't let the bastards get you down." Bush, slightly startled but cheerful, replied, "Don't worry. I'm not."…

President Bush won his first skirmish with the Iraq Study Group. James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, the ISG directors, insisted the president adopt all 79 of its recommendations for changing policy in Iraq. Bush balked, and for good reason. A sizable chunk of the ISG's advice--its call, for…

Copperheads

IN DEALING WITH the new Democratic Congress, President Bush is said to have a big choice to make. To get anything done, he either has to compromise with Democrats or ally himself with an as-yet-unformed majority coalition of Republicans and moderate-to-conservative Democrats. But there's a third…

RARELY HAS THE PRESS gotten a story so wrong. Robert Gates, President Bush's choice to replace Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, is not the point man for a boarding party of former national security officials from the elder President Bush's administration taking over defense and foreign policy in his…

This piece originally appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the International Economy.

WHEN REPUBLICANS won the House and Senate in 1994, President Clinton was badly shaken. At a White House press conference, a reporter suggested Clinton might no longer be "relevant" as a leader. It took weeks for Clinton to recover his composure. It turned out, of course, that he was as relevant as…

THIS ONE IS PRETTY EASY TO EXPLAIN. Republicans lost the House and probably the Senate because of Iraq, corruption, and a record of taking up big issues and then doing nothing on them. Of these, the war was by far the biggest factor. Unpopular wars trump good economies and everything else.…

REPUBLICANS FACE THE PROSPECT of losing a substantial number of Senate and House seats today, but it didn't have to be that way. For sure, the war in Iraq was always going to be a drag on Republicans. And an election in the sixth year of a presidency is often perilous for the president's party, a…

THE BIG QUESTION in tomorrow's election is whether Democrats capture the Senate, the House, or both. But there are other contests and issues at stake that have gotten little press attention but are nonetheless important (or at least interesting). Some of these are actually eye-catching or may have…

Evansville, Indiana

ONE OF THE MOST DISAPPOINTING TRENDS for Republicans in the 2006 campaign is their failure to compete effectively against incumbent Democrats. In fact, no Republican challenger has led a House Democrat in a single public poll. And while Republican Tom Kean Jr. ran ahead of Democratic Sen. Bob…

THE 2006 MIDTERM ELECTION, despite all the hoopla, is turning out to be quite normal for the sixth year of a presidency. This doesn't bode well for Republicans. With President Bush now deep into year six, Republicans are bound to lose House and Senate seats. That's par for the course for the party…

David Kuo, once an official of President Bush's faith-based initiative, published a book this month that attacks the White House for privately ridiculing evangelical Christians while cynically manipulating how they vote. The book arrived, cynically enough, just in time for the midterm election--an…

REPUBLICANS and conservatives, brace yourselves! Strategists and consultants of both parties now believe the House is lost and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi will become speaker. At best, Republicans will cling to control of the Senate by a single seat, two at most. For many election cycles,…

Here's how Washington works. On September 28, 2003, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department was investigating the leak to columnist Robert Novak of the name of a CIA officer married to Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat who had accused President Bush of lying about Iraq. The same…

CAN PRESIDENT BUSH help Republicans retain control of Congress? He thinks so. And so do more Republican candidates than you might guess, given Bush's improved but still relatively low popularity. In fact, he'll appear in many states not ordinarily viewed as Bush country: Connecticut, Illinois,…

It was a warm weekend day in mid-July when, Republican senator George Voinovich of Ohio says, "it came to me." He was back in Cleveland, his hometown, taking a walk with his wife Janet in the neighborhood where they'd lived for 40 years. "You know," he said, "I've been thinking about John Bolton."…

WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn't made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism. Here's how President Bush explained this Tuesday: "This thing about . . . let's put…

The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly no smear campaign against Joseph…

You could almost hear cheers of joy coming from the White House. President Bush, it seems, is back, no longer hopelessly unpopular and embattled. You could see a renewed vigor in Bush's bracing defense last week of his Iraq policy and his warning of the geopolitical disaster that would follow a…

HOW DO PEOPLE BECOME PRO-LIFERS? What turns people into passionate foes of abortion and related issues like euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research? I'm not referring to those who supported the pro-life position because of their family upbringing or religious faith or because of a political…

HURRICANE KATRINA caused the greatest natural disaster in American history. President Bush couldn't change that. But Katrina also was a political disaster for the president. And Bush, given a year to think about it, realizes he could have avoided that.

A TERRORIST CONSPIRACY to blow up American airliners flying from Britain to the United States--surely the most threat ening terrorist plot since 9/11--was broken up last week. The fighting between Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah continued to raise the possibility of a full-scale Middle…

DURING A GET-TO-KNOW-YOU meeting with the new Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, last week, a veteran Washington journalist asked about possible bipartisan talks to deal with the growing cost of entitlements. "Would revenues be on the table?" he inquired. Paulson looked puzzled. Another journalist…

DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. In the early 1970s, they rejected their hawkish tradition on national security with the nomination of George McGovern for president. The resulting weakness on national security issues has haunted them ever since. Democrats didn't recover until the 1990s when the…

SENATOR CARL LEVIN of Michigan had a grim and unhappy look on his face. For years, he had led Democrats in an effort to slash funding for missile defense. He had planned to seek a cut of $68 million. But with North Korea poised to launch missiles and Iran's relentless drive to go nuclear, the…

NO ONE should have been surprised by President Bush's let-Israel-fight policy in the current Middle East conflict. Bush is consistent. The essentials of his approach to Israel and its enemies were adopted four years ago when the president ostracized then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and called…

SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON of Texas and Representative Mike Pence of Indiana introduced a compromise immigration bill on Tuesday that amounts to the last serious opportunity for broad--or "comprehensive"--immigration reform this year. The measure is a long shot, but it has the tacit support of…

PRESIDENT BUSH, en route to last weekend's G8 summit in Russia, paused for a day in what used to be Communist East Germany, where he learned from German chancellor Angela Merkel the proper way to carve a roasted boar.

