William Kristol

A Democratic strategist weighs in.

How the late senator was like Henry Clay.

On Monday, July 9, President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is a serious and respected federal judge with a well-thought-through constitutionalist orientation. Based on what we know now, he deserves enthusiastic support from all who…

I miss Charles. I’ve missed him for the past 10 months, ever since his operation. As he wrote in his farewell letter, “That operation was thought to have been a success, but it caused a cascade of secondary complications.” Charles fought those complications in the hospital. This meant that he and…

A couple of hours ago I was commiserating with a friend who was also working on a short tribute to Charles Krauthammer. We were both having a tough time getting going. The problem, we realized, was this: We couldn't help but think of what Charles would have written. And we were painfully aware that…

Political observers are understandably focused on November 6, 2018—Election Day. What happens then will be important for the next couple of years: a Democratic wave, carrying that party to control of the House for the first time since 2010, and perhaps even to a majority in the Senate? A strong…

With our politics in 2018 transformed into a cartoonish version of Caesarism, one wonders: Could this experience lead to a revival of a healthy and robust republicanism in America? Given certain aspects of the Obama presidency as well, we're now closing in on a decade of vaguely authoritarian,…

The other day I signed an online petition sponsored by Republicans for the Rule of Law. It’s addressed to Donald Trump: “Mr. President: Firing Robert Mueller would gravely damage the Presidency, the GOP and the country. Please don’t do it.” Since this is an effort to rally Republicans behind…

Speaking at a Republican fundraiser Wednesday in Missouri, President Donald Trump criticized Japan for unfair trade practices, and offered this example:

Next year will be the centenary of one of the most famous poems of the 20th century, W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” I presume there’ll be suitable acknowledgment of this in literary circles, and even an occasional nod from those of us who labor in less rarefied intellectual climes. But if…

In a short, powerful piece in National Review, Rick Brookhiser concludes that "the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers."

Back when Donald Trump was merely a small dark cloud on the horizon of American politics, many of us were already worried about the state of American conservatism. Five years ago, I suggested in these pages that Eric Hoffer’s famous observation of decades ago applied to the conservative movement.…

Immigration policy is a complicated issue. Or perhaps one should say immigration policies are complicated, since we have many different immigration laws and practices which interact in complex ways. I'm no expert on those policies, and in fact have adjusted my thinking about elements of them over…

Federalist 68, by Alexander Hamilton, is not much read today. It consists of a defense of the original Electoral College in which the electors, chosen by the people, would assemble in each state and deliberate on their choice for president. This version of the Electoral College never really took…

Federalist 68, by Alexander Hamilton, is not much read today. It consists of a defense of the original Electoral College in which the electors, chosen by the people, would assemble in each state and deliberate on their choice for president. This version of the Electoral College never really took…

On Wednesday, January 3, Donald Trump tweeted:

Let's not kid ourselves: It’s a weird time in our nation’s capital.

You think you're getting my 2018 predictions? Dream on. I've been wrong enough the last couple of years, no way I'm sticking my neck out again. I'm upgrading. I'm asking instead for your predictions. So, dear reader, here are ten questions with multiple-choice answers provided. At the end of the…

For better or worse (mostly worse), Donald Trump was 2016’s person of the year. For better or worse (almost entirely for the better), 2017’s person of the year has to be Publius.

For better and worse (mostly worse), Donald Trump was undoubtedly 2016’s person of the year. For better or worse (almost entirely for the better), 2017’s person of the year has to be Publius.

"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’ ” This was Sigmund Freud’s famous lament to Marie Bonaparte almost a century ago. It’s not clear that decades’…

If cleverness has often been a sign of decadence throughout history, the attempt to be too clever by half is an even more reliable marker of cultural decline. And a fondness for complicated rationalization, a proclivity for sophisticated excuse-making, and a tendency toward rushed and forced…

I remember as a kid hearing John, Robert, and Teddy Kennedy all using in speeches various paraphrases of these lines from a play by George Bernard Shaw: “You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’ ”

On October 3, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, spoke to a group of Republican donors at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. Unbeknownst to Ayers, his remarks were recorded, and the audio was subsequently obtained by Politico.

On October 3, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, spoke to a group of Republican donors at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. Unbeknownst to Ayers, his remarks were recorded, and the audio was subsequently obtained by Politico.

We're back from a memorable TWS cruise. Not memorable just—or even mainly!—because the first night at sea was the roughest we've encountered in any of our 15 cruises. In fact, we've dispatched that experience down the memory hole of historical events that need not be recalled or spoken of again. We…

It would be nice, in a way, to be a progressive. You’d be confident you know the direction History is moving. And you’d have faith that the direction in which History is moving is the direction in which History should be moving.

It would be nice, in a way, to be a progressive. You’d be confident you know the direction History is moving. And you’d have faith that the direction in which History is moving is the direction in which History should be moving.

What a week! Newly minted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci goes nuts; White House chief of staff Reince Priebus gets fired and is replaced by retired Marine general John Kelly; General Kelly fires Scaramucci; Kelly then reassures Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had…

What a week! Newly minted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci goes nuts; White House chief of staff Reince Priebus gets fired and is replaced by retired Marine general John Kelly; General Kelly fires Scaramucci; Kelly then reassures Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had…

What a week! Newly minted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci goes nuts; White House chief of staff Reince Priebus gets fired and is replaced by retired Marine general John Kelly; General Kelly fires Scaramucci; Kelly then reassures Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had…

What is one to think as one watches the clown show in the White House, the train wreck in Congress, and the multi-vehicle accident that is conservatism today? We’re inclined (as we so often are) simply to quote Winston Churchill, in this case speaking in 1931 about Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald:

What is one to think as one watches the clown show in the White House, the train wreck in Congress, and the multi-vehicle accident that is conservatism today? We’re inclined (as we so often are) simply to quote Winston Churchill, in this case speaking in 1931 about Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald:

On Friday, July 17, 2015, Donald Trump called me at the offices of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. He wanted to tell me that even though I’d been critical of him, and indeed though I had said I couldn’t imagine supporting him for president, he thought I’d been fairer and more open-minded about him than some…

On Friday, July 17, 2015, Donald Trump called me at the offices of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. He wanted to tell me that even though I’d been critical of him, and indeed though I had said I couldn’t imagine supporting him for president, he thought I’d been fairer and more open-minded about him than some…

As we go to press, Donald Trump is visiting Paris. His visit can’t help but remind us of a famous trip to Paris by an American over three-quarters of a century ago. That American businessman, Rick Blaine, had little in common with Donald Trump—except perhaps a propensity to brand businesses with…

As we go to press, Donald Trump is visiting Paris. His visit can’t help but remind us of a famous trip to Paris by an American over three-quarters of a century ago. That American businessman, Rick Blaine, had little in common with Donald Trump—except perhaps a propensity to brand businesses with…

It did not take the attack on Charlie Hebdo to reveal that the Islamic world has a terrible problem. For quite some time, that’s been clearer than day. This is not an assertion made from outside Islam or against Islam. On New Year’s Day, the president of Egypt, in a major speech, called for a…

Many Trump critics relished a recent Quinnipiac poll showing that President Trump's job approval had fallen to a new low, at a net -23 percent (34 percent approve, 57 percent disapprove).

Many Trump critics relished a recent Quinnipiac poll showing that President Trump's job approval had fallen to a new low, at a net -23 percent (34 percent approve, 57 percent disapprove).

Occasionally you take a moment to look up from the day-to-day or hour-to-hour or tweet-to-tweet turmoil of the Trump presidency. You want a reprieve from the constant and enervating melodrama of the Trump era. You try to take a longer view.

In a cover story in this magazine almost a decade ago, the late Dean Barnett hailed "the 9/11 generation" and held out the hope—nay, the expectation—that they would contribute more to the nation than their parents, the baby boomers:

In a cover story in this magazine almost a decade ago, the late Dean Barnett hailed "the 9/11 generation" and held out the hope—nay, the expectation—that they would contribute more to the nation than their parents, the baby boomers:

The fish, as they say, rots from the head first. And Donald J. Trump is the head of the executive branch. It's not that the U.S. government isn't beset by innumerable problems and systemic dysfunction. But in the here and now, Donald Trump is the problem. The president is the dysfunction.

The fish, as they say, rots from the head first. And Donald J. Trump is the head of the executive branch. It's not that the U.S. government isn't beset by innumerable problems and systemic dysfunction. But in the here and now, Donald Trump is the problem. The president is the dysfunction.

Donald Trump is an embarrassment. It would be better for the country if he were president for at most one term. It would be desirable that his manner of governing go down in history as an aberration; that his form of conservatism be judged a detour from the broad path of a mostly praiseworthy…

"It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is." —Leo Strauss

"It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is." —Leo Strauss

I highly recommend the lovely tributes to Kate O'Beirne, who died Sunday after a very private battle with cancer, from her colleagues at National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg.

As we approach the 100-day mark of the Donald Trump presidency, it is instructive to recall the almost 100 months during which Barack Obama discharged the responsibilities of that high office. While there are reasons to be concerned about President Trump (and reasons to be encouraged, such as the…

The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven— All's right with the world! —"Pippa's Song," Robert Browning, 1841 As momentous events like the NCAA basketball finals and Major…

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.” So Abraham Lincoln wrote on August 24, 1855, to his friend Joshua Speed. Is it melodramatic to worry that the statement appears apt today?

Conservatives are generally interested in conserving. Defenders of liberal democracy are busy defending. Guardians of the postwar liberal world order spend their time guarding. As they all should.

ON THURSDAY EVENING, August 9, George W. Bush delivered the first prime-time special presidential address of the twenty-first century. No one would have predicted a few months ago—way back in the twentieth century—that a decision on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research would have been…

Who can forget watching in one’s youth the great sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? It aired for just two glorious seasons, from 1961 to 1963, on NBC on Sunday nights from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. It was a memorable touch of wry reality, sandwiched between the fantasies of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of…

Near the end of World War I, there was an alleged (almost surely apocryphal) exchange of telegrams between German and Austrian officers whose units were fighting side by side, in difficult circumstances, against the Allies. The German cabled: “Our situation is serious, but not critical." The…

When your mind runs over the history of the Grand Old Party, you think of the presidents first. You think of Abraham Lincoln and are proud to be in some way associated with a political party whose first president was our greatest. You recall Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin…

George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:

George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer isn’t a happy warrior. He loves the spotlight, but everyone's paying more attention to his colleagues Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He hoped to be majority leader, but Republicans surprised most observers by holding the Senate on Election Day. He…

The United States has had, prior to Donald Trump, 44 presidents. (Arguably we’ve had 43, but the guardians of historical pedantry long ago decreed that Grover Cleveland, who served nonconsecutive terms, would be counted as two.) There's no reason our descendants shouldn't enjoy at least another…

Eight years ago, reflecting on the inauguration of President Barack Obama, I wrote a piece that made two arguments, which may be worth briefly revisiting.

At a dinner Wednesday night in Washington, Donald Trump compared his victory—and his forthcoming presidency—to that of Andrew Jackson almost two centuries ago. "'There hasn't been anything like this since Andrew Jackson,' Mr. Trump quoted his admirers saying."

Just weeks after 9/11, Charles Krauthammer declared in these pages that our holiday from history—the 1990s—had come "to an abrupt end." And the United States did get back to work—briefly. But it turns out that President George W. Bush's exhortation in the aftermath of 9/11 that we should keep on…

The following is an excerpt from the Kristol Clear newsletter. Sign up for the weekly newsletter here.

The following is an excerpt from the Kristol Clear newsletter. Sign up for the weekly newsletter here.

Last week in this space we sketched the case for a party of liberty. We noted that “one lesson of 2016 is that it's time to worry about liberty again." We asked whether partisans of liberty might be able to come together—"more likely informally than formally"—in its defense. We claimed the answer…

The Foundation for Constitutional Government has released a new conversation with Harvey Mansfield, in which the Harvard professor discusses Donald Trump's election and, in a way, how political philosophy can inform our understanding of Trump and what Trump's victory reveals about American politics…

"At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, by…

"At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, by…

Dear colleagues, contributors, readers, and friends:

We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if we acknowledge that we were startled, in our callow youth, by a suggestion from a professor. The comment came from Adam Ulam, the distinguished scholar of Soviet foreign policy. In…

We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if we acknowledge that we were startled, in our callow youth, by a suggestion from a professor. The comment came from Adam Ulam, the distinguished scholar of Soviet foreign policy. In…

"I have no worries" about Donald Trump's presidency, the Dalai Lama said this week. Lacking the Dalai Lama's spiritual serenity and cosmic confidence, we do have some worries. But we also have some hopes.

"I have no worries” about Donald Trump's presidency, the Dalai Lama said this week. Lacking the Dalai Lama's spiritual serenity and cosmic confidence, we do have some worries. But we also have some hopes.

Who now gives much thought to the presidency of Warren G. Harding? Who ever did? Not us.

Who now gives much thought to the presidency of Warren G. Harding? Who ever did? Not us.

The late great Donald Westlake signed letters (and emails) “Onward." This wonderfully opaque valediction leaves altogether unclear the writer's own sentiments toward the addressee or the character of his relationship to the correspondent. What does "Onward" really mean? Presumably we all go onward…

Lots of interesting reflections today from email correspondents on the election, America in 2016 and life in general. Here's one, from a teacher:

If you'll permit me a personal note on Election Eve (and if you won't permit it, feel free to stop reading now!):

A savvy (if somewhat sadistic) friend writes:

A savvy friend, a lawyer with political and government experience, writes:

Patrick J. Buchanan, a fervent Donald Trump supporter, wrote recently and approvingly that Trump’s campaign embodies "the populist-nationalist right that is moving beyond the niceties of liberal democracy."

The two major party conventions, the three presidential debates, and various scandals large and small—all these features of the 2016 presidential general election have come and gone. Now the campaign draws to a close. And one outcome seems increasingly likely: Donald J. Trump will lose.

While serious foreign policy debate, like any kind of serious policy debate, has been virtually absent in this election, not talking about problems doesn't make them go away. In fact, the world has gotten much more dangerous under President Obama, and dealing with it will be a key challenge of the…

It's been a heck of postseason so far, with the highlight of course the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw coming out of the bullpen on one day's rest after a 100-pitch-plus start to save the deciding game in the division playoff against the Washington Nationals. (Then, two days after that, Kershaw pitched…

So the November 24 deadline for reaching a comprehensive agreement with Iran over its nuclear program—itself an extension of an earlier deadline—has come and gone with a whimper, and with another extension. The frenetic, feverish, and foolish pursuit of a deal by the Obama administration, marked by…

The 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature has posed the question for Republicans, whose party has nominated Donald J. Trump for president:

Feel free to forward the tweet storm reproduced below, by Twitter user @MBGlenn, to any Republican men you know who continue to support Donald Trump.

The emergence Friday of the disgusting Trump tape was a gift to the Republican party. It provided an occasion, at the very last minute, for the party to dump a fundamentally unworthy and radically unfit nominee. At the very least it provided an occasion for the party to separate itself radically…

"We have to think of the future and not of the past. This also applies in a small way to our own affairs at home. There are many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Governments—and of Parliaments, for they are in it, too—during the years which led up to this…

Stephen Hayes analyzed the problem correctly back in a piece in late July headlined, "Donald Trump Is Crazy, and So Is the GOP for Embracing Him." And he also prescribed the solution (short of persuading or forcing Trump to relinquish the nomination, which should also be explored):

Vice presidential debates don’t matter. Lloyd Bentsen was widely thought to have clobbered Dan Quayle in 1988; the Bush-Quayle ticket won easily. Vice President Quayle did well against Al Gore in 1992; the Bush-Quayle ticket lost.

"No one has any other way left but—upward." (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, address at Harvard, June 8, 1978) After this ghastly campaign, whose ghastliness reached new heights with the performance of the Republican nominee in the first presidential debate, conservatives will have no other way left…

At the beginning of the baseball season, we announced in the Kristol Clear newsletter a contest in which you had a chance to pick the teams that would make the World Series, and the winner. We've got the entries, are dutifully keeping track as promised, and the payoff will be YUUGE.

I recently received a long email from an old friend, someone whose judgment I very much respect, making the case for Trump. I can't say I'm convinced, but I thought his argument interesting and eloquent enough to ask him for permission to share it. Here are substantial excerpts from his missive.

"No one has any other way left but—upward." (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, address at Harvard, June 8, 1978) After this ghastly campaign, whose ghastliness reached new heights with the performance of the Republican nominee in the first presidential debate, conservatives will have no other way left…

In the first segment of the debate, Hillary Clinton started out on the defensive on trade, while Donald Trump did a pretty good job of making his case against free trade deals, NAFTA and the like (unsupported by most of the facts though that case may be). Trump also was able to tie that case to an…

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice…

One of many unfortunate effects of watching these two appalling candidates every day is that their awfulness can obscure the fact that our current president has done so much damage in his two terms in office. Digging out of that hole would be tough enough; digging out of a 12-year Obama-Clinton or…

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice…

The New York Times editorial board took a break this past week from its usual practice of blaming Israel for being the cause of assaults against her. On Wednesday, after the terror attack on Jews praying in a synagogue in Jerusalem, the Times editors ruminated:

"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." —John Kerry, New York Times Magazine, October 10, 2004 "What American would not trade the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young Americans were not…

“I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people—and the people who knocked these buildings down—will hear all of us soon."