I WAS RECENTLY ASKED about President Bush's chances of a political resurgence. Might Mr. Bush be able to recover as strongly as President Reagan did from a slump in his second term in the 1980s? My response was, Reagan recovery? What Reagan recovery? Though he continued his ultimately successful…

THERE'S JOY at the White House again and less anxiety among Republicans in Congress. The excesses of the press and Supreme Court are bringing Bush and rebellious conservatives closer together. Iraq is better off. The American economy is humming. The White House has made no harmful missteps. And the…

THE MEDIA COVERAGE of the killing of 24 Iraqis at Haditha has given rich new definition to the phrase "rush to judgment." The coverage, plus the reaction of antiwar politicians like Democratic representative John Murtha, amounts to a public verdict of guilty, rendered against a handful of Marines,…

THE LEFTIES AND THE MEDIA are right about Karl Rove. That's why they're in a dither now that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has cleared Rove of any criminal wrongdoing in the overblown leak case involving CIA functionary Valerie Plame. The left and the mainstream press know three things about…

PRESIDENTS RARELY RECOVER from second term slumps, but President Bush may be on the verge of at least a modest upturn and perhaps a strong recovery. For sure, his plunge in job approval over the past year has been halted. He's bottomed out. But how significant will his recovery and how durable?…

Tallahassee

JUNE 6, 2006, is an important date, not only because it's the 62nd anniversary of D-Day. It's also the day the Senate will vote on the so-called marriage amendment, which would amend the Constitution to restrict marriage in America to a man and a woman.

PRESIDENT BUSH AND REPUBLICANS are staring political disaster in the face on immigration. The problem isn't that they might enact a bill allowing illegal immigrants living in America to earn their way to citizenship, inviting foreign workers to come here, and beefing up security on the 2,000-mile…

Jefferson City, Missouri

PRESIDENT BUSH IS A CONSERVATIVE politician, not a conservative ideologue. This explains why Bush sometimes does things that aren't conservative. He does so to survive and, if all goes well, to prosper politically. Or he does so because he actually favors some nonconservative policy or position.…

Baton Rouge

NOW THAT HE'S BACK IN the elections business, Karl Rove has a huge task on his hands: assuring strong Republican voter turnout. At the moment, Republicans are in a funk. And their dejected mood may presage a low turnout in the midterm election on November 7. Should a large number of Republican…

TONY SNOW, the former Fox News anchor and talk radio host, has taken one of the toughest jobs in America. As White House press secretary for President Bush, he'll have deal with a press corps that is both out of control and smug in its negative opinion of the both the president and his…

THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE HAS FLIPPED in President Bush's favor. The public now firmly supports toughened border enforcement plus--and this is a big plus for the president--a system for letting illegal immigrants already in America earn citizenship. This has been Bush's position all along, though the…

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA may have trouble resisting the temptation to declare that Karl Rove has been demoted, but the truth is quite the contrary. By giving up his role as deputy White House chief of staff, Rove has been freed to do what he does best: shape big issues and develop strategies to win…

AS HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER, Tom DeLay had a crisp and clear style. He coupled an agenda with an unwillingness to compromise and an iron resolve to produce narrow victories based entirely on Republican votes. At the moment, his successor, John Boehner, is working on a mission statement--an official…

WHAT ARE THE ODDS that President Bush will succeed in his full-blown campaign to recover from a second-term swoon? Not good, if you consider the records of second-term presidents over the past 70 years.

THIS IS A DOG STORY. You're not required to be a dog lover or a mystic to understand it. But it'll help if you at least like dogs and don't dismiss mystical occurrences out of hand.

POLITICS IS PRETTY SIMPLE. If the debate in an upcoming election puts your party at a disadvantage, it makes sense to try to change the debate. At the moment, the 2006 midterm election is framed as a referendum on the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, putting Republican candidates…

IT'S TIME FOR PRESIDENT BUSH to think about a third term. No, he doesn't need to overturn the Constitution. He can start the equivalent of his third term now, by filling his presidential staff and cabinet with new faces--or old faces in new positions--and by concentrating on new or forgotten…

PATRICK BUCHANAN, COMMENTATOR AND former presidential candidate, looked over the issues on the political agenda in 2006 and liked what he saw. It was a paleoconservative's delight. There was the Dubai ports deal, rejected by a congressional uprising part nationalistic, part isolationist. There's…

Like few presidents before him, President Bush was poised for a consequential and potentially quite successful second term. It hasn't worked out that way (so far). Bush made one strategic error in 2005, guessing wrongly that the country was adult and serious enough to reform Social Security. Now he…