It's been two weeks since I wrote in the Kristol Clear newsletter:

I'm back from a day and a half at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia, and here are the highlights: breakfast with an old friend at the Down Home Diner in Reading Terminal Market; dinner with several political scientists/TWS contributors at the 117-year old…

I was exchanging emails the other day with a comrade-in-arms, and, the discussion of the matter at hand having been completed, she commented: "Thanks. We are all caught in the seventh circle of hell. I walk to the edge of my cliff here every morning and scream out over the river. The neighbors…

In the past week, Donald Trump has pivoted, as they say, to try to appeal to African-American voters. He’s convinced he can win them over. Indeed, he claims his policies as president will be so transformative that, "At the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the…

In his most recent newsletter, Jonah Goldberg has a very interesting discussion of "corruption" and the ways in which we're confused about the meaning of that term. (By the way, Jonah's newsletter, "G-File," is spectacularly good. He's a born newsletterist (is that a word?). And you should…

Susan was out of town this weekend, so I did what everyone does when his wife's away—scheduled dinners with friends Friday and Saturday nights, and got lunch Saturday at our local Chinese restaurant. And I was glad I did, because here's the fortune that came in my (complimentary!) fortune cookie…

I received an email this morning from Michael Lieber, the former GOP city captain for Bay Village, Ohio, who resigned that post last month to protest Donald Trump's nomination as the presidential candidate for the Republican party. Because Lieber says concisely and eloquently what so many others…

A correspondent calls to my attention a remarkable op-ed in the Plain Dealer in Cleveland by Phil Van Treuren, a Republican member of the Amherst City Council in Lorain County, Ohio.

Conservatives, temperamentally respectful of the past, uncertain about the present, and doubtful of the future, are often inclined to embrace the notion that their age is one of decadence. We at The Weekly Standard have tended to resist this temptation. While we might admire works like Jacques…

‘GOP at 'new level of panic' over Trump," ran the banner Washington Post headline on August 4. Just two weeks earlier Donald Trump had accepted his party's presidential nomination, marking the occasion with an effective if not elegant speech. A few days later, polls showed Trump opening up a slight…

"GOP at 'new level of panic' over Trump," ran the banner Washington Post headline on August 4. Just two weeks earlier Donald Trump had accepted his party's presidential nomination, marking the occasion with an effective if not elegant speech. A few days later, polls showed Trump opening up a slight…

My editorial in the latest WEEKLY STANDARD has generated several kind and thoughtful responses. Here's one that I think deserves wider readership (and which I reproduce here with the writer's permission):

Editor's Note: Below is an excerpt from the boss's weekly newsletter. You can sign up for free here.

Saturday's must-read: Harvey Mansfield in the Wall Street Journal, "Why Donald Trump is No Gentleman."

Depressed? We feel your pain. It’s not great to be living through the worst presidential matchup ever. And it's not a cheerful thought that one of these two horrendous candidates is very likely to be our next president.

Philadelphia

Donald J. Trump is the presidential nominee of the Republican party. But that does not absolve every Republican office holder, donor, and activist from the responsibility of satisfying himself that it is right to support that nominee for president. There are, in my judgment, many reasons to doubt…

‘A vote for anyone other than Donald Trump in November is a vote for Hillary," the governor of Wisconsin has spent the week of the Republican convention robotically repeating. "It's a binary choice," the speaker of the House keeps on telling us, in his less colloquial, more game-theoretical…

Cleveland

Cleveland

Hillary Clinton may or may not be the all-around worst presidential nominee in the history of the Democratic party. That party has, over the years, thrown up some pretty unappealing characters. It’s also nominated candidates whose policies did (James Buchanan, Jimmy Carter) or would have done…

A savvy and patriotic friend writes:

Any serious student of the theory and history of the Republican National Convention knows the delegates to that convention are unbound and free to exercise their judgment. If this were not the case, why did the Gerald Ford forces think it necessary in 1976 to move to explicitly bind the delegates…

Exactly twelve score years ago, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." More precisely: On July 2, 1776, the members of the Continental Congress agreed to declare independence. On July 4,…

I was chatting the other day with a politically savvy and experienced friend. While neither of us is pro-Trump, we agreed that, analytically, Trump's chances are being underrated, and that while one would still have consider Trump an underdog to Clinton, it's not out of the question that he could…

This election cycle hasn't been kind to Republican big shots. Their favorite presidential candidates—Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio—fell short. Their opposition to Donald Trump was ineffectual, and their subsequent submission to him inglorious.

As we approach July 4, 2016, the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is proper to recall what the philosopher Leo Strauss, in his introduction to Natural Right and History, called the “weight and elevation" of our founding principles. But fine principles are one thing. One must…

In an interview with Chuck Todd that will air on Meet the Press Sunday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan says this:

“Trust me, he's only hanging on by a thread."

Almost a half-century ago, the great Donald Westlake published a comic mystery novel, God Save the Mark. It’s probably not one of Westlake's very best efforts (though even a Westlake non-best-effort is awfully good). The "mark" of the title is a reasonably intelligent and likable young man who…

People keep saying how unusual this year’s presidential race is. They're wrong. It's an absolutely normal Third World election.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan argued that young Americans in particular should appreciate the power of choice:

This careful and first-rate national poll, done by Joel Searby of Data Targeting, has just been released. Searby's summary memo and the actual survey results are posted on Data Targeting's website; I encourage you to take a look at them yourself.

"Sometimes party loyalty asks too much." —John F. Kennedy, 1960 I have always voted for the Republican presidential candidate. From Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan (twice) and George H. W. Bush (twice) and Bob Dole, from George W. Bush (twice) to John McCain and Mitt Romney—I've…

Donald Trump awakened this morning to a Wall Street Journal editorial, "The Third-Party Temptation," warning against the search for an independent candidate who "would give conservatives an honorable alternative to Trump-Hillary." The Journal in effect called on all concerned to (grudgingly) accept…

On Tuesday, April 26, Donald Trump won impressive primary victories in five states, victories that would seem to make it difficult (though not yet impossible) to deny him the Republican nomination. On Wednesday, in Washington, D.C., Trump read from a teleprompter a foreign policy speech designed to…

Here is the bulk of an April 24 memorandum from Rich Danker, a bright young conservative operative who ran the Lone Star Committee, an independent expenditure effort on behalf of Ted Cruz. Danker's insights go beyond his analysis of the 2016 Republican race, and are a helpful guide to any…

On April 19, 1775, first at sunrise in Lexington and then at midmorning a few miles away at the North Bridge in Concord, the war for American independence began:

Ted Cruz, we are told, has a fondness for American popular music. We therefore trust he knows by heart and can belt out on demand Frank Sinatra’s "New York, New York."

If you’re a conservative, you admire Edmund Burke—and you may recall this passage—a bit hyperbolic perhaps, but stirring and powerful:

There would seem to be three possible outcomes for the Republican nominating process. Each has (more or less) a historical precedent.

In honor of Opening Day, I had a short discussion of baseball in yesterday's weekly newsletter (yes, you can get it--it's easy, just sign up here. And yes, it's free!) But I'll admit last night's Villanova-North Carolina game could call into question my endorsement of the superiority of baseball.…

In a famous episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza concludes that every instinct he’s had, every decision he's made, has been wrong and that he should henceforth do the opposite of what he had routinely been doing. He implements this new philosophy and promptly manages to entice an attractive woman…

John Feehery is a Washington lobbyist and former spokesman for the disgraced ex-speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. Last week, Feehery explained to the Atlantic’s Molly Ball why he's reconciled to accepting Donald Trump as the nominee of his party:

Last night's events in Chicago brought to mind the great 1838 address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, by the 29-year-old Abraham Lincoln, on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions." Here are a few excerpts. Read the whole thing:

Two months ago, in an editorial whose headline expressed both a hope and an imperative—"Neither Trump Nor Hillary"—we concluded, "Can the Republican party be saved from Donald Trump and the country from Hillary Clinton? The possibility of defeat is obvious and of failure is close."

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March. Caesar: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass. Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar. At best he's kind of a comic-book version of a Caesarist-wannabe. Had he been born two millennia ago as Donaldus Trumpum, he would have dodged the Gallic Wars, hired a…

Over the next two weeks, the non-Donald Trump candidates (except for Ben Carson) will stay in the race. That's fine. And the good news (if you're in the anti-Trump camp) is that all they have to do is pursue their enlightened self-interest, and that their interests pretty much coincide.

I've received lots of emails over the last few days from acquaintances and correspondents writing in the hope that I convey their strong feelings about a possible Trump nomination to those with the resources or political clout to do something about it. I thought a few representative ones might be…

‘You inspire us all." With that fulsome greeting, Pat Robertson welcomed Donald Trump this week to the stage of Regent University. According to the school's catalogue, the university's name invokes the fact that "a regent is one who represents Christ, our Sovereign, in whatever sphere of life he or…

We seem to be particularly susceptible to fatalism. Modern doctrines of science and history incline us philosophically in that direction. The experience of mass movements and mass effects seems to suggest individuals can do little to affect the course of events. When we do indulge our hopes and…

There seem to me to be two dominant scenarios for what happens next in the Republican presidential race. For now I'll just sketch them out, in the interest of stimulating thought and commentary rather than asserting a conclusion.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Justice and probably the most impressive member of the British Parliament, has issued a statement on the European Union referendum. Here are the highlights:

"It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself fully as what it is."

Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, claims in Saturday night's debate that the most recent Republican president, George W. Bush, knowingly and purposefully lied us into war in Iraq.

It was a wild and woolly debate, with lots of arguments worth commenting on and exchanges worth evaluating. But as is sometimes the case in these debates, only one statement really mattered.

When I was first saw the San Antonio newspaper was reporting Nino Scalia's death, I fervently hoped it wasn't true. But then there were other reports, and emails from friends, and hope was replaced by shock, and by grief.

I thought readers might be interested in this email I received today from a thoughtful Trump supporter ("for now"):

We seem to be at a point in the election season where, to quote George Orwell, “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." So to restate the obvious: Choosing Donald Trump as the Republican party's nominee would be a mistake. He lacks the character to be a trustworthy…

I've just heard from a political operative whom I've known a long time and whose integrity I trust. This person is working with an organization—not one of the campaigns—that was in the field (using a very reputable pollster) Wednesday night in South Carolina.

It’s been one scary horror movie. But now, at last, the happy ending. The slasher is dead. The aliens have been defeated. The flesh-eating zombies have been disposed of once and for all. The vampires will never suck blood again. You exhale. You relax. You heave a sigh of relief.

Watching the Republican debate tonight, I couldn't help but think,

The Weekly Standard looks forward to the 58th swearing-in of a president of the United States on January 20, 2017. The oath-taking is the heart of the occasion. It’s what makes the winner of the presidential election legally and constitutionally able to execute the office of the president. All the…

I'm passing on this amusing and thought-provoking email from a political junkie friend.

Depicted by masters of American literature from Herman Melville to Mark Twain to Donald Westlake, cropping up in real life in each epoch of our great hustling and bustling and grasping commercial republic, the confidence man is a primordial American type. Many accounts treat him with some…

One thought on last night's Democratic debate. It seems clear Hillary Clinton has decided to wrap herself in the mantle of President Obama, and in effect run for Obama's third term.

A confession: I didn't wake up at 4:00 am here in Israel in order to watch last night's Republican presidential debate. A further confession: I can't say I regret that decision. But it does mean my judgment of the debate, which follows, is based on reading the transcript rather than watching and…

Jerusalem

I'm in Israel, where I've been leading a full-day seminar on American conservatism for twenty or so very bright young Israelis. So I've been spared (thankfully) the annoyance of watching Obama's State of the Union, and also haven't been able to follow the Iranian seizing of our sailors as closely…

Writing in mid-June, a couple of days after Donald Trump announced his candidacy, we offered the judgment that he should not be our next president: “We're not Trump enthusiasts. We're not even Trump fellow travelers. We're closer to Trump deriders."

Well, we’ve endured 2015, the next to last year of the Obama administration. It's not been without damage to the country—both to its constitutional fabric and its standing in the world. But endured we have. One more year to go.

On January 15, 1787, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote proudly from Prague to his friend Baron Gottfried von Jacquin: "Here nothing is talked about except Figaro; nothing is played, blown, sung, and whistled except Figaro; no opera draws the crowds like Figaro. It's always Figaro. Certainly it's a…

You're worried. Okay, you're alarmed. Actually, you're panicked. Donald Trump will be the nominee and destroy the party. It's embarrassing for the GOP that Ben Carson has so much support. Marco Rubio will be judged by voters too young and inexperienced for the Oval Office. Ted Cruz would be a…

It would be an interesting exercise to trace the history of the word sanctimony. In its original derivation from the Latin sanctimonia, it seems to have had the straightforward sense of sanctity or sacredness. But centuries ago, it took on its current meaning—of pretended or affected or…

How unusual is this year's GOP presidential race?

“To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what…

“It would send a demoralizing and dangerous message to the world that the United States makes judgments about people based on the country they come from and their religion.”  Have these groups ever heard of the struggle for Soviet Jewry? Was it wrong to single out that group in legislation? If not,…

Walter Russell Mead has a terrific piece in the American Interest on "President Obama's Cynical Refugee Ploy."

Bernard-Henri Lévy has written an intelligent and forceful, if somewhat grandiloquent, piece on Paris and its implications. Highlights:

Generally speaking, The Weekly Standard is from the Edith Piaf school of second thoughts. We don’t have many. And when we do, we keep quiet about them. As the great chanteuse put it: Non, je ne regrette rien.

During the Democratic debate Saturday night, Hillary Clinton said that ISIS "cannot be contained, it must be defeated." She also said, not once but twice, that this "cannot be an American fight" (while adding, "although American leadership is essential").

Here's the most compelling and powerful reaction I've read so far to the attacks in Paris, by Mark Steyn, "The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates."

A thought-provoking email in response to my editorial, "The Self-Destruction of the American University:"

In January 2011, we at TWS had the notion that it would be good to defeat President Obama in 2012. And so in a blog post we asked the sensible question: " Wouldn't it be easier just to agree now on a Ryan-Rubio ticket, and save everyone an awful lot of time, effort, and money over the next year and…

‘Republicans in Turmoil!” “Chaos Confounds GOP Congressmen!!” “Catastrophic Conservative Crack-Up Imminent!!!” “Trump Likely GOP Nominee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Interesting political debates typically have what could be called primary effects. In Wednesday night's case, those would include the Bush-Rubio exchange, which did a lot of good for Rubio and a lot of damage to Bush, and the Cruz assault on the moderators, which was dazzling.

Anderson Cooper’s final question in the Democratic presidential debate on October 13 led to an interesting and revealing moment. He asked:

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s been two months since the first Republican presidential debate. How do things now stand for the party upon whose success next year rest all of our hopes for constitutional government at home and a manageable world abroad?

Let me risk ridicule by mentioning the ruthless Vladimir Putin and the clueless Joe Biden in the same sentence: The emergence of Putin abroad and Biden at home could reshape the 2016 Republican presidential race.

How big a problem is it that the two leading Republican candidates for president aren’t actually qualified to be president?

How big a problem is it that the two leading Republican candidates for president aren’t actually qualified to be president?

On Monday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the Republican presidential front-runner on April Fools' Day, quit the contest. There had been no scandal which disgraced him, no momentous mistake which undermined him. It was simply that he once had support from Republican primary voters; he no longer…

Here are the judgments of several senators on the Obama administration’s Iran deal:

All of us at THE WEEKLY STANDARD are shocked and deeply saddened by the terrible news of the death in a cycling accident of our friend Jake Brewer, at age 34. Jake, the husband of contributing editor Mary Katharine Ham, was not only a person of great achievement and remarkable promise, but a…

The American people believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. When pollsters ask whether the country is on the right or the wrong track, wrong track prevails by better than two to one. And the American people are right. We are going the wrong way: The economy isn’t strong, the…

The results of the latest straw poll of WEEKLY STANDARD readers are in. It's not a scientific poll, of course—but since the respondents are very perceptive WEEKLY STANDARD readers, I'm going to claim (why not?) that the results are a suggestive leading indicator of where the GOP race may be going.

The results of the latest straw poll of WEEKLY STANDARD readers are in. It's not a scientific poll, of course--but since the respondents are very perceptive WEEKLY STANDARD readers, I'm going to claim (why not?) that the results are a suggestive leading indicator of where the GOP race may be going.

I'm pleased to let you know that the Foundation for Constitutional Government, which produces the Conversations that I've been hosting for a couple of years, has just released a series of websites called Contemporary Thinkers.  The aim is to make more easily accessible the works of pioneering…

It's Labor Day—the end of summer, the beginning of the school year (though now schools usually begin earlier), the time when the pennant races get interesting (will the Mets collapse yet again?), and the traditional kick-off for the presidential races (as you may have noticed, those now begin…

‘The Muse of History must not be fastidious.” Thus Churchill the historian. But as Churchill the politician knew, the Muse of Politics must not be fastidious either.

A few people have asked me to elaborate on the thought I tried hurriedly to express at the end of the This Week roundtable. Here it is: Republicans have a problem, while Democrats have a crisis.

I've suggested before that 2016 is beginning to look more and more like 1968. This is true in terms of the presidential contests—on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is Eugene McCarthy, Hillary Clinton is Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden will be Hubert Humphrey, and (the big question!) Elizabeth Warren…

A week ago, I suggested that—contrary to conventional wisdom and perhaps even to first-blush common sense—the GOP field might benefit from one or more new candidates. One of the well-qualified dark horses I mentioned was third-term Rep. Mike Pompeo from Wichita, Kansas.

A savvy friend who's held elective office emails:

“Because this is such a strong deal, every nation in the world that has commented publicly, with the exception of the Israeli government, has expressed support. The United Nations Security Council has unanimously supported it. The majority of arms control and nonproliferation experts support it.…

Next year will be the most consequential presidential election in two generations. Given how difficult it is to hold the White House for three straight terms, and given President Obama's shaky approval numbers, Republicans will have a good chance to win. On the other hand, Democrats had a good…

We are very sorry to have to inform our readers of the death last night of our friend, our teacher (in class and out), and above all a woman whom we thoroughly and unreservedly admired, Amy Kass. Amy's character and her work will be the subject of many well-deserved tributes in the days and weeks…

As Jeffrey Anderson noted in this week's issue of the magazine, the issue of Obamacare featured less conspicuously that one might have expected in the first Republican presidential debate. More broadly, the issue has been less central to the GOP primary campaign than one might have anticipated,…

It’s more than a quarter-century since the Berlin Wall came down. We now take it for granted that it happened, assume it was inevitable that it would happen, and forget that some people helped bring about victory in the Cold War while others sought to impede their efforts.

Just about six weeks ago, I had the honor of participating in a tribute at Ashland University for Peter Schramm, who had been diagnosed with a terminal disease. It was a very moving event, and Peter summoned all his energies to give truly wonderful and memorable remarks (which you can and should…

In May, President Barack Obama donned a yarmulke and spoke in a Washington, D.C., synagogue. He reminded his audience that Jeffrey Goldberg, a member of the congregation, once called him the “first Jewish president.” He claimed to be flattered by the characterization. And perhaps he was—most Jews,…

In a new national poll, Quinnipiac asked the question in as straightforward a way as possible: "Do you support or oppose the nuclear deal with Iran?" And, "Do you think the nuclear deal with Iran would make the world safer or less safe?"

The Iran deal turns out to be so no good, so very bad, so awfully ugly, that there is a chance—an outside chance—that a congressional process accepted by the administration because it seemed to virtually guarantee the deal’s survival might actually kill it instead.

Here's part of Maureen Dowd's interesting and moving column in tomorrow's New York Times on Joe Biden:

Today! A chance to chat with President Obama about the Iran deal! Be there or be square! 

A friend with political experience who's also a sports fan writes:

President Obama had a moment of impressive moral clarity at his Iran press conference Wednesday. It was when he was asked about Bill Cosby.

Someone joked this past week that for the first time in 2,500 years, Persia and Greece are dominating world news. But now, as then, the questions raised by Persia and Greece go beyond Persia and Greece.

We have a deal. It's a deal worse than even we imagined possible. It's a deal that gives the Iranian regime $140b in return for ... effectively nothing: no dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program, no anytime/anywhere inspections, no curbs on Iran's ballistic missile program, no maintenance of the…

It’s the summer of 2015, and the left is on the march. Or perhaps one should say—since the left presumably dislikes the militarist connotations of the term “march”—that the left is swarming. And in its mindless swarming and mob-like frenzy, nearly every hideous aspect of contemporary leftism is on…

Here's a news bulletin from the Iran talks in Vienna:

We are not allowed, needless to say, to disclose our top secret list ranking the GOP presidential candidates from top to bottom. It’s kept in encrypted form on a password-protected, self-destructing hard drive in a safe room at The Weekly Standard, accessible only to a trusted few who are cleared…

The Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell is disappointing. But it also provides a welcome moment of clarity: We can finally dispense with the false belief that the Supreme Court will save us from Obamacare. It is perhaps a blessing for the cause of repeal that all eyes will now turn to the…

In today's newsletter, I segued from Alexander Hamilton and the ten dollar bill to a fine performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro at Wolf Trap last week (don't ask about the relationship, you had to be there--and in fact you can be there if you sign up here) but I then continued:

In last week’s blur of news, as we forced ourselves to pay attention to the candidacies of the second Clinton and the third Bush, as we reacted to the vagaries of the Supreme Court at home and the brutalities of ISIS abroad, as we pondered the implications both of the Iranian nuclear program and…

There's a new poll of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters. It shows Bernie Sanders with 32 percent of the vote, closing in on Hillary Clinton with 44 percent. This survey was released yesterday afternoon, shortly, as it happened, after I'd suggested on This Week that Hillary might not be so…

I'm not sure what the great political philosopher Leo Strauss would have thought of the Internet (he was a skeptic about progress, but also a skeptic about reaction). I personally think he would have appreciated aspects of it. Perhaps he would have even written an essay on "Persecution and the Art…

William Butler Yeats sure had the Age of Obama right:

From the beginning, patriots have understood the need, at times, to sound the alarm:

Randy Richardson, a friend of my parents and a man I knew and admired, died on Memorial Day. Randy was an important if unheralded figure (unheralded because he preferred to shun the limelight) in the conservative intellectual movement for several decades. Here are excerpts from tributes by his…

Last week, Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin convened a focus group of Iowa Democrats to discuss Hillary Rodham Clinton. They were Ready for Hillary. Indeed, they were enthusiastic about the prospect. But when Halperin asked them to name an accomplishment of Hillary as secretary of state, they couldn’t…

One reason to look forward to Friday is that "Ammo Grrrll" always graces us with some "Thoughts From the Ammo Line" over at Power Line.

A reader who wishes not to be named, as he toils behind enemy lines—at a university—emails with a good question. It's about this statement by President Obama in his speech at Adas Israel synagogue last Friday:

As I was looking around online Saturday, I happened to come across the text of President Obama's Memorial Day weekend radio address. Here's how it begins:

Let’s begin by doing something we don’t often do, and that is quoting the New York Times at some length. We do this because David Sanger’s report of Thursday, May 14, makes clear how mistaken are the premises underlying President Obama’s forthcoming Iran deal:

John Forbes Kerry is the 68th secretary of state of the United States of America. If you’re ever tempted to ponder American decline, or for that matter the decline of the West, you might pause to reflect that John Kerry was preceded in his august office by, among others, Thomas Jefferson, James…

Assuming a Republican wins the presidency in 2016, his top domestic priority will be—and should be—to repeal and replace Obamacare. The health care overhaul is the cornerstone of President Obama’s project to transform America into a top-down administrative state. The effects of repealing Obamacare,…

Two decades ago, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam lamented that we “bowl alone.” This week, two teams played baseball alone.

Seventy-five years ago today, on May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Holland and Belgium. Conservative prime minister Neville Chamberlain was rebuffed by Labour in his request to join him in a National Government, and at 6 pm, King George VI asked Winston Churchill to form a government. Churchill…

As always, Winston Churchill said it best. Here he is on March 24, 1938, less than two weeks after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, quondam secretary of state and presumptive heir to the presidency 

As always, Winston Churchill said it best. Here he is on March 24, 1938, speaking less than two weeks after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria:

What is to be done about Obama’s Iran “deal”? We could, fatalistically, lament the collapse of American foreign policy. We could, indignantly, gnash our teeth in frustration at the current administration. We could, constructively, work to secure congressional review of the deal and urge…

A must-read, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal opinion pages: Remarks from earlier this week in San Francisco by retired four-star Marine Corps general James Mattis to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've received several inquiries asking me to spell out some implications of this week's editorial. Here goes:

This morning at 10:00 a.m., in Israel, all activity came to a halt as sirens sounded, and Israelis stood for two minutes with heads bowed in memory of the 6 million Jews, one third of the Jewish people, who perished in the Holocaust. Yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Yad Vashem…

Jerusalem

One of many startling statements in President's Obama interview with Tom Friedman is his assertion that he's seeking “to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table.”

Commentators have exposed how bad the Iran deal is in various ways; the point, however, is to kill it.

Seth Lipsky of the New York Sun grasps the significance of the moment in his editorial today, "The Shape of Things to Come":

In my latest newsletter (you can subscribe here—it's free!), I noted the death last week of Yehuda Avner, an adviser and English speechwriter to four Israeli prime ministers. I wrote, 

If you’re an establishment Republican, ripples of doubt are intruding on your normal placid contentment.

In the aftermath of Benjamin Netanyahu's inconvenient (to Barack Obama) victory in the Israeli election, it looks like the administration is heading towards exacting revenge. The administration's threat is that under President Obama the United States will "join the jackals"—the permanent, global,…

Three moments stood out for me as I watched Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday from the gallery of the House of Representatives.

Sometimes a speech is just a speech. Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech about Iran policy on March 3 will not be his first address to Congress. It will make familiar, if important, arguments. One might assume that, like the vast majority of speeches, it would soon be overtaken by events in Israel and the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a video likely GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry is about to release on Iran. In his statement, Perry blasts the Obama administration for "desperately pursuing a nuclear agreement with Iran," and criticizes the concessions the administration has made in some…

We'll all be discussing for quite a while the substance, context, and implications of yesterday's speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I thought I might just offer a personal note on what most struck me yesterday, sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives. 

Dozing off as we pored through a raft of mostly meaningless polls this week, we were startled awake by one set of findings. The CNN/ORC survey released February 18 was The Weekly Standard’s own little fire bell in the night.

We've just finished tabulating the results an online poll conducted during the last week of WEEKLY STANDARD readers. They were given a chance to let us know who would be, as of now, their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices for the GOP presidential nomination. We want to thank the 3,700 readers who…

Lost in much of the reporting about CPAC is that almost all of the likely presidential candidates—really, all of them, with the exception of Rand Paul—seemed to place themselves at the Reaganite hawkish-internationalist end of the foreign policy spectrum. The much-heralded return of Republican…

David Axelrod is the man who, more than any other, could be called Barack Obama’s brain (though Axelrod would be publicly horrified by the honorific, and would hasten to assure Valerie Jarrett that he has never been in communication with the editors of this magazine). In his new book, Axelrod…

Every couple of generations, the West gets lucky. The civilizational collapse of the 1930s, in reaction to the Great War and then the Great Depression, could well have led to an unbelievably brutal world dominated for decades by tyrannical communism, barbaric National Socialism, and fanatical…

Otto von Bismarck may never have said what’s often ascribed to him: “There is a special Providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America.” But he could have, and it probably sounds even better in German. In any case, one can certainly see, looking back, why the apparently…

The Obama administration is angry with Israel. Here's the administration's house organ, the New York Times, this morning:

On September 4, 2014, as the NATO summit convened in Wales, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron coauthored an op-ed in the Times of London. Its headline: “We will not be cowed by barbaric killers.” On January 15, a mere four and a half months later, the same coauthors had the…

Tablet has one of the best articles I've seen from Paris, capturing the mood of French Jews--and the meaning for them of the state of Israel. Here are excerpts:

Here's David Brooks's review of the late Walter Berns's 2001 book, Making Patriots, from our May 21, 2001 issue:

Walter Berns, the great constitutional scholar and defender of the American republic, died today. He was 95. Generations of students have learned from his work, and will continue to do so. Those of us who knew him looked up to him and admired him unreservedly. He was at once a distinguished…

In October 1940, Americans flocked to movie theaters to see Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, mocking the most powerful tyrant on the globe. In December 2014, movie theaters and then the production company cancelled the release of The Interview because of threats of terror from a tinpot, though…

I hereby nominate Dick Cheney's answer to Chuck Todd's question about a United Nations official who's called for the criminal prosecution of U.S. interrogators, as the 2014 Sunday Show Answer of the Year:

Americans have many customs as to what they say, or whether they say anything at all, when they assemble for Thanksgiving. But if you're looking for something unfamiliar but traditional, something both American and Biblical in spirit, here's a suggestion, courtesy of "The Book of Doctrine and…

So Chuck Hagel has been fired as defense secretary. We were critical of his appointment, and opposed his confirmation by the Senate. But let's be clear: Hagel has done what he was asked and what was expected of him at the Pentagon. To the degree he has deviated from the Obama White House line, he's…

Back before incoming senators Tom Cotton and Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst and Dan Sullivan were born, before new House members Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin and Mia Love were a gleam in their parents’ eyes, the Beach Boys said it best: “Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world.”

Most of us at The Weekly Standard are baseball fans. Like all human institutions we are imperfect, so we have a few colleagues who superciliously disdain sports, and a few others who vulgarly prefer football or basketball. But we ignore the naysayers and carpers in our midst. We’re proud to endorse…

Whether or not Jeff Bell comes from behind to win the New Jersey Senate race, he deserves credit for having run a classy, ideas-focused race. That's epitomized by his "closing argument," reproduced below. If a majority of New Jersey voters actually read this email, I do think Bell would win. The…

Supposing Republicans win a big victory on November 4. What then?

Two new polls show Republican Ed Gillespie closing in on Democratic incumbent Mark Warner in the Virginia Senate race. Christopher Newport University, which had Warner up 12 points earlier in the month in its survey, now has Warner's lead down to 7.

In the latest wave of the New York Times/CBS/YouGov poll, Cory Booker leads Jeff Bell 51-39.

It's a daunting moment for conservatives. To have even a chance for a semblance of a conservative future in the United States, we probably need (1) to elect a GOP Congress in 2014, which (2) does well enough in the majority for the next two years to (3) allow a Republican to win the White House in…

Jeff Bell used to email us to pitch articles for THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Now he emails asking for help for a TV buy in his New Jersey Senate race.

How to introduce students to conservative thought? It’s hard. The colleges and universities aren’t interested. The media and popular culture are hostile. What if young Americans nonetheless become aware of the existence of such a thing as conservative thought? How to convey its varieties and…

I happened to be meeting with Senator Ted Cruz a few hours after President Obama’s United Nations speech Wednesday. We naturally started by discussing the president’s latest oratorical effort. Cruz’s judgment on the speech as a whole? “Unsurprising, but consistently disappointing.” On Obama on…

The new Quinnipiac poll of the New Jersey Senate contest shows Jeff Bell only 11 points down to Cory Booker, 51 to 40 percent, among likely voters. It goes without saying that a race can move a dozen points in the final five weeks of a campaign—especially when a little known challenger (but one…

Republican voters are down on the sluggish GOP officials they elected, and the officeholders whine about the unreasonable people who voted for them. Republican backbenchers complain about their lame leaders, and GOP leaders grumble about their unruly followers. Right-wing pundits despair of…

In his September 10 speech to the nation, President Obama said, “This is American leadership at its best: We stand with people who fight for their own freedom; and we rally other nations on behalf of our common security and common humanity.”

We're at war. We're putting boots on the ground. We're not waiting around for the host nation's government to get its affairs in order, or for a regional coalition to commit first. The president has apparently overcome his reluctance to use the military, his worries about a commitment to intervene…

Barack Obama’s foreign policy is in shambles. He had a dream, expressed in Cairo, of “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” of “a world where extremists no longer threaten our people.” So he got out of Iraq and failed to follow through in Libya, seeing no need for…

The White House has released a couple of excerpts of the president's address to the nation. Here's the second:

2017 Project executive director Jeffrey Anderson issued a memorandum this morning reporting that the nonpartisan Center for Health & Economy has "scored" the group’s alternative to Obamacare. THE WEEKLY STANDARD readers are familiar with the broad case for the alternative (see here and here), which…

"Rooting out a cancer like ISIL won’t be easy and it won’t be quick,” President Obama told the American Legion’s annual convention in Charlotte on Tuesday, August 26. He repeated the thought in his pre-Labor Day weekend press conference on August 28. A week before, the day after the murder of James…

President Obama spoke about ISIS at length in his Meet the Press interview this morning, but he didn't offer much clarity as to what he's going to do about ISIS. One might say he's learned from bitter experience not to lay down red lines, and that he 's being purposefully vague. But I'm afraid the…

On Tuesday, August 19, an American citizen, James Foley, was savagely killed. The group of jihadists known as ISIL had previously killed and brutalized tens of thousands of non-Americans. But they killed Foley because he was an American. They titled the grotesque video of this particular act of…

The president is appalled. Indeed he said this afternoon that "the entire world is appalled by the brutal murder of Jim Foley by the terrorist group, ISIL." The act of violence that killed Jim Foley, the president continued, "shocks the conscience of the entire world."

Here are the two best responses I've seen so far to the latest barbarism from ISIS.

It was something of a puzzle, according to the headline in the August 7 New York Times: “Islamic Militants in Iraq Are Widely Loathed, Yet Action to Curb Them Is Elusive.” On the one hand, the article pointed out, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, “is on nearly every nation’s public…

An unquestionably eminent, manifestly distinguished, and conspicuously bipartisan -congressionally appointed panel has produced a report on the state of our nation’s defenses.

On Tuesday, President Obama visited the Dutch embassy in Washington to pay his respects to the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot down over Ukraine by forces armed and backed by Vladimir Putin. Obama wrote in the embassy’s condolence book, “We will not rest until we are certain that…

The House Republican leadership is having trouble getting 218 votes for its immigration bill. The policy objections to the bill seem convincing to me—among them that it seems to appropriate more money, on a pro-rated monthly basis, than the president's proposal; that it might well make it harder,…

Our friends at the admirable Italian newspaper, il Foglio, have announced a rally in front of their headquarters in Rome Wednesday night. The rally has two goals: First, to support the right of Israel to defend itself -- something that will be a useful challenge and rebuke to the anti-Israel…

This fall, voters will get another chance to register their opinion on Obamacare. President Obama’s signature legislation is causing health costs to spike, federal spending to soar, doctors to leave their profession, millions of Americans to lose their health plans, and millions more to be coerced…

A leading drug policy researcher, David Murray, has a must-read piece up at the Hudson Institute website, "Comparing Marijuana and Alcohol: Seriously." Murray's article is a devastating deconstruction of claims that marijuana is relatively safe, or at least safer than alcohol. And, as he points…

Writing in Haaretz (Israel's New York Times, but further left), Barak Ravid, unquestionably a man of the left, turns on John Kerry. Read the whole thing, but here are highlights:

We've been seeing short clips from President Reagan's address to the nation a few days after Korean Air Lines fight 007 was shot down by the Soviet Union. But it's worth reading the whole text to remember what an eloquent, serious, tough, and thoughtful American president says--and does--in such a…

Douglas Murray has a terrific post at the London Spectator's website, a reply to Hugo Rifkind's claim in his column in the magazine that Israel is "drifting away" from the West.