Seattle

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ON THE 2006 midterm elections is that Republicans will take a bath. Because of the Abramoff scandal, an unpopular president, and low morale, Republicans have the political stars aligned perfectly against them--or so it seems. The polls often cited as pointing toward a…

PRESIDENT BUSH TOLD AN OLD joke at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. A preacher delivers a powerful sermon, prompting a parishioner to leap to his feet and yell, "Use me, Lord, use me!" The same thing happens the next week, so the preacher buttonholes the man after church and says he'd like…

WHEN HE MET with TV anchors over lunch at the White House yesterday, President Bush was feisty, blunt, salty, assertive, and brimming with self-confidence. He was passionate on the topic of national security, saying the first thought on his mind when he wakes up every morning is how to protect…

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE moments when you realize Congress is not an altogether serious body. There have been others. One that comes to mind is the frantic effort several decades ago to stop the National Football League from blacking out home games on local television (unless stadium tickets have…

PRESIDENT BUSH is a book reader. Last year, he read three books on George Washington and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave him a book on the peace talks after World War I entitled Paris 1919. This year, he's delved into the new biography of Mao Zedong with simple title Mao.

Mark Kirk is a worried Republican who represents a House district in the suburbs north of Chicago. In the 1960s, the seat was held by a young Republican named Donald Rumsfeld, now defense secretary. Once safely Republican, the district has been drifting Democratic for years. The last Republican…

DO YOU KNOW WHO PAUL Ray Smith is? If not, don't feel bad. Most Americans aren't familiar with Paul Ray Smith. He is the first and only soldier awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary courage in the war in Iraq. Five days before Baghdad fell in April 2003, Sergeant Smith and his men were…

THE WHITE HOUSE regularly bemoans the fact that the economy is humming along impressively but the public doesn't recognize it. Just last week, President Bush told NBC News anchor Brian Williams that he's "a little bit" frustrated by the public's negative attitude. "I also think it's important to…

THE POLL NUMBER--80 percent of Iraqis want Americans out of their country--has become a staple of Democratic antiwar rhetoric. Representative John Murtha cited it in his proposed House resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Democratic national chairman Howard…

WE NOW KNOW WHAT WAS behind President Bush's mysterious refusal for so many months to respond to Democratic attacks on his Iraq policy--a refusal that came at great political cost to himself and to the American effort in Iraq. It wasn't that Bush was too focused on Social Security reform to bother.…

REPUBLICAN MODERATES, only two dozen or so strong, believe they now hold a pivotal position in the House of Representatives and can influence legislation and internal Republican affairs as never before. Oddly enough, House Democrats have put them in this key position.

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNED THE Homeland Security Appropriations Act six weeks ago, he did it in the East Room of the White House in a glossy ceremony befitting an occasion of Republican unity. Which is what it was, right up to the moment when Bush started talking about illegal immigrants. "They…

CONSERVATIVES are justifiably proud of the alternative they've created to the mainstream media--the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, big regional papers, TV networks, and the national news magazine. Last year, conservative talk radio, websites, and bloggers forced the…

MANY HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW THE United States lost in Vietnam, but not former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. When the last American military unit was withdrawn in 1973, the Viet Cong had been defeated and the North Vietnamese army checkmated. For the next two years, "South Vietnam held its own…

IN 2004, THE NEW hotbed of Republican voters was the outer suburbs, the so-called exurbs on the distant outskirts of a central city, packed with tract housing, strip malls, chain stores, a megachurch or two, and thousands and thousands of middle class and lower middle class families. President Bush…

PRESIDENT BUSH DIDN'T TAKE THE HINT. Clean house, find fresh blood, replace senior White House staff--and this will assure success in the final three years of your presidency, Bush was told. When he didn't respond, those offering the president advice in public got specific. Get rid of Karl Rove,…

VIRGINIA is a Republican state with a habit of electing Democratic governors. And it's really not hard to see why. Democrats run on state issues like education and roads. Democrat Tim Kaine stressed these in handily defeating Republican Jerry Kilgore in Tuesday's election for governor. Kilgore ran…

JERRY KILGORE lacked the three things needed for a Republican to be elected governor in Virginia. In order of importance, they are: a dynamic campaign, an issue, and a president who's not a burden. So he lost to Democratic Tim Kaine yesterday in an election that Democrats will claim is more…

IN NOVEMBER 1986, THE Iran-contra scandal broke. The White House announced that proceeds from the secret sale of arms to Iran had gone to the pro-democracy contras in Nicaragua to aid their fight against the Sandinista government. The presidency of Ronald Reagan had more than two years to run, but…

KARL ROVE, PRESIDENT BUSH'S virtuoso adviser, is the most influential White House aide in decades, maybe longer. His departure, if compelled by an indictment in the Valerie Plame investigation, would be demoralizing and a blow to Bush's prospects for a successful second term. Could he be replaced…

THE WITHDRAWAL of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is the first step on the road to political recovery for President Bush. It gives him the opportunity to select a well-known judicial conservative for the Court vacancy, rally conservatives who opposed or were skeptical of Miers, and rebuild his…

PRESIDENT BUSH knew exactly what he wanted when he picked a successor to Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He sought a nominee as risk-free as possible, someone with little chance of either encountering a bitter confirmation fight or, once in office, of opposing his economic…

IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN and already worried about your party's prospects in 2006, pollster Frank Luntz, a Republican himself, has a message for you: It's worse than you think.