In a new report on a bizarre email sent to dozens of reporters over the weekend, the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove explores "The Strange Leak of the New Expose 'Clinton, Inc.'"

After U.S. goalie Tim Howard had a record-setting 16 saves in the American team’s 2-1 World Cup knockout loss to Belgium, a wag edited Chuck Hagel’s Wikipedia entry to show Tim Howard as the true U.S. secretary of defense. The meme took off on the Internet, and by Wednesday afternoon Hagel was…

Commenting on the results of the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, NBC’s Chuck Todd remarked, “This poll is a disaster for the president.” Indeed, he continued, “essentially the public is saying, ‘Your presidency is over.’ ” 

This clip explains, better than countless learned articles could, the essence of Obama's foreign policy. He's got a "four-stage strategy:"

In the largest turnout in a congressional primary in the history of Virginia politics, the voters of the Commonwealth’s 7th Congressional District last Tuesday decisively chose not to renominate their seven-term representative, now serving as House majority leader, who had massively outspent his…

It’s widely agreed that the collapse of Iraq would be a disaster for American interests and security in the Middle East and around the world. It also seems to be widely assumed either that there's nothing we can now do to avert that disaster, or that our best bet is supporting Iran against al…

It’s widely agreed that the collapse of Iraq would be a disaster for American interests and security in the Middle East and around the world. It also seems to be widely assumed either that there's nothing we can now do to avert that disaster, or that our best bet is supporting Iran against al…

“Regardless of the circumstances, whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity. Period. Full stop. We don’t condition that. That’s what every mom and dad who sees a son or daughter sent over into [a] war theater should expect not…

In the New York Times, Jonathan Martin calls David Brat's defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary "one of the most stunning primary election upsets in congressional history."

Around 7:00 p.m. this evening, as the polls closed in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, and as a populist, anti-Big Government and anti-Big Business challenger was about to record an amazing upset of the House majority leader in the GOP primary, an email arrived in TWS inboxes.  It was from…

If the mainstream media have their way—and to the degree they can prevent the continued groundswell of outrage about the Bergdahl/Taliban deal from interrupting the party—this week will be all Hillary, all the time. But will the party be good for Hillary? Or will we end up with a Hillary hangover?

President Obama’s announcement that U.S. forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 should have been no surprise. As the Washington Post editorial page pointed out, “You can’t fault President Obama for inconsistency. After winning election in 2008, he reduced the U.S. military…

I'm sorry to report that Joe Shattan—talented writer, dedicated anti-Communist, and above all a truly fine and decent man—has died after a courageous struggle with cancer at the age of 63.

The two most impressive victories in GOP Senate primaries last night were by Joni Ernst, who swept to a huge win in Iowa, and Jeff Bell, who came from behind to win a close four-way contest in New Jersey. Both are pro-Main Street populist reform conservatives who will pose a real threat to their…

In the March 10 WEEKLY STANDARD, we wrote ("Get Off the Sidelines," TWS March 10, 2014):  

If you’ve been around for a while, you know what it feels like to be in the middle of a congressional “wave” election, when the electorate is turning sharply against the party in the White House. If the wave is with you—think 1994 or 2010—you can feel the energy and sense the anticipation. If the…

Two emails recently showed up, one right after the other, in my inbox. The first was a mass mailing from Ron Paul (my inbox is a big tent!). Its subject line: “The IRS asked for a fight. How about a revolution?” The second was a review by Peter Berkowitz of the recently reissued book by Roger…

"Nigerian girls inspire international action,” reads the headline on the front page of the May 7 Washington Post. But nowhere in the story will you learn of any action actually being taken to rescue the 276 Nigerian girls abducted over three weeks ago by the Islamic terror group Boko Haram. You…

It's mature to be calm. Republicans are nothing if not mature. It’s chic to be cool. Republicans yearn to be chic. It’s a sign of gravitas to be collected. Republicans have gravitas. And so Republicans, from candidates to consultants to commentators, cultivate a calm, cool, and collected affect.…

From Brandeis on the Atlantic to Azusa on the Pacific, an iron curtain has descended across academia. Behind that line lie all the classrooms of the ancient schools of America. Wesleyan, Brown, Princeton, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Berkeley, Bowdoin, and Stanford, all these famous colleges and the…

I'm sorry to report the death of Werner Dannhauser last Saturday in Frederick, Pennsylvania, at the age 84. Werner, whom we had the honor of publishing a few times, was a man of uncommon wisdom, wit, and humanity.

Polls are overrated, but they can be still instructive. So what’s to be learned from a Fox News survey of 1,012 registered voters conducted April 13-15? 

The Arkansas Senate race has been close in virtually every serious poll. The Republican challenger, Tom Cotton, probably had a small lead a month or so ago; after a massive negative assault on him by Harry Reid's Super PAC, the Democratic incumbent, Mark Pryor, is probably now ahead by a point or…

The crowing by the Obama administration over getting 7 million people to sign up for mandatory health insurance—with some portion actually paying for it—will soon fade. The big picture will remain clear: Obamacare isn’t working. And Americans, who didn’t like Obamacare when the Democrats passed it…

The Obama administration has scheduled a deputies committee meeting this week—tentatively set for Tuesday—to resolve a bitter inter-agency dispute over a request from Russia with respect to the Open Skies program. Informed sources believe the White House is likely to side with the State Department,…

The distinguished intellectual historian Jeffrey Herf, whose Ph.D. is from Brandeis, has written an eloquent and powerful letter to Brandeis president Fred Lawrence. Prof. Herf concludes:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has just released this statement in response to Brandeis University's decision to rescind her invitation to receive an honorary degree:

As Lori Lowenthal Marcus notes, Brandeis University has in recent years bestowed an honorary degree on Tony Kushner, who called the creation of Israel as a Jewish state “a mistake” and who attacked Israel for ethnic cleansing and for causing “terrible peril in the world.” Brandeis has also…

President Obama said yesterday:

On February 22, popular protests led to the fall of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev. On February 27, in response to this setback, President Vladimir Putin sent forces into Crimea to seize it from Ukraine. On March 19, President Barack Obama delivered his response. He…

Aboard the Wind Surf, at port in Charlestown, Nevis

Under sail aboard the Wind Surf, somewhere in the Caribbean

Are Americans today war-weary? Sure. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been frustrating and tiring. Are Americans today unusually war-weary? No. They were wearier after the much larger and even more frustrating conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. And even though the two world wars of the last century…

“No one can or should sit on the sidelines.” —Hillary Clinton, at the University of Miami, February 26, 2014 Hillary Clinton is right. Well, partly right. Her characteristic disregard for personal freedom and her instinctive love of the nanny state lead her to say that no one can sit on the…

Kiev is ablaze. Syria is a killing field. The Iranian mullahs aren’t giving up their nuclear weapons capability, and other regimes in the Middle East are preparing to acquire their own. Al Qaeda is making gains and is probably stronger than ever. China and Russia throw their weight around, while…

Saturday afternoon the White House press office released a "Readout of President Obama's Call with President Putin." Here it is, with interpretative commentary:

Here's President Obama on Friday: "The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine."Characteristically, Obama establishes a few degrees of separation between himself and actually acting. He doesn't say,…

It's been almost a year since THE WEEKLY STANDARD quoted Philip Larkin’s great 1969 poem, “Homage to a Government." Yesterday the Obama administration released its 2015 defense budget, shrinking the Army to its lowest size since 1940 and reducing base defense spending to less than 3 percent of GDP.…

On February 11, writing for the Washington Post, Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers ably summarized the latest “bad week for Obamacare.” The Congressional Budget Office concluded that Obamacare will cause “a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to…

I understand House Speaker John Boehner has just announced to his conference that he intends to bring the floor of the House a clean debt limit increase. Conservative members of the conference had argued for this course. Conservatives will vote against "Obama's debt increase," but expect it to pass…

New York Democratic senator Chuck Schumer, an author of the Senate immigration bill, may have succeeded in helping Republicans kill his own bill.

Obamacare is failing. Faced with this unpleasant reality, President Obama offered up during his State of the Union address his only remaining defense of his eponymous program: There is no alternative. “[M]y Republican friends…if you have specific plans…tell America what you’d do differently….We all…

President Obama couldn’t resist confiding to a recent interviewer, “I am comfortable with complexity.” In fact, he is comfortable with a kind of pseudo-complexity that lends itself to pseudo-thoughtful formulations.

Election Day is almost nine months off. But right now Republicans seem almost certain to hold the House of Representatives and are likely to take the Senate. Which raises the inevitable question: How might the GOP seize defeat from the jaws of victory?

National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Greg Walden told reporters at the House Republican retreat that immigration votes are "probably months out" and will be after the congressional primaries are mostly over.

The Wall Street Journal reports that some House Republican leaders:

2017 Project executive director (and frequent TWS contributor) Jeff Anderson has an important memo outlining the new health care reform proposal from three senior Republican senators that would repeal Obamacare and replace it with legislation that "beats Obamacare in every particular" and would…

This week’s Time magazine splashes the question on its cover: “Can Anyone Stop Hillary?” The Weekly Standard is happy to provide our friends at Time with an answer to their query: Yes. Hillary Clinton can be stopped. How? Let us count the ways.

On the one hand, Barack Obama, speaking as a dad, says he "would not let my son play pro football." It's a reasonable judgment, one other parents have made and one they're entitled to make (though enforcing it on recalcitrant sons is another matter!).

Lest the American people be put off by the chortling, boasting, and provoking of the Obama administration's Iranian negotiating partner, the administration has tried to deflect domestic political pressure by putting out a statement "condemning" the wreath-laying by the Iranian foreign minister at…

The year 2014 marks a centennial and a bicentennial. The centennial is well known: 1914 saw the beginning of World War I, a calamity perhaps unmatched until then in the history of the West. We will be reminded many times this year in centennial commemorations of the war’s terrible destruction, but…

Ariel Sharon—a man whose deeds as soldier, general, cabinet minister, and prime minister were decisive in the history of modern Israel, a soldier-statesman of true historical significance, a larger-than-life figure whose like we're unlikely to see again—dies, and Barack Obama issues a statement…

If you have a taste for Schadenfreude (and who doesn’t, especially in this holiday season?), you’ll enjoy Anemona Hartocollis’s article in the New York Times of December 14. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Seduced and then disappointed by a hipster who turned out just to be another solipsistic boomer, now chastened yet still hopeful for change (if no longer swept away by the promise of Hope and Change), young Americans are ready to ditch Barack Obama. Things had been getting rocky for a while, but…

Let me add a word to my comments from Tuesday night supporting the budget deal.

The budget deal announced today is a good deal for conservatives and Republicans.

The interim agreement that the United States and its partners cut with Iran last week stands as a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. The Obama administration has walked away from a core objective of U.S. policy for two decades—preventing a nuclear Iran—thereby threatening…

As we go to press, the Obama administration seems to be hurtling towards a bad deal with Iran. The administration will claim the agreement freezes and indeed sets back the Iranian nuclear program. But even the New York Times acknowledges that “only some elements are frozen, and rollbacks in the…

In light of the Geneva Agreement, I went back to read Winston Churchill's October 5, 1938, speech in the House of Commons on the Munich Agreement. Here are a few highlights:

Scott Johnson calls attention to a column in the Roanoke Times by Sharon Ingerson, a registered nurse in Salem, Virginia.

One of the many fine features of Veterans Day is that it's observed on the date on which it should be observed.

Watching the Obama administration at work this week, a friend offered this judgment: Under Obama, Iran keeps its nuclear program and Americans lose their health insurance.

This year, Virginia Republicans were divided and had an easily caricatured candidate at the top of the ticket who ran a defensive campaign and was massively outspent ... and the state still broke basically 50-50. Next year, incumbent Democratic senator Mark Warner will be on the ballot.

Could the focus on Obamacare in the last couple of weeks before Tuesday's Virginia gubernatorial election enable the Republican nominee, Ken Cuccinelli, to come from behind in the homestretch? He's run a pretty awful campaign so far, and has been trailing badly for months, but ...

Halloween has become, like so many things in modern America, nice. It's all treat and no trick, and far more amusing than terrifying. But the Obama administration is to be commended for reminding us—in an uncharacteristic moment of originalism—of the older meaning of the holiday, in which the trick…

Halloween has become, like so many things in modern America, nice. It's all treat and no trick, and far more amusing than terrifying. But the Obama administration is to be commended for reminding us—in an uncharacteristic moment of originalism—of the older meaning of the holiday, in which the trick…

The captain of the ms Noordam has announced that due to the choppy seas we won't be able to put in, as planned, at Santorini—but that rather than having another day at sea, we're boldly heading off to dock at Iraklion, Crete.

At sea aboard the ms Noordam, off the coast of Greece

On board the ms Noordam sailing from Italy to Greece, with a break from both sightseeing and panels, it seemed advisable to me 1) to ignore the goings-on in Washington, and 2) to find time for an article I'd set aside to read, Harvey Mansfield's "Machiavelli's enterprise" in the October New…

On board the ms Noordam, at port in Venice

In the midst of media coverage of the government shutdown (it’s the Republicans’ fault!) and the glitch-filled rollout of Obamacare (it’s not Obama’s fault!), Americans may not have noticed the October 1 speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United Nations General Assembly. But…

Our upcoming WEEKLY STANDARD cruise had me thinking (only a bit!) about blackjack, since the ship's casino is occasionally (rarely!) frequented after dinner by TWS editors and guests. I remember being told on a previous cruise by a real gambler that the characteristic error of occasional blackjack…

Syria has receded from the front pages. A long and winding road of failed diplomacy lies ahead, and who wants to bother covering that? Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad is more firmly in power than before, al Qaeda is stronger among the Syrian rebels, the United States has lost credibility, and Iran and…

As House Republicans come under unfair and even vicious assault over the next hours and days, how to react? Here's a recommendation: Having had the great good fortune of seeing Cosi fan Tutte at the Met Saturday night, with the great James Levine back in the pit and an all-star cast led by Susanna…

Maybe Barack Obama really is a Marxist. His September 10 speech to the nation on Syria seems to have been inspired by Groucho’s great number in Animal Crackers (1930):

Timed to coincide with the annual Walter Berns lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which is in turn timed to coincide with Constitution Day (September 17), there's a new website honoring Walter Berns: walterberns.org.

The statesmanlike case for voting Yes on the congressional resolution to use force against the Assad regime has been made widely and well by conservative foreign policy thinkers. At the end, the case boils down to this: As a policy matter, a Yes vote may be problematic in all kinds of ways. But a…

Near the end of his speech to the nation on Syria, President Obama quoted Franklin Roosevelt:  “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideas and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”

Is President Obama going wobbly on Syria? No. He’s always been wobbly on Syria—and on pretty much everything else.

Elliott Abrams, writing in Politico, has a devastating critique of Obama's foreign policy—and a call for Republicans to vote to authorize the use of force against the Assad regime. Here's Abrams:

One of American conservatism's leading thinkers, James Ceaser of the University of Virginia, weighs in on "To authorize or not to authorize:" 

Perhaps inspired by the Searchers’ great 1964 hit “Love Potion No. 9,” the Chinese Communist party seems to be rallying behind “Document No. 9.” As the New York Times reported last week, a memorandum with that title issued forth in April from a party office. While the wisdom of Documents Nos. 1-8…

The president has decided to ask Congress to authorize the use of force against the Assad regime. As we editorialized this week, "It may be that the president believes he ought to get congressional approval before acting against Assad. There is merit to this view. The solution is to ask Speaker…

Mugged by Middle East reality, President Obama and Secretary Kerry seem finally to have awakened to the necessity to act—unilaterally and un-apologetically. That's heartening. Still, do they understand that the American action has to be decisive? After all, as the late Mike Scully put it, liberals…

The good news is that most of the nation remains as opposed to Obamacare today as it was three years ago, when the law was enacted. Indeed, most polls show the public even more skeptical today—as the Wall Street Journal reports, “public support for the law has waned and Republican opposition has…

At 5:09 pm on August 21, Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted this:

Winston Churchill on the Middle East:

Sometimes politics is just “one damned thing after another.” But sometimes not. Sometimes those damned things constitute a trend and form a pattern. So it is today, with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

The good news is that most of the nation remains as opposed to Obamacare today as it was three years ago, when the law was enacted. Indeed, most polls show the public even more skeptical today—as the Wall Street Journal reports, “public support for the law has waned and Republican opposition has…

An old friend, savvy in the ways of Washington, emails:

Reza Aslan's book on Jesus, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, has gotten tons of attention, and Aslan has gotten lots of sympathy, because of some of the questions he was asked on a Fox interview. We've already addressed some of the issues regarding Aslan, but now, over at the Jewish…

The Weekly Standard has paid tribute to Philip Larkin’s great 1969 poem “Homage to a Government” before. In light of the release this week of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s strategic review laying out the dramatic reductions in our fundamental defense capabilities that current budget scenarios…

In the midst of a fair amount of depressing news from Afghanistan (e.g., al-Qaeda backers get U.S. military contracts, U.S. cites “due process rights” as reason not to cancel), here's a report from the front that offers some grounds for hope.

The indispensable online magazine of Jewish life and thought, Mosaic, is featuring a spectacular contribution by our friend, the French journalist and president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, Michel Gurfinkiel. Gurfinkiel offers a sweeping, compelling, and, yes, depressing assessment of…

On April 17, 2013, Senator Max Baucus committed a classic Washington gaffe: He spoke the truth. Baucus, along with every other Democratic senator, had voted for Obamacare in 2010. Now, at a Senate hearing, he told HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius that when he looks at its implementation, “I just see…

Ten days ago, as John McCormack noted, in the midst of a speech about the economy President Obama mentioned some other issues:

At Frontpage, Peter Collier has an excellent brief account of the life of Medal of Honor recipient Colonel George "Bud" Day, who died over the weekend at the age 88. I had the honor of meeting him a few times, and was struck by his modesty and affability. But many men are modest and affable. How…

House Republicans don’t get no respect. Has there been in recent times a more derided, mocked, and pitied bunch? Establishment types think the backbenchers are Neanderthals, grassroots activists denounce the leadership as a bunch of squishes, and the media can’t find enough bad things to say about…

For Anglophiles and royalists inclined to celebrate the birth of the youngest pretender (was the removal of James II really justifiable on monarchical principles?) to the British throne, here's a link to a performance of Handel's fantastic coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, with its stirring…

House Republicans don’t get no respect. Has there been in recent times a more derided, mocked, and pitied bunch? Establishment types think the backbenchers are Neanderthals, grassroots activists denounce the leadership as a bunch of squishes, and the media can’t find enough bad things to say about…

The Obama administration has worked diligently to shrink, underfund, and demoralize the military. Now, Politico reports, two Republican senators, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, are joining an effort led by New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand that goes beyond where even the Obama administration is willing…

James Capretta is testifying today before the House Ways and Means Committee on the Obama administration's announcement of a delay in Obamacare's employer mandate. Capretta's testimony is an excellent and judicious summary of the implications of the Obama administration's decision, along with a…

We are conservatives who have differed in the past on immigration reform, with Kristol favorably disposed toward it and Lowry skeptical. But the Gang of Eight has brought us into full agreement: Their bill, passed out of the Senate, is a comprehensive mistake. House Republicans should kill it…

"For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

"Because of the way in which baseball links the generations it has been a channel through which vital traits of American character are instilled. The health of baseball concerns all of America, and the health of ­America — perhaps especially the American family — finds itself reflected in the state…

Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson reminds us of perhaps the greatest speech about July 4th—Lincoln's remarks on July 10, 1858, in response to Stephen Douglass. Here's the key passage:

On this 4th of July, I presume that TWS readers are soberly re-reading their Jefferson and carefully studying their Lincoln. But this shouldn't be a day of too much solemnity. So here's a stirring cinematic moment to revisit, from the 1996 hit Independence Day, and enjoy:

House Republicans need to focus on turning the administration's retreat on Obamacare into a rout. In light of the administration's announced delay of the employer mandate, they could move immediately to delay the individual mandate as well, and/or the legislation as a whole.

The Obama administration has announced that it's delaying Obamacare's employer mandate—but not the individual mandate. The Obama administration's solicitude for big business apparently doesn't extend to workers and families and individuals.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress declared independence. George Washington declared that day that “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves....The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct…

Kenneth Minogue, longtime professor of politics at the London School of Economics, died Friday, age 83. He was a leading conservative political thinker of our time—no, he was a leading political thinker, period, of our time, whose classic, The Liberal Mind, written a half century ago, remains must…

On June 19, President Barack Obama delivered a lengthy speech in Berlin, in front of the Brandenburg Gate. The shades of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan surely wept.

Yesterday, millions of Americans received an important email (subject line: "This is important") from no less a personage than the vice president of the United States. Here it is:

Sean Trende asks, in a thoughtful and data-heavy piece, whether the GOP has to pass immigration reform to be competitive in the future at the presidential level. The answer is no.

Politics can seem frustratingly complex. It can be a challenge to grasp that the targeting of conservatives by Internal Revenue Service officials over the last few years constitutes a genuine scandal, while the lawful activities of employees of the National Security Agency do not. It can be a…

Today, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, President Obama paid appropriate tribute to the brave East Germans who rebelled 60 years ago against Communist dictatorship:

In Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, the captive English maid, Blonde, scornfully rejects the advances of the powerful Osmin, overseer of Pasha Selim’s harem: “Pasha here, pasha there! Girls are not good to give away! I am an Englishwoman, born free, and I defy anyone who wants to force me to…

We'’ll take the liberty of updating, for the summer of 2013, the famous lines from Auden’s “September 1, 1939”:

I was browsing this afternoon through Rachel Abrams's TWS blog posts from 2009-2011. They're all well worth reading, but these three seemed to me to particularly capture some of Rachel's spark and zest. Here are snippets: read the whole things.

Our dear friend Rachel Abrams died this morning, after a valiant three-year battle against cancer. She was an American patriot, a fighter for Israel, and a joyful and gifted controversialist. She was also the loving bulwark of her wonderful family and a loyal and sparkling friend. We offer our…

The website Jewish Ideas Daily has been, for quite some while, a star of the web, featuring interesting original material as well as links to other worthwhile writing embodying a lively, serious, and committed approach to Jewish issues and ideas. Today, Jewish Ideas Daily has re-launched as Mosaic.…

Harry Truman famously kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office, “The Buck Stops Here.” Sixty years later, President Obama hangs a sign on the door to the Oval Office, “Do Not Disturb.” In 1978, about halfway between the two liberal presidents, Harvey Mansfield, as we’ve noted before, diagnosed…

A longtime friend and savvy D.C. veteran emails with these worthwhile thoughts:

On this Memorial Day, as on others, every American will turn to his own thoughts and prayers, and recall his own favorite speeches, music, and poetry. Memorial Day has no one dominant "text." But for those who aren't familiar with it, I recommend Theodore O'Hara's poem, "Bivouac of the Dead,"…

Everyone in Washington, except those in the crosshairs, likes a good scandal, and THE WEEKLY STANDARD is no exception. What’s more, in the case of the Obama administration, comeuppance is well deserved and overdue. So while it may be a dubious pleasure to enjoy watching the high brought low and the…

Following in the footsteps of other TWS contributors who've run for Congress (e.g., Jim Webb in 2006 and Tom Cotton in 2012), Quin Hillyer has thrown his hat in the ring for the GOP nomination in the First Congressional District of Alabama, where incumbent Jo Bonner announced yesterday he'll be…

The thoughtful Carl Cannon has written a piece, "Richard Milhous Obama," concluding that our current president has more in common with our 37th than President Obama's partisans would like to acknowledge. The estimable Victor Davis Hanson has weighed in, defending against liberal dissents the…

There was one moment in President Obama’s world-weary press conference last Tuesday when he seemed genuinely interested and engaged. At the very end, when Obama had already begun to depart the podium, a reporter shouted a question about the previously obscure but now famously gay NBA center, Jason…

Last December, Hillary Clinton's State Department famously threw four career officials under the bus for Benghazi (while of course exculpating all senior and political appointees). One of them was Raymond Maxwell, the deputy assistant secretary for Maghreb Affairs in the Near East Bureau. But…

Yuval Levin has an excellent piece at NRO, "Reforming Immigration Reform," on how the Gang of Eight's immigration bill could be improved. Levin notes "that, compared with some other conservative critics (including some of NR's editors), my starting point on this subject is significantly friendlier…

The Obama administration’s Syria policy is bad enough, and this State Department press release from this morning is just pathetic:

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. How many times in the last century have these concluding lines of C. P. Cavafy’s famous 1898 poem, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” been quoted? How many modern intellectuals have pondered the…

A lawyer writes in:

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?They were, those people, a kind of solution. How many times in the last century have these concluding lines of C. P. Cavafy’s famous 1898 poem, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” been quoted? How many modern intellectuals have pondered the…

And now the last of them is gone. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II—three who won the Cold War and, it isn't too much to say, saved the West (at least for a while!)—are no longer with us. Their examples remain.

Thanks to our friends at Powerline for featuring Clark Griffith's recent perceptive meditation on "Baseball's Timeless Appeal." In their spirit, I'll also recommend to one and all the exchange in the Fall 1990 Public Interest between Donald Kagan ("George Will's baseball—a conservative critique")…

"The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered,” Kentucky senator Rand Paul said Thursday to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “I don’t think we need to name any names here, do we?” he added coyly.

As the men of Harvard exit the NCAA tournament at the hands of the Arizona Wildcats, you'll surely want to wish them a fond and hearty farewell. So sing along with the final verse of "Fair Harvard," written by Reverend Samuel Gilman for the university's 200th anniversary in 1836.

On March 21, 2013, history was made. Ivy League champion and 14th seed Harvard men's basketball team busted brackets everywhere as it upset 3rd seed New Mexico, winning its first NCAA playoff game ever and notching its first victory over a top-ten team. Read all about it here and here. 

Robert Samuelson's fine column in the Washington Post, “America the retirement home,” argues that “The budget debate’s central reality is that federal retirement programs, led by Social Security and Medicare, are crowding out most other government spending,” and that this is endangering the other…

What to make of Rand Paul’s 12 hours and 52 minutes of fame? Was his filibuster on the floor of the Senate last Wednesday, as Charles Krauthammer said on Fox’s Special Report, though substantively misguided, “a stroke of political genius”? Was it, as Seth Lipsky suggested in a column in the New…

Leo Strauss wrote of the “all men are created equal” sentence in the Declaration of Independence, “The passage has frequently been quoted, but, by its weight and its elevation, it is made immune to the degrading effects of the excessive familiarity which breeds contempt and of misuse which breeds…

In the states, Republicans are governing successfully. At the think tanks, conservatives are arguing intelligently. Around the country, activists are organizing energetically. All well and good. And important. But not enough.

It’s understandable that Republicans are tempted by the prospect of allowing the “sequester”—the automatic cut to defense and domestic discretionary spending agreed to as an enforcement mechanism for the 2011 debt ceiling deal—to go into effect on March 1. It’s understandable because Republicans…

A Boston-area friend with a good track record writes in about the Massachusetts Senate race to fill the remainder of John Kerry's term. A highlight of my friend's track record? In late 2009, before a single poll had shown Scott Brown to be within 30 points of Martha Coakley, he sent an email…

There weren't many memorable lines in President Obama's State of the Union speech. Indeed, only one leapt out at me: "As long as I’m commander in chief, we will do whatever we must to protect those who serve their country abroad." 

Fox News reported yesterday that Chuck Hagel, who has been nominated as the next secretary of defense, failed to “disclose at least two recent speeches on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict” in paperwork filed with the Senate.

In a premature celebration of Chuck Hagel's nomination being voted out of committee, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon last night. At 1:48 a.m., the White House put out a "Statement by the President" denouncing the test. One understands such statements are staff-written. But presumably President…

The newly discovered 2008 video of Chuck Hagel has drawn attention, as it should, for his comments dismissing the U.S. even “thinking” about acting militarily against Iran, and for his seeming to be more concerned about Israel's nuclear weapons than Iran's.

What you see below is a copy of a May 26, 2005 letter from Senators Christopher Dodd and Joe Biden encouraging a no vote on cloture for the nomination of John Bolton. Senate Democrats (including Senators Obama, Biden, Clinton, and Kerry) twice voted en bloc against cloture on the Bolton nomination,…

The White House left Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith on their own on September 11 in Benghazi. That is the upshot of today’s Capitol Hill hearing featuring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey.

The woman who still could be the next defense secretary, Michele Flournoy, has an intelligent op-ed, well worth reading, in today’s Wall Street Journal, on "The Right Way to Cut Pentagon Spending." If we're to have a defense secretary who acquiesces in cutting defense (and we will while Barack…

President Obama has gone on the offensive at the beginning of his second term, and Republicans aren’t happy campers. Of course, every Republican camp is unhappy in its own way.

On October 3, 2005, President George W. Bush announced his intention to nominate his White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. On October 27, after vigorous statements of opposition from conservatives and quiet expressions of…

In March 1975, with the United States in post-Watergate disarray at home, stunned by repeated diplomatic defeats at the United Nations, and about to suffer the humiliation of seeing an ally at whose side we had fought for many years be overrun by the North Vietnamese Communist Army, Daniel Patrick…

The case for women in combat units has been, on the whole, a case made from ideology ("Equality requires it!") and from authority ("The Joint Chiefs signed off on it!"). Ideologues and authoritarians tend not to welcome debate on whatever issue it is they're applying their ideology to or invoking…

President Obama has released a statement supporting Secretary of Defense Panetta's decision on women in combat units! "Today, by moving to open more military positions—including ground combat units—to women, our armed forces have taken another historic step toward harnessing the talents and skills…

In an otherwise unmemorable second inaugural speech, I was struck by one sentence: "But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well."

On the day he was nominated as secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel gave an interview to the Lincoln Journal Star. His critics had “completely distorted” his record, he complained. Rather, Hagel claimed, his record shows “unequivocal, total support for Israel.”

I predicted on Fox News Sunday on December 30 that the Metropolitan Opera's production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda would be the entertainment event of the year. We had the good fortune to be invited by friends to see it at the Met last night, and it was spectacular. Bel canto doesn't get any…

In a private meeting Monday—not just any old private meeting, but a 90 minutes long private meeting!—New York senator Chuck Schumer was reassured by secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel that he didn't mean the many things he's said over the years and didn't stand by the many votes he's cast…

At the Mass of Christian Burial conducted for Robert Bork on December 21, the program for guests included two quotations from Thomas More, traditional patron saint of lawyers. They were presumably favorites of Bob Bork’s, or perhaps the family felt they exemplified the principles of his public…

As an ignorant but unabashed admirer of Xenophon, I was struck by this email from a reader, and thought other readers would enjoy it as well:

The pro-Chuck Hagel forces, having failed to pick up momentum from the president's announcement today, seem to be getting desperate. Why else would the following bombshell magically appear on BuzzFeed's website?

Here's an exchange from MSNBC this morning between Steve Clemons, a close friend and ardent supporter of Chuck Hagel, and Dan Senor:

In a post yesterday waxing enthusiastic about Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, Michael Moore called attention to a statement of Hagel that I don't believe had been previously much noted. Here it is, from September 2007:

In the three weeks since Chuck Hagel’s name emerged as President Barack Obama’s likely choice as the next secretary of defense, there's been a lively, if lopsided, debate about his qualifications for the job. The debate’s been lopsided because the arguments for Hagel have been so startlingly…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

I suggested earlier today that enough House Republicans should support the Senate fiscal cliff bill to see that it passes. But here's an email from a reader whom I know and respect:

The fiscal cliff deal that the Senate passed early this morning is ridiculous in too many ways to count. There seem to be no figures from the Congressional Budget Office and only "very preliminary" figures from the Joint Tax Committee about the real spending and revenue implications. The two month…

I'm as thrilled as every other red-blooded Washington-area resident by the Redskins' victory yesterday. Yes, I did "predict" a Cowboys victory on Fox News Sunday. But that was, as I said on the show, a prediction contrary to my hopes, and of course was really made in order to avert the evil eye…

"There were giants in the earth in those days.” The death on December 19 of Robert Bork—superb legal scholar, preeminent constitutional thinker, principled public servant—calls to mind the other giants of American conservatism who have left us in the last decade: Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol,…

In an odd column in Wednesday's New York Times, Tom Friedman praises Chuck Hagel. Friedman doesn't actually praise anything Hagel has ever said or done. He never quotes Hagel nor cites any of Hagel's votes. Indeed, Friedman acknowledges Hagel is "out of the mainstream" on national security issues…

Robert H. Bork, a superb legal scholar, principled public servant, fine judge, and important social critic—withal, a great American—died early this morning from heart complications. He was 84.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a fact sheet circulating widely on Capitol Hill. It details the record on a number of issues of former GOP senator Chuck Hagel, a leading candidate to be nominated by President Obama as the next secretary of defense:

The Wall Street Journal editors are unhappy about the present correlation of political forces. Who isn't? They're also, I gather, unhappy about "Beltway sages" who, facing the fact that the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year, have suggested Republicans accept a modest increase in tax…

There are some facts so obvious that only a liberal could deny them. One of them is that, from Benghazi to Be’er Sheva, the West is under attack.

The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and…

I happened to read Michael Connelly's first mystery, The Black Echo, when it was published twenty years ago. I've been a fan every since. His books are now bestsellers, but it's always a nice feeling to have discovered someone (or something) before everyone else did—even if one deserves no…

There are some facts so obvious that only a liberal could deny them. One of them is that, from Benghazi to Be’er Sheva, the West is under attack.

After his defeat in Britain’s 1945 general election, Winston Churchill’s wife Clementine consoled him: “It may well be a blessing in disguise.” Churchill replied, “At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.”

I received an email yesterday from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, Ill.) that he's given me permission to post, as I thought it would be of interest to our readers. Here it is:

President Obama heads abroad Saturday for a four-day visit to Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia. One assumes the president was going to add on to this trip a visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which would certainly be the fitting and proper thing to do. Wouldn't it also be fitting and proper, and an…

In today's New York Times, Ross Douthat begins the debate, and, in my judgment, very much points in the right direction.

Two thoughts for those TWS readers who—for some reason!—may be a bit down in the dumps, and especially for those who may have spent considerable time and effort trying to secure a better outcome on Election Day 2012.

James Ceaser's article in last week's WEEKLY STANDARD, "The Day After," is very much worth re-reading … the day after. Here's the most relevant part:

I gather the first wave of the exit poll has the right track/wrong track at around 46/52. The current Real Clear Politics polling average for right track/wrong track is about 41/54, with no poll having the right track above 43. Maybe all the other polls are wrong. Or, given that Democrats are more…

Reader email of the day! (We've removed his name for the sake of his mom's privacy.)