Richmond

WHY have so many conservatives suddenly revolted against President Bush, nearly five years into his presidency? I think their split with Bush is ill advised, counterproductive, and in some ways childish. But there's no doubt it's happening and it's serious. And there's more to it than…

AT HIS PRESS CONFERENCE ON October 4, President Bush took a question about the number of Iraqi military units engaged in fighting insurgents and terrorists. Bush, the reporter noted, had once said there were 100 Iraqi battalions in combat "across the nation." But in an appearance on Capitol Hill,…

WHAT DOES A PRESIDENT owe his followers, especially on issues that may have caused them to back him in the first place? And what do followers owe their president, particularly on matters where his commitment to their common agenda is unclear? These questions need to be considered in light of the…

WITH TOM DELAY ON THE sidelines, things will be different on Capitol Hill, especially for President Bush. The White House will no longer command an automatic majority in the House of Representatives--that is, the votes of nearly all 231 Republicans--on any bill the president endorses. In the…

IF ALL GOES WELL, Harriet Miers will turn out to be a less impressive version of John Roberts: that is, a judicial conservative, or constitutionalist, who will cause the ideological balance on the Supreme Court to shift to the right. She's not likely to have Roberts's gift for describing and…

SMALL GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVES HAVE REVOLTED against President Bush and the Republican leadership of the Senate and the House. Their goal, with hurricane recovery costs soaring, is what it's always been: to hold down spending and restrain the growth of government. It is an impossible dream or close…

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION of 2008 is a long way off, but Republicans better start worrying about it now. The 2006 midterm election? Republicans are likely to hold onto the Senate and House. But 2008 is another story. In the midst of a Republican era, Democrats stand a good chance of taking the…

PRESIDENT BUSH, LIKE NO president in modern times, has guarded himself against a second-term slump. His most competent aides--the first team--stayed on at the White House. He has a sweeping agenda to keep staff busy and out of trouble. He has a majority in both houses of Congress. The economy,…

FEW DECISIONS BY PRESIDENT BUSH have generated as much agony among conservatives as his selection of Supreme Court nominees. With the nomination and likely confirmation of John Roberts as chief justice, Bush has satisfied conservatives, even thrilled some of them. But it's his next pick--the person…

I TAKE CREDIT FOR THE creation of The Weekly Standard--but only a portion of the credit. My cofounders, Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz, deserve more. In any case, it wasn't exactly the brainstorm of the century to start a weekly conservative magazine on politics and policy (and a lot more on…

NANCY PELOSI, THE HOUSE Democratic leader, tells a great story about questioning a benighted President Bush on Katrina relief. At a White House meeting last week with congressional leaders, she told Bush he should immediately fire Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.…

Raleigh, N.C.

PRESIDENT BUSH WENT TO BED at the normal time, roughly 10p.m., on the night the House of Representatives voted on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. But he was awakened by White House staffers to talk to wavering Republicans on the House floor. A cell phone with the president on the line…

IN THE DAYS BEFORE PRESIDENT Bush picked a Supreme Court nominee, the White House was gripped by Souter-phobia. Bush and his aides desperately wanted to avert the disaster that befell his father's White House in 1990. The elder Bush, on the advice of his chief of staff John Sununu and Senator…

Waukee, Iowa

PRESIDENT BUSH kept his promise in nominating John Roberts, a federal appeals court judge, to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the Supreme Court. Since Bush first announced for the presidency in 1999, he has vowed to name judicial conservatives who will interpret the law rather than legislate…

PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS TO KEEP two facts in mind as he looks to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor (and, should he step down, Chief Justice William Rehnquist). The first is that he can win confirmation of almost any conceivable nominee for the High Court, screams of protest by…

THOUGH HE DEFENDED Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against conservative critics, President Bush now appears highly unlikely to nominate Gonzales to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Nor is Gonzales expected to be chosen to fill a second vacancy on the high court should…

THROUGH A CAMPAIGN AIDE, Bush answered a question about the kind of Supreme Court justice he admired. The answer was Antonin Scalia, a conservative. That was in 1999, as Bush was beginning his race for the presidency. He was asked a similar question later that year by Tim Russert on Meet the Press.…

DEMOCRATS DON'T HAVE A DEATH wish. It just seems that way. What they actually have is a habit of falling into the national security trap. They did it in 1972. They did it in 1984. They did it in 1994. They did it in 2002. And they're doing it again this year as they prepare for the 2006 midterm…

When Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987, the Reagan White House was not prepared to fight effectively for his confirmation. Indeed, Bork was such a respected judge and admired legal scholar that President Reagan and his aides assumed Bork would have a relatively easy time…

THE QUESTION ASKED OF THE president by a British reporter sounded like a setup, aimed at getting Bush to dismiss Bono and reject the U2 singer's pleas for aid to poor, debt-laden countries as mere "rhetoric from rock stars." And, at first, Bush seemed to take the bait. "Part of this world," he…

WHO'S WINNING IN WASHINGTON RIGHT now? Republicans, President Bush included. But they are winning ugly, and just barely. Actually, if success on Social Security reform is the yardstick, Republicans aren't winning at all. What changes the score is success on judges. Thanks to the Gang of 14 deal to…