At Harry's Bar, 5 rue Daunou, 2eme, Paris—in the deepest of deep blue precincts!—Mitt Romney is doing surprisingly well in the early vote, trailing Barack Obama by only about 10 percentage points. Sophisticated statistical analyses of early voting trends suggest this may well mean diminished Obama…

What did or didn't the president do on the evening of September 11?

Six months ago, in an editorial titled “President Romney,” I speculated that Mitt Romney​—​then behind in the polls​—​could prevail this fall: “If Romney can speak to Americans’ sense that it’s a big moment, with big challenges, and if he can make this a big election rather than a petty one, then…

David Axelrod was asked this morning on Fox News Sunday about the decision not to deploy military forces to Benghazi the evening of September 11. His response: “The president convened the top military officials that evening and told them to do whatever was necessary and they took the steps that…

Last night, on Special Report, I urged Mitt Romney to step up and address President Obama's failure to explain what decisions he made and didn't make on the evening of September 11, as Americans fought terrorists in Benghazi. This afternoon it seems that Romney, not having mentioned Benghazi in his…

There's an interesting article on Benghazi in the Wall Street Journal, with some useful information, and lots of finger pointing and back-and-forth between the State Department and the CIA, and between Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus. Guess who's nowhere mentioned in the piece: The person who's…

Obama administration officials are feeling the pressure to answer some basic questions about their responsibility for what happened September 11 in Benghazi. As has become very clear, the administration doesn't want to answer the questions, such as what the president did and didn't do that evening;…

Seven weeks later, the White House still hasn't explained what President Obama did and didn't do during the seven hours of the attack on Benghazi on September 11. And there's been no response from the White House to questions asked by senators or THE WEEKLY STANDARD or David Ignatius in the…

On September 2, 1939, the day after Hitler invaded Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made clear in the House of Commons that he still entertained hopes for negotiations with the Führer: “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces then His Majesty’s Government would be…

What was President Obama doing Tuesday evening, September 11, while Americans were under assault in Benghazi? Which of his national security team did he meet with, whom did he speak with, what directives did he issue? So far, the White House won't say. 

Friday, in response to questions regarding the events of September 11 in Benghazi, President Obama said this: "Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do. But we want to make sure we get it right, particularly because I have made a commitment to the families impacted as well as to the…

On September 11, 2012, Rasmussen Reports had President Obama's job approval at 52 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove. Today, October 27, the numbers have reversed—47 percent approve, 52 percent disapprove. The economic news over these past six weeks has been on the whole a bit better than…

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ” 

When asked Thursday whether U.S. forces should have been dispatched to assist American servicemen under attack from terrorists in Benghazi on September 11, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta responded, “There’s a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking going on here,” adding that “the basic principle…

Mitt Romney is more than holding his own with Barack Obama tonight. Only two other challengers have done as well debating foreign policy with an incumbent president—Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and, to a lesser degree, Bill Clinton against George H.W. Bush in 1992. Reagan and Clinton…

In the first presidential debate of 2012, we saw, up close and personal, what Harvey Mansfield called in last week’s issue the ennui of Barack Obama. Obama’s ennui is related to his dislike for the real challenges of governing. More fundamentally, his ennui reflects his declinism. What’s exciting…

On September 2, 1939, the day after Hitler invaded Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made clear in the House of Commons that he still entertained hopes for negotiations with Hitler: “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces then His Majesty’s Government would be…

When The Decline and Fall of the American Republic is written centuries hence, the date October 17, 2012, will occupy a prominent place in the narrative. On this day, a playoff game between the Yankees and the Tigers in Detroit was called not because of rain, but because of ... the threat of rain.…

On October 2, the day before the first debate, Mitt Romney trailed Barack Obama in the Real Clear Politics poll average by 3.3 percentage points. Today, just before the second debate, Romney led by 0.4 points—almost a 4-point swing in two weeks. What now?

Almost 25 minutes into last Wednesday night’s presidential debate, it was already clear Mitt Romney was doing better than expected, and that Barack Obama was a bit flat. But it wasn’t yet obvious at the end of the debate’s first segment that the debate would produce a decisive winner.

Watching last night's debate, I'm more struck than ever that Obama may be able to fight the economic policy issues to a draw. Romney-Ryan still haven't answered the blame-Bush narrative, and that combined with scaring people about Romney-Ryan on taxes and entitlements have probably pulled…

Joe Biden was aggressive, condescending, and shamelessly demagogic. Paul Ryan was earnest, youthful, and perhaps a bit over-scripted. The upshot was a vice presidential debate that was occasionally entertaining for partisans on both sides, but was mostly unenlightening. Ultimately, I suspect, it…

I've been wary of comparisons of this year's presidential race with that of 1980. I'd love it if the comparison holds, but have been worried 1) that the conditions aren't the same as in 1980 in all kinds of ways, and 2) that over-confidence the race will inevitably break to Romney at the end, as…

In a new television ad, the Obama campaign mocks Mitt Romney’s promise to end the federal subsidy to PBS:

A friend notes Jimmy Carter's diary entry from the day after the 1980 Reagan debate—the last time a Democratic president lost a debate to a Republican challenger:

Perhaps because Mitt Romney is a Winston Churchill fan and Barack Obama is not, I thought this morning of Churchill's "end of the beginning" remarks, delivered almost 70 years ago, at Mansion House in London, on November 10, 1942.

President Obama was right in his closing statement: “This was a terrific debate.” So it was. For Mitt Romney.

Almost a year ago, James Ceaser of the University of Virginia wrote this in THE WEEKLY STANDARD ("The Gift of Gab, October 31, 2011):

It was said the first forty minutes or so of the first debate would be key. If so, Mitt Romney has passed a key test. After a slightly rocky start, Romney has taken charge, is in command, and is on course to win this debate—and perhaps to create an inflection point in this race. Romney seems the…

In late March 2011, the United States intervened in Libya to save Benghazi. A year and a half later, we've withdrawn:

What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent. And those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are…

Adam White emails in response to this post: 

A savvy friend writes:

President Obama's address at the United Nations was at times eloquently aspirational, and for the most part conventionally unobjectionable. But there was one sentence that gave away the fundamental lack of seriousness of the Obama worldview: "We have begun a transition in Afghanistan, and America…

David Winston's newly released poll, based on a survey taken September 12-14, nicely illustrates the challenges facing—and the opportunities available to—the Romney campaign. The poll (with a reasonable D+2 sample) shows a close race, with Obama up 48-46 percent. But it's worth looking at answers…

The new Politico/GWU/Battleground poll seems to me, from a quick perusal of its internals, to have produced solid and non-quirky results consistent with several other surveys. It has a D+3 sample, and shows an Obama margin of 3 on the presidential ballot test and a 1 point Democratic edge on the…

Early Friday morning, September 14, a movie-loving and Romney-supporting friend emailed: “I’m starting to panic. Tell me not to.”

Politico reports that “the Obama administration is airing ads on Pakistani television condemning the anti-Islamic film ‘The Innocence of Muslims,’ a State Department spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.” (Watch the State Department ad here.) But why just the ridiculous video? Perhaps the Obama…

A perceptive e-mail from a friend from the world of finance:

So we have in 2012 two presidential candidates who—when they thought they were speaking privately to their fellow 1 percenters—have shown contempt for fellow Americans.

“So here we stand. Americans have a choice. A decision.”

Bill Galston, one of the most intelligent center-left observers of contemporary American policies, is surprised:

Paul Bremer emails with this observation:

I'm not sure what the correct response would have been from the New York Times to the State Department's request Wednesday not to post online a graphic AFP photograph of the fatally wounded U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.There are reasonable arguments both ways, I suppose, and the Times's…

One can question the timing and tone of Mitt Romney’s statement last night. One can note he wasn't as fluent and clear as he might have been at his press conference this morning. Still, the fact remains that the events of September 11, 2012, represent a big moment for the country. Romney is right…

Buried in the middle of an interesting Politico article on GOP alarm over the Romney campaign's neglect of foreign policy and its "ham-handed response" to criticism on that score is this:

We’re at war. More than 68,000 troops are deployed to Afghanistan. More than 2,000 Americans have died in over 10 years of fighting. The war has quiet bipartisan support. Too quiet.

Todd Akin, a six-term congressman and Senate nominee from Missouri, said something stupid and offensive a couple weeks ago. Akin apologized for the comment, and was nonetheless promptly rebuked by every leading Republican, including the presidential nominee. GOP leaders announced they were cutting…

Was there a GOP convention bounce? The better question may be, was there a VP/convention bounce? The VP choice and the convention have normally been back to back, often making the two in effect one event, with one bounce. This year Romney announced Ryan more than two weeks before the convention. So…

What if what everyone knows about presidential elections is wrong? 

The United States has some 68,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan. Over two thousand Americans have died in the more than ten years of that war, a war Mitt Romney has supported. Yet in his speech accepting his party's nomination to be commander in chief, Mitt Romney said not a word about the war in…

The supporting cast did its job. Ann Romney and Chris Christie on Tuesday, and Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan on Wednesday, all came through with efforts that ranged from good to excellent. They've loaded the bases. Now it's Mitt Romney at the bat. 

The first day of the Republican convention had two highlights, one at its beginning, one at its end.

Vice presidential picks don’t matter. Except when they do. If John Kerry had chosen Dick -Gephardt instead of John Edwards in 2004, and had then parked Gephardt in Ohio during the general election campaign to make the Democratic case to working-class voters, Kerry might well have won the Buckeye…

The guy's an embarrassment. Even Charlie Rangel says so:

Wait: Wasn't the choice of Paul Ryan, with its attendant focus on the Ryan budget and Medicare, supposed to be a disaster for the GOP? That was the Democratic talking point for the first few days after the Ryan pick, and I think it was the genuine and confident belief of Democratic operatives. But…

My advice, for what it's worth, to conservatives and Republicans desperate to see Todd Akin off the ballot in Missouri: You've made your point. You've bewailed and denounced and threatened. Now it's time to hearken to the words of Lincoln, in his great Temperance Address, delivered on Washington's…

Worth watching: Jeffrey Bell on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, making the (contrarian) case for the importance of social issues in this year's campaign. For more on this, take a look at his fine book, along with his recent articles in THE WEEKLY STANDARD: here, here, and here.

I suggest in this week's editorial that the newly invigorated 2012 Romney-Ryan campaign may end up resembling the upbeat, forward-looking Obama 2008 campaign more than the dour Obama 2012 campaign does. Here's another straw in the wind: This week, President Obama derided Romney-Ryan economics as…

Almost exactly twenty years ago, when I was Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff, we faced an attempt by some aides to President George H.W. Bush to dump Quayle at the last minute. President Bush refused. Doing so, he thought, would be disloyal and dishonorable.

Can the Romney campaign become a cause? Can a mere electoral effort become a broad political movement? That's what really successful campaigns do—think Reagan 1980 or Obama 2008. The last few days have suggested this possibility. And the Virginia small businessman who took a stand provides an…

Can you find the "MOST INTRIGUING SENTENCE" in today's Playbook from Politico? It's from these paragraphs:

One of the minor disgraces of this year's campaign is that the presidential candidates act as if the war in Afghanistan doesn't exist. We have 84,000 troops fighting over there in very difficult circumstances; they've had a tough few weeks, with 41 killed in the last month, but the candidates…

I’m reassured—indeed, encouraged—indeed, buoyed!—by this morning's Politico article, "GOP pros fret over Paul Ryan." "GOP pros" are the stupidest part of "the stupid party." For one thing, they're not very professional—why are they using the press to take shots at the Ryan pick in the first…

America's second-best journal of politics and ideas gets it right:

Bill Bennett suggested on his radio show this morning that the Romney-Ryan campaign (or someone else) cut an ad to make famous these remarks (delivered a year ago at the University of North Carolina) about Paul Ryan by Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles:

One of the first political events I vaguely remember (I was eight years old) is listening on the radio to John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address. When I woke up this morning, this passage was echoing in my head. It needs a bit of updating—but I think it captures the spirit of the Ryan pick:

Mike Gerson succinctly lays out part of the case for Chris Christie:

Here's an intelligent if speculative piece by Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin about what a Romney administration foreign policy team could look like. Full disclosure: Yes, I was one of those with whom Josh spoke for this article. (Unlike everyone else, apparently, I didn't insist on speaking off the…

A couple of readers have written in to respond to my mention of Paul Ryan in this post. First, a dyed-in-the-wool Romney supporter:

Almost two weeks ago, I speculated on Fox News Sunday that Mitt Romney would announce his vice presidential pick early next week, on August 6 or 7. It was, if I may say, a reasonably well-informed forecast at the time. But I didn't take into account the existence and importance of the redoubtable…

Mitt Romney's hosting a campaign event at Jeffco Fairgrounds in Golden, Colorado around lunchtime today, and a quick scan of Chick-fil-A's website shows several locations within fifteen miles or so of the Romney event. So it should be easy for Romney to stop at a Chick-fil-A for a photo-op (and a…

A savvy friend, a Romney supporter who has an excellent track record of reading election trends, emails:

Listen to the audio of the media horde screaming questions at Mitt Romney just after he had finished paying his respects at Poland's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and tell me you don't sympathize with the pithy comment by his aide, Rick Gorka.

Mitt Romney’s stop in Jerusalem will probably remain the highlight of his foreign trip, but his eloquent and powerful speech today in Warsaw deserves more notice than it will probably get. In his remarks, Romney suggests a theme for his trip as a whole and a rationale for visiting the three nations…

Does this year’s presidential campaign strike you as strikingly petty? Boringly conventional? Uncommonly stupid? Yes? Join the crowd.

Daniel Halper has called attention to Nancy Pelosi's remarkable interview with Al Hunt on the topic of Barack Obama and Israel. I'd note one comment in particular: Pelosi's claim that President Obama "has been there [Israel] over and over again."

There's been some grumbling in the pro-Israel community about Israeli ambassador Michael Oren's genuflection toward President Obama earlier today. I think the criticism is unfair.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Mitt Romney is recounting a Jim Baker anecdote in which President Reagan ordered Baker, as White House chief of staff, to hold no national security meetings over a hundred day period early in his first term so that President Reagan and his team could…

A new political science is needed for a world altogether new. But that is what we hardly dream of: placed in the middle of a rapid river, we obstinately fix our eyes on some debris that we still perceive on the bank, while the current takes us away and takes us backward toward the abyss.

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us,” we are told. So we take this occasion to praise three admirable individuals who died in the past two weeks. Each of them was extraordinary in his or her own right, but each of them also exemplified the virtues of a remarkable generation.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has been able to confirm reports that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to be in Israel on Sunday, July 29. That day coincides on the Jewish calendar with the observance of the ninth day of the month of Av—Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the…

When I suggested a couple months ago that President Obama might seriously consider replacing Joe Biden as his running mate with Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice hadn't yet thrilled Romney backers with her speech on June 23 in Park City, Utah, and Ann Romney hadn't subsequently said, "We've been…

I've gotten several inquiries about the poll numbers I cited this morning on Fox News Sunday.

Erin McPike's "close examination of the [Romney] campaign's activity" at RealClearPolitics suggests four leading contenders for Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick—former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Ohio senator Rob Portman, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, and Louisiana governor Bobby…

Remember Michael Dukakis (1988) and John Kerry (2004)? It's possible to lose a winnable presidential election to a vulnerable incumbent in the White House (or in the case of 1988, a sitting vice president). So, speaking of losing candidates from Massachusetts: Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to…

If you're in the mood for reading a bit this July 4th, there are many fine Independence Day speeches and orations to choose from. Here are three that I find particularly moving:

Last week, we wrote on this page that given the Obama administration’s lack of leadership on Iran in this “period of consequences,” Congress should step in to fill the void. As our editorial went to press, a bipartisan group of 44 senators began to do just that. In a letter organized by Senators…

Obamacare survives on June 28, 2012. It falls on November 6, 2012.

Two years ago, we wrote in these pages that we were entering with respect to Iran what Winston Churchill called in 1936 a “period of consequences,” in which “the era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close.”

First social science runs amok in New Zealand, as Harvey Mansfield explains in the current issue in his analysis of the social science classic by two N.Z. psychologists, "Why are Benevolent Sexists Happier?"

For those of us who think baseball is part of American greatness ("May the sun never set on American baseball"—Harry Truman), and who've worried about the declining status of baseball in American life (see Diana Schaub's "America at the Bat" in the Winter 2010 National Affairs), June has been a…

James Piereson has an important article in the June New Criterion on the "forthcoming political revolution" in America. Here's the heart of the argument:

A friend who's a canny political veteran writes:

Put not your trust in judges​—​nor in other berobed or bejeweled personages. To the degree you trust anyone: Trust the people.

Mark Hemingway notes that, "While all eyes were on Wisconsin last night, few people noticed that...residents of both San Diego and San Jose voted to rein in exorbitant public employee retirement packages by huge margins. ... Also worth noting is that these measures had support from key Democrats at…

Mitt Romney's statement last night was more interesting than the normal formulaic election night press releases of the genre. Here it is:

Roger Simon has an interesting and amusing piece at Politico about Bill Clinton's recent shenanigans undercutting Barack Obama. Its only problem is its premise, captured in its title: “Bill Clinton out of control on 2012.” But that's not the case. It's in fact perfectly evident that Bill Clinton is…

An encouraging email this morning, from Dan G. from Mequon, Wisconsin:

Steve Hayes reported Saturday on President Obama's refusal to get his hands dirty—or even to get Air Force One's wheels dirty—by landing on the soil of the great state of Wisconsin prior to Tuesday's recall election between Scott Walker and Tom Barrett.