TO UNDERSTAND WHY President Bush is relatively unpopular, one only has to look to the case of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. After his election in November 2003, Schwarzenegger experienced a political honeymoon. He governed mostly by compromise and without pushing for sweeping change.…

MY MOTHER, ROSA MILLER Barnes, was the Billy Graham of our family. With my dad's help, she converted all of us to orthodox Christianity. Her approach was not to deliver a sermon or drag everyone off to church or insist we read a religious book or tract. It wasn't that she was shy about discussing…

DAVID BRODER, THE POLITICAL columnist for the Washington Post, wrote last week that President Bush "has become the victim of overreach." Former vice president Al Gore has said Bush and congressional Republicans have a different problem, their "lust for power." Both are wrong. Bush's biggest…

PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS AN EXIT strategy on Social Security. With luck, he may never have to use it. There's still a chance a sweeping reform bill will pass this year. But despite Bush's valiant efforts to sell Congress and the nation on the idea of modernizing Social Security, the prospects are dim.…

A conceit of the modern age is that we're free and independent- thinking people who decide, wholly on our own, how to live our lives. Stereotype plays on this theme. One is the rebellion of children of conservative parents who transformed themselves into counterculture radicals in the 1960s.…

THE WORDS OF HUBERT HUMPHREY became the motto of American liberalism almost from the moment he uttered them on the Senate floor in 1977. "The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life--the children; the twilight of life--the elderly; and the shadows…

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER BILL FRIST never saw it. Neither did the Senate Republican whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The number three Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, didn't get a copy. Nor did the senator with the closest relationship with President Bush, Judd Gregg of New…

EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTS loved Pope John Paul II. Many felt more in harmony with him than with the leaders of their own denomination. I attend an Episcopal church and I certainly preferred the Pope. He was the world's greatest defender of orthodox, Bible-based Christianity. The presiding bishop of…

PRESIDENT BUSH DID NOT INITIATE the political realignment that made Republicans a majority party. But he has helped create the current moment of opportunity for Republicans to enact a far-reaching conservative agenda. Absent Bush, Republicans might not have 55 senators--which they also had in 1997,…

WHEN THE RUMOR ERUPTED in the press recently that Carly Fiorina, the deposed CEO of Hewlett-Packard, was being considered for the presidency of the World Bank, it prompted guffaws at the White House. President Bush was not conducting a job search for the World Bank post. There was no short list.…

FOR ALL THE QUESTIONING of motives in the Terri Schiavo case, it's three simple facts that make it both wise and morally necessary to have allowed the federal courts to examine the issue. And these facts suggest that Schiavo, brain damaged since a heart attack 15 years ago, should have her feeding…

PRESIDENT BUSH HAS GOTTEN A lot of bad advice lately on how to promote Social Security reform, but none worse than the recommendation he cease talking up individual retirement accounts funded by payroll taxes. Oddly enough, this advice has come from both Republicans and Democrats. Republican…

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY IS adamant about not running for president in 2008. Asked by host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he might change his mind, Cheney answered with a firm no. "I've got my plans laid out," he said. "I'm going to serve this president for the next four years, and then I'm…

ON HIS WAY TO A special lunch on the day of his State of the Union address, President Bush asked why he was hosting this event. It's traditional, he was told. Indeed, for years presidents have invited television news anchors to the White House to brief them on the speech that evening. This year,…

ON THE EVE of the election in Iraq, Democratic senator Edward Kennedy called President Bush's Iraq policy "a catastrophic failure." He demanded that American troops immediately begin to withdraw. "We have no choice," he declared, "but to make the best we can of the disaster we have created in…

PRESIDENT BUSH COULD HAVE OPTED for an easy route to modest success in the White House. After overthrowing the Taliban and routing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he could have stopped there and not ordered an invasion of Iraq. In his first inaugural address, he advocated "a balance of power that favors…

IS A BIPARTISAN COALITION REQUIRED to pass legislation that would allow individuals to invest their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks and bonds? Not really. Surely, the White House will endorse a Social Security reform plan that slows the growth of benefits by roughly 40 percent, right? Don't…

WHAT WAS SO GREAT about President Bush's inaugural address? First, it was eloquent, noting that freedom lights "a fire in the minds of men" and represents both "the hunger in dark places [and] the longing of the soul." More important, the speech laid out an extraordinarily sweeping and ambitious…

MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T WORRY. President Bush is bravely pushing ahead to introduce personal investment accounts in Social Security and to save the system from insolvency. This is political turf where others, including President Reagan, have feared to tread. And Bush is poised to press later this year…

GEORGE W. BUSH got more votes in winning re-election than the entire population of France. He improved his share of the vote among Latinos, women, African-Americans, Jews and Catholics. Winning a plurality of states along the Mississippi River has guaranteed presidential victory since 1912. Bush…

AFTER HUMILIATING OKLAHOMA last night, USC was officially declared the top college football team in the country. But is there any doubt that Auburn is No. 2 and would have played a far better game against USC--and perhaps even won? Oklahoma's weak pass defense was easily picked apart by USC…

AT HIS PRESS CONFERENCE JUST before Christmas, President Bush was George the Salesman, pitching Social Security reform. He failed to make the sale. He stumbled in his explanation of why the system is in trouble. He awkwardly ducked questions on the grounds that he shouldn't "negotiate with myself."…