From the Washington Post: "Asked Thursday whether he could envision a situation in which the United States would take military action in Syria without U.N. authorization, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said, 'No, I cannot envision that because, look, as secretary of defense, my greatest…

Have pro-Israel liberals—at least some of the intelligent ones—finally had enough of President Obama's incompetence and dithering with respect to Israel and the Middle East?

Max Boot wrote last year about a visit by a small group of us to Afghanistan in October. One of the most memorable parts of the trip was the day we spent with the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 10th Mountain Division:

From Haaretz: Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Obama and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew met about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders. ... "I not going to tell you again how I even feel about Israel, but why [are] we still talking about it," Obama said, reminding his guests that all his friends…

This morning's news summaries are full of the political jousting expected this week between the Romney and Obama campaigns. In particular, for President Obama, it’s business as usual—a Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House, meetings with advisors, travel, and so on. And the vice president,…

President Obama, an avid follower of left-wing media, is surely aware of the controversial remark by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who explained yesterday, in a discussion of Memorial Day on MSNBC, that he felt “uncomfortable” using the word “hero” for an American killed in battle: 

This issue of The Weekly Standard features advice from Yuval Levin and Jay Cost for Mitt Romney in his presidential race. A Romney victory is devoutly to be desired. But a truly grand victory requires worthy opponents. Barack Obama is one. With all due respect to our affable vice president, Joe…

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has a post in his series, "This Day in Baseball History," reminding us that it was fifty years ago yesterday, May 26, 1962, that the Detroit Tigers defeated the Yankees 2-1 at Yankee Stadium: 

Hours after Tom Cotton won the GOP nomination for the open seat in Arkansas' Fourth Congressional District, and became a strong favorite to win the general election in a district that went 58 percent to 39 percent for John McCain in 2008, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a…

In the early 1980s, Midge Decter famously explained to an acquaintance surprised by her unapologetic embrace of American conservatism, “There comes a time to join the side you’re on.” One could say that last week President Obama followed—as so many of us have!—in Midge’s footsteps. He joined the…

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,  So frolic, so gay.... —Thomas Dekker (c. 1572-1632), "The Merry Month of May." The poet Thomas Dekker is surely set to become a Tea Party favorite, anticipating as he did the merry and gay (in the old-fashioned sense) month of May 2012: Merry and gay…

No whining. No nagging. No teeth-gnashing. These are our springtime resolutions here at The Weekly Standard, at the beginning of the six-month general election campaign to select the next president of the United States.

In the wake of Keith Judd's inspiring showing in the West Virginia Democratic primary, one wonders if there's another state where Democrats could be encouraged to exercise their sovereign right of choice to refuse to rubber stamp the renomination by their party of President Obama.

Richard Mourdock’s big primary victory over incumbent senator Dick Lugar in Indiana suggests that the insurgent Tea Party conservatism of 2009-2010 is alive and well in the 2012 Republican party. (On the other hand, Keith Judd’s showing against President Obama in Tuesday’s West Virginia Democratic…

The U.S. is divided on gay marriage, as on many issues. But the gulf of the cultural divide on this particular issue is striking.

We've been skeptical of the arguments by some of our brethren on the right that Barack Obama is a quasi-socialist or a crypto-socialist ... or just a plain old socialist. But now the New York Times is weighing in, in favor of the proposition.

At RealClearPolitics, Sean Trende deconstructs the faux determinism of those political scientists and journalists who would be pundits, and who in this case claim to know that Mitt Romney's electoral path to victory is necessarily narrow. Here's the core of Trende's argument (but do read the whole…

President Obama's reelection prospects look grim. The New York Times, in its account of Saturday's campaign launch, reported:

According to Politico, the Obama campaign's new video, titled "Forward," may in fact prefigure a new Obama campaign slogan.

Here’s how Reuters recently summed up the race for the White House: “The 2012 presidential election is more than six months away, but here is what we know so far: It is going to be close, it is going to be nasty, and the outcome could turn on a series of unpredictable events.” The argument that…

Politico reports that the Young Guns Network, "a group affiliated with two former aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor," just spent $104,628.00 to support six-term incumbent senator Richard Lugar in his primary battle to hold his seat against state treasurer Richard Mourdock. The money,…

I’m not the first president to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share. Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower…

Here's the text of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's powerful Holocaust Remembrance Day speech to his countrymen. Worth reading.

There's a profile of the late Andrew Breitbart in the New York Times "Sunday Styles" section by reporter David Carr. Carr's a talented and fair journalist, by Times standards, and the piece is mostly fair enough. But in the middle of it is this striking sentence, or rather this striking parenthesis:

The conventional wisdom about the 2012 presidential race, among most political professionals and especially Republican campaign operatives, has been this: Reelection efforts are all about the incumbent. This incumbent is beatable. President Obama’s job approval rating, for the last couple of years,…

It's over: CNN estimates that Barack Obama has won enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination for president in 2012.

Last week, Mitt Romney’s communications director, Eric Fehrnstrom, made a terrible gaffe: He told the truth, as he saw it, on national TV. Asked, “Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general…

President Obama's explanation today of his private request yesterday, captured on an open microphone, of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev for some "space" and "flexibility" until after November's election, simply compounds the problem. 

If one needed a reminder of why President Obama must be defeated in November, he provided it today in Seoul, where the end of his private conversation with Russian president Dmitri Medvedev was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room:

Looking back at the day's news, I must admit I'm having trouble maintaining my customary good cheer.

Paul Ryan unveils the House Republican budget proposal Tuesday, as Illinois Republican primary voters go to the polls. I dare say the Ryan budget will be much the more consequential of the two events, and that victory or defeat in the intellectual and political battle over Paul Ryan’s budget will…

It’s not easy to lose 63 seats in a House election. Before 2010, the last time it had been done was when Joe DiMaggio was still patrolling center field for the New York Yankees. It’s even harder to pull off such a feat when exit polling shows that Americans were inclined to blame the prior…

The fantastic NCAA upset of #2 Missouri by #15 Norfolk State has big implications:

“Senator Santorum is at the desperate end of his campaign,” Mitt Romney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. Oops. For weeks, Team Romney and many of its allies have been eager—one might even say desperate—to end this campaign. The Republican primary electorate has been resisting this, and the…

Virginia

Monday night, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said simply and clearly, "When it comes to Israel's survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate."

To the Republicans of the states of Arizona, Michigan, Washington, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia:

The estimable George Will is almost ready to hoist the white flag on the 2012 presidential election. Neither Mitt Romney nor Rick Santorum, he writes in his column for this Sunday (an advance copy of which was obtained by Politico), “seems likely to be elected.” And while conservatives, Will…

James Q. Wilson, perhaps the best political scientist of the past half-century, has died. I took his course as an undergraduate, was a teaching assistant for him as a graduate student, and he served on my dissertation committee. We stayed in touch over the years, though I think I was too…

James Q. Wilson, perhaps the best political scientist of the past half-century, has died. I took his course as an undergraduate, was a teaching assistant for him as a graduate student, and he served on my dissertation committee. We stayed in touch over the years, though I think I was too…

Is the GOP presidential race effectively over? It could turn out that Mitt Romney’s narrow victory in Michigan, and the understandable (if misplaced) concern of lots of Republicans that the continued primary contest is doing damage to the chances of defeating President Obama in the fall, will…

Andrew Breitbart died suddenly last night, much, much too young. He was a good and loyal friend, a happy and exuberant warrior, and a talented and dynamic force on behalf of causes he believed in, and the country he loved. May his memory be a blessing.

As his 80th birthday approaches, TWS contributor and friend (and my teacher) Harvey Mansfield is profiled in the Harvard Crimson. It's a perceptive and fair article, and provides further evidence for the hopeful view that today's students are surprisingly open-minded and intelligent despite—or…

A brilliant essay by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal on why Santorum might well be electable, on populist conservatism, and on a "clarifying sentence" by Clive Crook with commentary by Mickey Kaus and Jeffrey Bell. Here's a taste—but read the whole thing:

Through December and January, Mitt Romney was comfortably ahead in polls in his home state of Michigan. Then Rick Santorum surged into the lead after his February 7 victories in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. Romney's advertising and surrogate assault on Santorum over the next couple of weeks,…

Barack Obama is a careful politician and a disciplined man. But when he’s on the West Coast, perhaps a little tired because of the jet lag, at a fancy fundraiser with his most glamorous and credulous supporters, he tends to let his guard down. The mask slips.

The general view about last night's debate is that Rick Santorum didn't do well. Rich Lowry put it best: Santorum spent too much time "explaining why he voted for things he opposed (NCLB, Title X)," got "tangled up in his Senate record," and was in general "too defensive, too insider, too…

We moderns like our roads direct, our destinations clear, our paths planned, our routes rational. But we delude ourselves. We presume to know in advance what cannot be known. We bask in the conceit of rational control when such control is not to be had. We’re then disappointed, even angered, when…

Here’s President Obama, at a fundraiser last night in Los Angeles: “[T]he American people, beneath all the pain and hurt and frustration … still want to believe that that change is possible, and there's still that hope there.  … Mario Cuomo once said that campaigning is poetry and governance is…

America is going bankrupt, Iran is going nuclear, the Obama administration is going after religious liberty. And Mitt Romney is going after Rick Santorum.

Yuval Levin has come up with an even-more-brilliant-than-usual idea. 

Republicans have been critical of the Obama administration's "preventive care" regulation, both before and after its (meaningless) modification Friday. But have our elected leaders and our candidates made the fundamental point? This regulation isn't some kind of weird bug in the software of…

Here's another interesting finding from the Fox News poll showing Rick Santorum surging nationally: Unlike GOP elites and large elements of the punditocracy, Republican primary voters are not eager to close down the race.

Yesterday I pointed out that "February 7 could prove to have been Super Tuesday if it turns out to be a key inflection point in the campaign."  Two indications, I wrote, of such an inflection point would be "if Santorum now passes Newt Gingrich in national Republican surveys" and if he "continues…

Mitt Romney will be in Washington, D.C., for a fundraiser at the JW Marriott tonight. (For interested readers with some cash on hand, it's $1,000 for a ticket to the general reception, $2,500 for a photo opportunity, and $10,000 to attend a “policy roundtable.”) In attendance will undoubtedly be…

The White House, presumably stung by criticism following its acknowledgment last week that the president hadn't presided over a meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan in quite a while, today put out a press release trumpeting such a meeting.

Was yesterday Super Tuesday? Only three states had contests, and one was a beauty primary commanding no delegates. On the other hand, it was the first day in which there were races in more than one state, more delegates were selected yesterday than on any day of the primary season so far, and about…

Remember the second Florida GOP debate on Thursday night, January 26, in Jacksonville? Mitt Romney came out pummeling Newt Gingrich, Gingrich was ineffectual in response, and Romney sailed on to a decisive victory five days later in Florida. This was soon followed by Romney's easy triumph in Nevada…

Campaigns are populated by hacks and trade in cheap shots. But the hacks are usually paid staffers, and the cheap shots are part of their job description. It's sad to see a respected former governor reduced to low-level staff hackery, acting as an attack dog on behalf of a man he once criticized…

To the Republicans of the states of Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado:

On January 23, 1980, Jimmy Carter gave what turned out to be his final State of the Union address. Ronald Reagan’s victory over Carter that November spared us any more of them. Will Barack Obama’s appearance before Congress on January 24, 2012, be his swan song? 

On February 3, during a rare Friday prayer lecture at Tehran University, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran would "support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world, and we are not afraid of declaring this." Khamenei continued, “The…

"It’s the economy, stupid,” was a useful slogan for the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign. Of course, it wasn’t really true. The Clinton campaign was about much more than the economy. It was about “ending welfare as we know it,” for example, and putting government on the side of those who “work hard and…

I wonder if three features of the race as it stands today aren't being a bit neglected:

Does liberalism embody the military virtues? Is martial virtue the highest stage of progressivism?

I’ve got to think Monday night’s debate further swelled the groundswell of support for Mitch Daniels. The liveliest part of the debate was at the beginning, when Mitt went after Newt—and Republicans all over America watched with fascinated horror at the thought that these are the two GOP…

We’ll stipulate that of course the Marines who urinated on the bodies of dead Taliban in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, last year should be appropriately disciplined, assuming things are as they appear in the video.

Courtesy of one friend, an old pro, three perhaps overlooked points in the sea of analysis of South Carolina and beyond:

Cancel the competition. Mark Steyn has already won the "best-article-not-in-THE-WEEKLY-STANDARD-to-appear-in-2012" award. Read his "The Sinking of the West."

Tax rates were cut, regulations were rolled back, but the part of Ronald Reagan’s original economic agenda that never got off the ground was re-establishing a dollar as good as gold. This was partly because Paul Volcker was so successful a Fed chairman that fundamental monetary reform came to seem…

It's notoriously hard to judge the political consequences of candidate debates. The media and political elites tend to opine as either drama critics judging performance art or as professors judging intellectual arguments. Doing well on one or another of these criteria can matter for a candidate.…

This morning, the Republican leadership on the Hill announced that Indiana governor Mitch Daniels would deliver the GOP response Tuesday night to President Obama’s State of the Union Address. An hour ago, a dark lady mysteriously appeared at our offices and dropped off an envelope before vanishing…

The most obvious thing to say about Monday night’s debate is that it was better than almost all the previous ones, in part because there were fewer participants. We’ll get one more five-person debate on Thursday, then Rick Perry will most likely withdraw after Saturday’s primary—so we'll have…

Newt Gingrich has told voters in South Carolina not to vote for Rick Santorum because Santorum can’t defeat either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. In particular, Gingrich made an appeal to conservatives: “If you're a conservative, just look at the polls. I am the only candidate capable of stopping a…

Obama administration bigwigs are falling all over themselves to denounce, condemn, lament, and apologize for the unfortunate behavior of a few Marines in Afghanistan last year. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta condemned the action as not just deplorable but “utterly deplorable.” Secretary of State…

I’m flattered to be welcomed by Karl Rove, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, to membership in the GOP establishment. I’m even more pleased by Rove’s statement that “No group of power brokers can pressure others into uniting behind one candidate. Millions of primary voters and caucus-goers…

Rush Limbaugh compares Newt Gingrich's attacks on Mitt Romney with Ross Perot's destructive assault on George H.W. Bush in 1992. It's a thought-provoking comparison.

Manchester, N.H.

There’s a lot of silliness on all sides of the Bain Capital debate.

Derry, N.H.

Concord, N.H.

The Republican candidates did a pretty good job of making their cases tonight, given that they were dealing with questioners whose combination of bias and silliness was stunning, even by mainstream media standards.

For those interested in things Jewish, the formidable literary critic D. G. Myers has provided a terrific guide to the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, ranging from Jewish history to thought to literature. I’ve long been an admirer of Myers, but I must admit I’m even more of one now, thanks to his…

Des Moines, Iowa

To the Republicans of the states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida:

The Virginia Republican Party is apparently planning to require voters in the March 6 Virginia GOP presidential primary to sign a form that says, “I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for president.”

The late Murray Kempton famously said that “a political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.”

He would side with Josh Block, who blew the whistle on rabidly anti-Israel and borderline anti-Jewish statements on the left, and who for his efforts has been expelled from membership in the Truman National Security Project.

In one of my few real conversations with President George W. Bush, I was struck by the degree to which he seemed always to have given thought to this question: How would what he said, and what his subordinates said, affect the morale of those fighting for our nation, and their families? Bush was…

In the last century, Republicans have posted large gains in midterm elections during the first term of a Democratic president five times. The elections of 1914, 1946, 1966, 1994, and 2010 all reflected popular disenchantment with big-government liberalism, and with the newly elected (or in the case…

I wasn’t a close friend of Christopher Hitchens—more like a friendly acquaintance—but he was so outsized a presence, had so fertile a mind, was gifted with such a bold personality, and was altogether so much larger than life that I already feel his loss deeply. I lack the gifts to convey what…

Matthew Continetti predicted earlier today that tonight's debate could be “Michele's Moment.” He may well prove to be right.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that we do not know who the GOP presidential nominee will be:

“The phrase ‘I do not know’ becomes inexpressibly bitter once one has proclaimed oneself to be a pundit, if not a polymath, especially when station, office, and dignity seem to demand that we should know.”

The always thoughtful Rhodes Cook writes:

Should Mitt Romney be the nominee of the Republican party for president in 2012? Perhaps. Should voters support him because he’s the “inevitable” nominee? No.

“GOP rivals differ sharply on security issues.” This was the page one headline for the Washington Post's coverage of the pre-Thanksgiving Republican presidential debate focused on foreign and defense policy.

Should Mitt Romney be the nominee of the Republican party for president in 2012? Perhaps. Should voters support him because he's the "inevitable" nominee? No.

For every Southern boy 14 years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to…

Supposing Wall Street were to be occupied . . . what then? Would the left’s occupation be brutal, like that of occupied Poland or France? Presumably not. Would it be a reluctant and benevolent occupation, like Israel’s of the West Bank? Perhaps. Or would its occupation resemble an occupied…

Today is the third anniversary of the death of our friend and colleague Dean Barnett. We loved him, and we miss him. But we are inspired by his memory--by his strength of character, his extraordinary courage, his gift for friendship, and his zest for life.