JOE KLEIN, WRITING IN Time, says Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid is "pro-life." The New York Times quotes Washington lobbyist Frank Fahrenkopf, the former Republican national chairman, as saying about Reid, "He's pro-life." In the Washington Post, after Reid was elevated to his leadership post,…

THERE'S A WORST CASE SCENARIO for Social Security reform that haunts the White House. It goes like this. With great fanfare, President Bush announces his plan for overhauling Social Security, creating private investment accounts for every American worker, and making the system solvent. He touts his…

A DEMOCRATIC SENATOR who attended a special screening of the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 was asked what he thought was the most revealing part about President Bush. The senator pondered a moment, then said it was the episode where Bush, in close-up, continues to talk to a grade-school class in Sarasota,…

AUBURN is a pretty town in the middle of nowhere. It's in eastern Alabama, 100 miles from Atlanta, just off I-85. It's a classic college town, dominated by Auburn University. Once a cow college, Auburn is now a major state university with 25,000 students. It's a conservative place with fraternities…

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH toured Stuart, Florida, after Hurricane Jeanne struck the town last September, he met an engineer from Louisiana working as a volunteer with the Federal Emergency Management Administration. "Do you know Bobby Jindal?" the man asked. The president did, recalling Jindal as a…

PRESIDENT BUSH always believed he would be reelected. So in the weeks before November 2, he repeatedly discussed with White House aides who should replace the departing cabinet members in his second term. And decisions were made, pre-Election Day. Alberto Gonzales, the president's legal counsel,…

THE SCHEMING in Washington as President Bush prepares for his second term is easily explained. It's the insurgents versus the Washington establishment, and the insurgents are winning.

KARL ROVE SAID LAST YEAR that the question of realignment--whether Republicans have at last become the majority party--would be decided by the election of 2004. And it has. Even by the cautious reckoning of Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, Republicans now have both an operational…

WHY DO PRESIDENTS stumble in their second terms? Four reasons. They try to govern without a real agenda, having exhausted their policy initiatives in the first term. Their wisest and most competent aides and advisers leave and are replaced by less talented people. They suffer from bad relations…

AT THE BEGINNING of the presidential campaign last winter, President Bush and his strategists figured he'd wind up leading his Democratic opponent by 2 or 3 points on the eve of the November 2 election. Sure enough, he is. But he got here by a far more circuitous route than anyone in his camp…

THE SCARIEST THING about this election is not the prospect of a contested outcome with no winner declared for weeks, just as in 2000. No, the most scary thing is the sense of entitlement that many Democrats and their allies have about tomorrow's election. It goes like this: Bush stole the…

LET'S GET RID OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES. They don't bring out or test the characteristics and skills we want in a president. They take up days and days of practice before the actual debate, then dominate the campaign with sound bites from the 90-minute encounter for days afterwards. They often…

THERE ARE no former Boston Red Sox fans. And it isn't a sustained act of perversity to stick with the Red Sox over the years. Failing to win the World Series for 86 years didn't create a masochistic love for the team. Instead, the attraction of the Red Sox is very simple: they were always in the…

Tampa

PRESIDENT BUSH'S political strategists have avidly studied past campaigns. But they still repeated the most famous mistake of President Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign. They prepared Bush too relentlessly for his first nationally televised debate with John Kerry, holding practices and prep…

WHAT DO YOU want to achieve in a presidential debate? You want to hammer home your campaign themes. You want to put your opponent on the defensive. You want to sell yourself personally. And you want to avoid a gaffe or a damaging sound bite. Bush did all four in Wednesday night's third and final…

HERE'S WHY President Bush survives the gauntlet of three nationally televised debates: the Kerry contradiction. John Kerry is glib and knowledgeable and smart enough in his attacks on Bush to stop short of being overbearing and abrasive. But the dominant issue in the campaign is Iraq, and that's…

IF IT'S POSSIBLE for a vice presidential debate to matter, last night's duel between Dick Cheney and John Edwards did. Why? Because Vice President Cheney did two things that might help President Bush. He attacked Bush's presidential opponent John Kerry effectively on the war on terrorism and…

THE QUESTION no longer is whether Democrats can win back the Senate, now controlled 51-49 by Republicans. The prospect of a Democratic takeover was always remote and has recently become more so. The question now is how much can President Bush, should he defeat John Kerry by 5 percentage points or…

FOR JOHN KERRY, the first presidential debate was an opportunity. He seized it and revived his flagging candidacy. For President Bush, the debate was a burden. He struggled through it, acting as if he had better things to do. But the second debate this Friday in St. Louis will find Bush in a…

TALKING TO DEMOCRATS prior to last night, what you heard were complaints about how bad John Kerry was as a presidential candidate. The good news for Kerry is that on the basis of his solid performance in the first nationally televised debate with President Bush, the griping among Democrats is…

WHERE HAVE ALL the swing voters gone? The conventional answer is that the nation has become politically polarized and swing voters have taken sides. There's some truth in this, but there's a better explanation. In disproportionate numbers, swing voters have become Republicans over the past three…

JOHN KERRY'S NEW POLICY on Iraq is like a doughnut. It has a big hole in the middle. The Kerry four-point plan calls for recruiting more allies to help in Iraq, accelerating the training of Iraqi soldiers, pushing ahead on reconstruction, and guaranteeing a national election by next January. All…

BETTER TO BE LUCKY than good. That's an old baseball saying that applies as well to President Bush's reelection campaign. First CBS News--then the entire mainstream media--plays up damaging documents about Bush's National Guard service. But within hours, thanks to bloggers and not to any effort by…

CBS has left the flap over purported documents involving President Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard in this posture: Who are you going to believe, CBS or your lyin' eyes?

THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE consists of two campaigns. One concerns who would be the better commander in chief in the war on terrorism. President Bush, bolstered by speech after speech at the Republican convention (including his own), is handily winning that race. The other, the campaign John Kerry…

JOHN MCCAIN WARNED John Kerry, a fellow Vietnam vet, not to emphasize the Vietnam war in his presidential campaign. No good would come of it. It would only reopen old wounds. Kerry ignored McCain's advice. The Democratic convention made Kerry's Vietnam record the focus of his candidacy. To know the…

PRESIDENT BUSH has reason to be delighted, though not giddy, as he prepares for his acceptance speech to the Republican convention tonight. He's already gotten to the point in the campaign against John Kerry where he figured to be after the convention. Several weeks ago, he was a few points down.…

ACTOR RON SILVER has played some amazing roles. He was boxing trainer Angelo Dundee in the movie Ali. He was defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz in Reversal of Fortune. And he played Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Kissinger and Nixon, a TV film about the final days of the Vietnam war. At the…

THERE'S NEVER BEEN a presidential campaign like John Kerry's. Never has a presidential nominee made his own experience in a war the centerpiece of his campaign for the White House. In 1960, John F. Kennedy didn't hide his World War II record as commander of PT-109, but he didn't talk it up either.…

New York

JOHN KERRY is very good at the political dodge. This consists of raising one issue to avoid talking about another. He's cleverly done this twice in recent weeks. First, he concentrated on his Vietnam war experience in his speech at the Democratic convention to avert discussion of his dovish Senate…

DON'T FEEL SORRY FOR GERALD FORD. He was a president who was never elected, lost his bid for a full 4-year term, and served during the rough post-Watergate years (1974 - 1977), a low point for the presidency. But the week before last, Ford and his former aides were in a happy mood as they…

THE PRESIDENCY of Bill Clinton had a silver lining for Republicans and conservatives. Thanks to Clinton, they made significant political gains in the 1990s. More important, they achieved three policy breakthroughs that in all likelihood would have eluded a Republican president: serious welfare…

IS THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE John Kerry's to lose? After a successful Democratic convention and an adequate but uninspiring acceptance speech, Kerry would never say so publicly. But that's what he and his advisers believe. Their theory is that the country has fundamentally made up its mind that…

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is curtailing democracy in America. President Bush himself, in case you hadn't noticed, is like Hitler. By the way, he knew about 9/11 beforehand. On top of that, he let Osama bin Laden's relatives sneak out of America shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and…

Boston

Boston

WHEN L. PAUL BREMER, fresh from stepping down as American regent in Iraq, visited the White House on June 30, he was greeted by President Bush with a bear hug. Half-jokingly, Bush insisted a White House photographer take a picture of them and drew attention to the signature soft leather boots…

Boston

D-Day

A BOOK CANNOT ELEVATE a president. That's true even for a book marketed by Dan Rather for an hour on 60 Minutes, its publication treated like a show-stopping event by the media, its author's tour seen as the equivalent of a high-octane political campaign, and its importance signified by the…

NINE MEN ran for president in 1980. Nine big issues would be decided by whoever won: taxes, monetary policy, the air traffic controllers' strike, deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, missile defense, Soviet communism, anti-Communist wars of liberation, tax reform, national spirit. Ronald…

THE WHITE HOUSE, the Treasury Department, congressional Republicans, President Bush's reelection campaign--in unison, they rushed forward last week to tout the new job growth numbers. What's most striking is the economy is now on pace to create 2.8 million jobs in 2004, more than offsetting job…

TOM BROKAW and Dan Rather believe too much media attention has been heaped on Ronald Reagan after his death at 93 last weekend. And it's true Reagan, a modest man with much to be proud of, might have been embarrassed by so many glowing testimonials about him. But he was a strong believer in…

THE DOG BARKS, but the caravan moves on. This Arab saying has been used privately by Bush administration officials to characterize the progress that continues, despite all difficulties, in Iraq. There's some truth to it. The turnover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government--a measure of…

A FEW YEARS AGO Michael Moore, who's now promoting an anti-President Bush movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, announced he'd gotten the goods on me, indeed hung me out to dry on my own words. It was in his first bestselling book, Stupid White Men. Moore wrote he'd once been "forced" to listen to my…

THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press…

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION has lived hard, and it shows. Democrats demand the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and few Republicans in Congress rush to his defense. Pro-Rumsfeld noises come mostly from the White House. Without informing the White House, Attorney General John Ashcroft…

ON PRESIDENT BUSH'S initial economic team, Larry Lindsey, the head of the White House's National Economic Council, famously didn't get along with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. They needed a referee on policy disputes--deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. The budget chief, Mitch…

THE MOST OMINOUS MOMENT for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week came in an exchange with Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Near the end of Rumsfeld's appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Graham suggested that "the worst" of the prison abuse scandal "is…

WE'VE ALL HEARD those classic myths of the Iraq debate that just won't go away. First, President Bush is said to have called Iraq under Saddam Hussein an "imminent" threat and, second, the connection between Saddam and al Qaeda has never been substantiated. Both are laughably false. And now there…

THE ODDS are still against it, but Democrats now have a legitimate shot at winning back the Senate in this November's election. They've already done two things well: recruit good candidates, especially in Republican-leaning states, and avert costly primary fights. Democrats need to net two seats if…

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS have windows. These are periods of a few days, sometimes several weeks, in which the interest of voters is piqued and they take a serious look at the candidates. The first window of the Bush-Kerry race came after John Kerry locked up the Democratic nomination on Super…

A STAPLE OF DEMOCRATIC RHETORIC these days is the charge that a "Republican attack machine" is smearing John Kerry. Is it really true that Republicans are impugning Kerry's military service in Vietnam and questioning his patriotism? Seeking an answer, my colleague at Fox News, Morton Kondracke,…

A field outside Baghdad

BOBBY JINDAL led polls in the Louisiana governor's race last fall right up to Election Day. And for good reason: He was one of the most impressive candidates either party had fielded in any election in any state in recent years. Then he lost. A 32-year-old Republican from Baton Rouge, Jindal is the…

WATCHING PRESIDENT BUSH'S PRESS CONFERENCE Tuesday night, you could see why he drives the press crazy. No matter what they asked, his answer was invariably the same: We're staying the course in Iraq. It's important to gaining freedom for Iraqis and winning the war on terror.

Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad

Sacramento

Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad

A SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL spoke privately the other day about dramatic progress in the Middle East. Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds have broken an impasse and are on the verge of a historic compromise on a new Iraqi constitution. It mandates a pluralistic, democratic Iraq when the United States…

HERE'S A DOG that won't hunt: John Kerry's accusation that President Bush's reelection campaign is questioning his patriotism. This elevates a Democratic refrain--if we disagree with Bush on national security, we're called unpatriotic--to a ridiculous new height. In Kerry's case, his record on…

WOULD JOHN KERRY have been better off not winning the Democratic presidential nomination so easily and so quickly? It's not an entirely idle or silly question. And the reason is that Kerry has emerged from the primaries with his candidacy and his record largely unchallenged. He hasn't been…

THE TAWDRY Laci Peterson murder case has a significant twist. Scott Peterson is charged with two homicides--for killing both his wife Laci and his unborn son Conner. Under California law ("murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought"), an unborn child is a…

REMEMBER THE BEAR in the woods? It was featured in the most devastating of President Reagan's TV ads in the 1984 presidential race. An angry, menacing bear was shown prowling through a forest. "There's a bear in the woods," the narrator said. "For some people the bear is easy to see. Others don't…

WHAT HAS HOWARD DEAN WROUGHT? The answer is not what he's been credited with. Sure, he raised money on the Internet, activated some previously inactive Democratic voters, and built an impressive database. Fine. But his most important legacy was pulling the Democratic presidential candidates to the…

GEORGE W. BUSH is a September 12 person. John Kerry is a September 10 person. The difference is real. A September 12 person was traumatized by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A September 12 person believes the world we thought existed before the…

WHEN JOHN KERRY SPOKE to a rally after winning the New Hampshire primary, he employed the language of populism. Kerry is well educated, well-to-do, and wedded to an heiress. But in his speech he positioned himself as a champion of the common man. America, he said, doesn't belong to "the…

IN THE ANNALS of presidential primaries, the assessment of frontrunner John Kerry by his chief opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, John Edwards, may be the kindest ever uttered. Kerry, he said, "is a friend of mine. I have great respect for him." Sure, he and Kerry have…

Manchester, New Hampshire

Manchester, New Hampshire

Nashua, New Hampshire

Des Moines

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES are often downright boring. They frequently disappoint journalists because the candidates don't fight among themselves. More often than not, debates are marked by the relentless avoidance of candid answers. But presidential debates always have two things: winners and losers.

THE BIG-NAME ENDORSEMENTS for Howard Dean began as the Iowa caucuses drew near. In December, Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000, lauded the ex-Vermont governor as "the only major candidate" who was right about Iraq. Gore urged Democratic voters to halt their infighting and rally…

Des Moines

THE DEMOCRATIC REVERSAL on taxes has come full circle. Forty years ago, Democratic president John F. Kennedy believed tax increases would neither balance the budget nor create jobs. Kennedy proposed deep cuts in income taxes that were enacted by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress after his…

Ottumwa, Iowa

THERE ARE TWO THINGS to be said about President Bush's new plan for dealing with illegal immigrants. The first is that the plan reflects a beautiful sentiment. Immigrants slip into the United States illegally for all the right reasons. They want to find jobs, raise families, and decide their own…

The Great War

PRESIDENT BUSH has gotten a bigger reelection boost in a shorter period of time than any other president ever. And that may be putting it mildly. Yes, Sherman's taking of Atlanta in early September 1864 was critical to Lincoln's reelection, and Bill Clinton's signing of welfare reform in 1996…

AL GORE'S ENDORSEMENT of Howard Dean was anything but polite. A more diplomatic politician would have praised Dean's major rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination--Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark--as esteemed colleagues and said they were all capable…