The latest CBS/New York Times GOP presidential preference poll has Herman Cain at 25 percent, Mitt Romney 21, Newt Gingrich 10, Ron Paul 8, Rick Perry 6, Michele Bachmann 2, Jon Huntsman 1, and Rick Santorum 1. A quarter of respondents failed to choose any of the announced candidates. And most of…

The foiled Iranian plot to blow up the Saudi ambassador to the United States has met with a tough U.S. response. Tough talk. And lots of it. If words were dollars, the federal budget deficit would have disappeared, as U.S. officials from President Obama to Vice President Biden to Secretary of State…

Judging by the incoherence of their agenda and the relatively small number of participants, you could say the Occupy Wall Street protesters aren’t serious. Their spirit is captured in this anecdote from New York’s Zuccotti Park, reported in the New York Times: “One woman gave a pep talk to what…

Life is, undoubtedly, bittersweet. But not America. According to President Obama, America is bittersoft.

Chris Christie gave an impressive speech at the Reagan Library last night. But by far the most interesting moment was an exchange from the question and answer session.

Paul Krugman, of Princeton and the New York Times, was up early last Sunday morning, reflecting, as many of his fellow Americans were, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. He chose to share his thoughts on the meaning of the day. Here’s his contribution in its entirety, posted at 8:41 a.m., five…

Having watched the debate Thursday night, and having heard the candidates speak and having mingled with them over the subsequent couple of days, 70 percent of the activists attending the Florida Republican gathering this weekend cast a vote of no confidence in the two GOP frontrunners.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s official reaction to last night’s Republican presidential debate: Yikes.

President Obama tried to reassure more than 900 rabbis today on a half-hour conference call that he’s a stalwart friend of Israel. In the midst of all the happy talk, though, he inadvertently revealed how he really thinks about the Middle East:

Historians will little note nor long remember what President Obama said in his jobs speech to Congress last Thursday night. For one thing, it was painfully obvious that the main job Obama was concerned to save was his own. But some may, after Obama leaves office in January 2013, recall the inspired…

I’m in New York, and the hotels are jammed with diplomats and bureaucrats associated with the U.N. General Assembly session, which opened yesterday. Overhearing various conversations at breakfast, I was reminded of John Bolton’s comment that "The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If…

As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we’re pleased to let two men of distinction speak for us. Here’s the president of the United States at the American Legion convention in Minneapolis last week:

On Thursday, the president will award Dakota Meyer, a former active duty Marine Corps corporal, the Medal of Honor for his actions while serving as a member of Marine Embedded Training Team 2-8, Regional Corps Advisory Command 3-7, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on September 8, 2009 in support of…

Here’s how bad it’s gotten for President Obama:

Lots of words have been and will be written for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, but Wilfred McClay has set a very high standard of courage, clarity, and eloquence with his "Memorializing September 11th." It's in the forthcoming issue of National Affairs, and is now available on their website. Here's…

The German Marshall Fund has released data from its annual Transatlantic Trends survey. The most striking finding: “there remains a very strong transatlantic difference of opinion over whether war is sometimes necessary to obtain justice, with 75% of U.S. participants  agreeing with that concept…

An upbeat beginning to the school year in today's Washington Post: The new ABC/Post poll has Obama's overall approval at 43 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. If these numbers hold, it's very unlikely Obama will be reelected.

A reader with federal government experience emails:

Time's Michael Scherer reports that, in June, "White House chief of staff Bill Daley arranged a secret retreat for his senior team at Fort McNair ...  Historian Michael Beschloss went along as a guest speaker to help answer the one question on everyone’s mind: How does a U.S. President win…

Reading President Obama's eloquent tribute to the 9/11 generation in his American Legion speech today, I thought of our late and beloved friend and colleague, Dean Barnett, and his terrific July 30, 2007, cover story "The 9/11 Generation." It's very much worth reading, or re-reading--and you can do…

Last week, the Almighty expressed His displeasure over Paul Ryan's decision not to run for president by sending us an earthquake and a storm. But Ryan still refuses to reconsider. So we at THE WEEKLY STANDARD have put dreams of Ryan-Rubio 2012 on hold, and have turned our attention to other…

In his Inaugural Address, President Obama quoted from Thomas Paine’s The Crisis: “Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.”

Andrew Ferguson inexplicably neglected, in his fascinating and entertaining piece on Rick Perry in the current issue, to raise the question that’s surely on so many readers’ minds: But is he good for the Jews?

If I had more dramatic flair, I'd announce that I'll be in seclusion for a while, grimly pondering the Republican future while re-reading the great Yeats poem, "To a Friend whose Work has Come to Nothing."

Forty years ago yesterday, President Richard Nixon suspended gold convertibility, and the U.S. (and the world) went onto a “paper dollar standard.” Two pieces yesterday on the fortieth anniversary of Nixon’s announcment, by Lew Lehrman in the Wall Street Journal and Jeffrey Bell in the Washington…

Editor’s note: On March 1, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a mysterious dark lady approached me in Harvard Yard and pressed a sheet of paper into my hand. It was entitled “To Her Chris Christie,” based on Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” and we were happy to share it with our readers on our…

It's hard to believe Thursday night's debate did much to alter the dynamics of the 2012 GOP presidential race. And it's unlikely Saturday's Ames straw poll will do so either, though it will begin to winnow the field.

A reader, inspired, he says, “by the sudden outburst of poesy at THE WEEKLY STANDARD,” sends in this reflection on last night’s debate:

A businessman and investor for whose judgment I have the highest regard sends this email about yesterday’s Fed announcement:

Every time you think Harry Reid can't be even more crassly political and partisan, you're proven wrong. He's now appointed Patty Murray—chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)—to be co-chair of the new deficit supercommittee. Murray has little in the way of widely recognized…

Circumstance #1: Obama is a weak candidate for reelection. 

Jay Cost argues convincingly that “No serious Democratic official would dare challenge Obama for the nomination.” But Ralph Nader says that “I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent.” Nader says that challenger could be “an ex-senator…

I’m glad for the long-suffering John Boehner. I respect those who stood with him and their attempt to do the right thing as they saw it. I hope the deal—for as long as it lasts—turns out to benefit the country and advance conservative principles. I will curb my annoyance at those who triumphantly…

I understand the debt ceiling deal is probably going to pass. I’m not even comfortable unequivocally urging members to vote against it, given all the real loyalties and future relationships and competing responsibilities actual members have to deal with. And I’m not sure I’d urge anyone to vote…

Anyone considering opposing the debt ceiling deal will be accused of being ... not just a hobbit (!), but also a totally irresponsible full-faith-and-credit-of-the-U.S.-government defaulter. Not so—if the anti-deal position is not pro-default.

Here’s the situation with respect to defense spending, which Speaker Boehner fought for yesterday, with some (very limited) success:

I’m pretty much where Mitt Romney is on the deal to raise the debt ceiling: On the one hand, it “opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table.” On the other hand, “I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican…

John Bolton has just issued a thoughtful statement raising “serious questions ... about the national-security implications of the proposed deal to raise the Federal debt ceiling.” Bolton calls attention to the worrisome short-term defense cuts that the deal makes likely, and to the huge medium- and…

O tempora, o mores! O Cicero, if thou couldst be with us now! The corruption of our age is approaching that of your own! Who today speaks for the ancient Roman—and modern American—virtues of civic duty and personal responsibility?

Members of Congress and their staff who know and care about defense are somewhere between alarmed and panicked at the emerging shape of the debt ceiling deal. (Consider this amazing on-the-record statement by Senator Joe Lieberman’s communications director to Jennifer Rubin just a few minutes ago:…

Take fifteen minutes for the sake of your country.

Last night, Speaker Boehner toyed with adding a gimmicky balanced budget amendment provision to the Republican budget bill in order to try to get the final handful of votes he needs for passage. He thought better of this last night, and didn’t do so. He should continue to avoid pointless and…

Nancy Pelosi on today's vote: "What we're trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today."

To govern is to choose. To vote is to choose. To vote against John Boehner on the House floor this week in the biggest showdown of the current Congress is to choose to vote with Nancy Pelosi. To vote against Boehner is to choose to support Barack Obama. It is to choose to increase the chances that…

I was struck by these sentences in President Obama’s speech:

The debt ceiling negotiations have become a tedious game of dorm room poker. Barack Obama is the dealer, and the deck is stacked in his favor. He’s enjoying the game. Even so, he’s not as good as he thinks he is: Witness his comment last week to House Republican leader Eric Cantor, “Eric, don’t…

Judy Shelton makes the case in the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD for the “Gold Standard or Bust.” Sound finances, she points out, require sound money, and sound money, it turns out, seems to require a dollar as good as gold—i.e., a return to a gold standard. As she puts it, “monetary policy…

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced the failure of "Cut, Cap and Balance" on the Senate floor: "We just completed a very important vote. We've now demonstrated that the House Republicans' Cut, Cap and Balance is over, done, it's dead."

The Senate has voted, along party lines, to table the Cut, Cap, and Balance debt ceiling legislation passed by the House. Is that the end of the story?

O tempora, o mores! O Cicero, if thou couldst be with us now! The corruption of our age is approaching that of your own! But who speaks for the ancient Roman—and modern American!—virtues of civic duty and personal responsibility?

The debt ceiling fight has now reached a point typical of many dramas of this kind, when participants and commentators alike start to lose sight of the forest for the trees. That's inevitable. Trees are what Congress and pundits do for a living, and in any case which trees are left standing just…

Mitch McConnell’s plan, as Eric Cantor and Jim DeMint said tonight, is “going nowhere.” Which is where it deserved to go. It was too clever by half, transparently cynical, probably unconstitutional, and Rube Goldberg-like in its incomprehensibility.  

There is a possibility that Republican congressional leaders will capitulate Sunday to President Obama and the forces of the status quo, by agreeing to a deal in which 1) we take on trillions more debt without any guarantee of fundamental structural budget reforms; 2) our tax burden is increased,…

There are many reasons to be skeptical that any likely budget deal would be worth supporting. And it’s long past time for Republicans to be planning strategically, and laying the groundwork legislatively and politically, for an outcome of no deal (or possibly a mini-deal that doesn’t sacrifice…

Here’s a chance to help Purple Heart Family Support (PHFS) win a $25K grant from the Pepsi Refresh Everything Challenge. I know volunteers who work with PHFS at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and can vouch for their activities. At Bethesda, they serve dinner twice a month to families of severely wounded…

Will President Obama replace Joe Biden as his running mate in 2012? I've always thought it’s a real possibility. Biden was perhaps useful in bringing experience to the ticket of challenger Obama in 2008, but he does nothing for incumbent Obama in 2012, whereas a fresher and younger face might add…

The mass email from BarackObama.com evaded our spam filter and made it into our inbox at 1:03 a.m. on June 24. What was Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, urgently telling us as we slept?

You've reread the Declaration of Independence. You've once again enjoyed Jefferson's extraordinary 50th anniversary letter of June 24, 1826, addressed to Roger Weightman. But you're up for still more reading this weekend, and you think you wouldn't mind something that deals seriously—but also in a…

The Economist magazine thinks the Space Age is probably over, and the discussion of our space future (or non-future) in its new issue is intelligent and informative. I've found over the years, though, that in many instances, the Economist's suave articulation of the not-so-cutting edge of…

Following on Matt Continetti’s cover story this week, “Queen of the Tea Party,” a host of writers seem to have awakened to the charms, and the potential, of Michele Bachmann. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza insightfully describes her “unique appeal” in an account of a town hall meeting in Rock…

Here’s a startling excerpt from the prepared testimony of Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is testifying this morning in front of the House Armed Services Committee: “I would prefer not to discuss the specifics of the private advice I rendered with respect to these…

“As a result, starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the surge I announced at West Point." — President Barack Obama, June 22, 2011 Why bring home…

Is Newt Gingrich getting out? Could be—or maybe you don’t need a staff to run. Is Rick Perry getting in? Why not? Who else combines governing success and Tea Party credibility? What about Rudy Giuliani? He apparently intends to see whether the second time’s a charm. In the Senate Dining Room, John…

At his confirmation hearing on June 9, Secretary of Defense nominee Leon Panetta faced questions from Democrats and Republicans alike about President Obama’s intention, hastily announced in April, to cut $400 billion from national security spending over the next 12 years. Unfortunately, Panetta…

Our current issue features a short, provocative piece by David Gelernter, arguing that too often Republican politicians fail to speak plainly and forcefully to the American people. Based on his remarkable performance during the 2010 campaign and his fine speech on election night, Florida senator…

The seven candidates on stage performed creditably last night, with two pretty clearly helping themselves—Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. But since the stage at St. Anselm didn't feature all of the eventual candidates, one can also ask, which potential candidates who aren't yet in the race were…

I'm told by two reliable sources that Rudy Giuliani intends to run for the GOP nomination for president in 2012. He may throw his hat in the ring soon.

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal features a very important piece on Afghanistan by Kim and Fred Kagan. The Kagans show how irresponsible it would be for the president to announce the withdrawal of a substantial number of troops in July, as some political advisers in the White House are advocating.…

Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Jimmy Carter in 1980, and the subsequent rapid American recovery at home and abroad, didn’t come out of the blue. There were plenty of signs before Election Day 1980 that such a reversal and triumph were possible:

Here are a few posts worth reading, I think, on this Memorial Day.

Paul Ryan was interviewed on Fox News’s Special Report last night. Watch the segment for an impressive, and unapologetic, defense of the House Republican budget—and (what Republicans too rarely stress) an explanation that the status quo is "collapsing." His plan, Ryan says, "saves Medicare from…

There’s no GOP operative for whom I have higher regard than former RNC chair and senior Bush advisor Ed Gillespie. He deserves to be taken seriously when he says (according to Politico): "For all intents and purposes, the field is set. The waiting is over. It's possible someone may get in later on,…

Not running: Mike Huckabee, the 2008 runner-up; John Thune, the likeliest candidate from the Senate, the body that has produced the out-party candidate in 2008, 2004, and 1996; Mike Pence, who could lay as much claim as anyone to represent the conservative movement; and Haley Barbour and Mitch…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has confirmed that Paul Ryan will announce he does not intend to run for what will be an open Wisconsin Senate seat in 2012, with Herb Kohl's retirement. As House Budget chair, Ryan has his hands full, developing and promoting various efforts at "right-wing social…

Here’s what we posted on our website shortly after President Obama finished speaking Sunday night, May 1:

Nonetheless, Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” That’s not a slogan designed for signs at the 2012 Democratic convention, but it does accurately describe the balance that Obama now…

I just ran into former White House chief of staff/Treasury secretary/secretary of State Jim Baker at Reagan National airport. After some small talk and some sharing of our pleasure at the killing of Osama bin Laden and our admiration for all involved, from the president to the Navy SEALs, we…

Congratulations to all those, from the president on down, who are responsible for the achievement of tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden. The wheels of justice may sometimes turn slowly, but turn they do—with the help of the United States armed forces and intelligence personnel. Justice has…

Mitch Daniels is likely, I’m told, to announce his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination in the next couple of weeks. Michele Bachmann will, I think, enter the race in June. And it now looks as if Mike Huckabee is also going to run.

In an important piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Lew Lehrman explains the connection between monetary and fiscal policy—fiscal policy will almost inevitably tend toward deficits and debt if the monetary authorities are (virtually) unconstrained in financing that debt. Until it all comes…

It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. Who are these 50 million Americans? Many are somebody’s grandparents, maybe one of yours, who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor…

Remember Barack Obama? He’s the president of the United States. As a candidate he promised hope and change. Now he defends the status quo. The fact that the status quo is clearly unsustainable doesn’t deter him. His budget’s endless deficits and rising debt takes us down a perfectly obvious road to…

Let's assume for the purpose of argument that our friends at National Review are at least partly right in their analysis of the deal on the continuing resolution (CR) that's to be voted on today in the House of Representatives (but see John McCormack’s post for some context). In their…

Spring isn’t what it used to be. Here, for example, is Robert Browning in 1841:

It’s not war but a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.” The United States has been in the lead, but will be stepping back, ASAP, in favor of command (supposedly) by a squabbling coalition of the not-so-willing. The objective of the “kinetic military action”—which is going to last days,…

Three months ago, in this space, I half-jokingly suggested a Ryan-Rubio ticket in 2012:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained the text of a letter freshman senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent tonight to the Senate majority and minority leaders. In it, Rubio proposes that the Senate authorize the president’s use of force in Libya, and that the authorization state that the aim of the use of…

My Reaganite heart leapt and skipped when I read this article, “Obama authorizes secret support for Libya rebels,” wherein we learn that “President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar…

Russ Feingold speaks truth to power. He calls out one aspect of the Obama administration’s crony-capitalist, big-government-corporatist, welfare-state liberalism—the relationship between the Obama White House and its favorite pet CEO, GE’s Jeffrey Immelt. Russ has a petition—see below—calling on…

I knew pretty early on during tonight’s speech that President Obama had rejoined—or joined—the historical American foreign policy mainstream. It was when he mentioned Charlotte (the city, not the spider):

President Obama picked the four #1's to go to the NCAA Final Four. In this, he was in accord with conventional wisdom, which had the #1 seeds likely to be even more dominant than usual. So we have a Final Four with a #3, #4, #8, and #11.

And so, despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to war in another Muslim country. Good for him.

It’s not war but a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.” The United States has been in the lead, but will be stepping back, ASAP, in favor of command (supposedly) by a squabbling coalition of the not-so-willing. The objective of the “kinetic military action”—which is going to last days,…

Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) starred at today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. This is from James Rosen's report: 

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air is understandably exasperated and angered by the Obama administration's "lack of leadership and the vacillation" on Libya, to say nothing of their "weakness and incompetence." I couldn't agree more with his exasperation and anger—and reading team Obama's juvenile…

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, president of Z Street, has done some excellent reporting on the recent 2011 J Street conference in Washington. J Street, an invention of Obama allies, has been feted at the White House, and addressed by senior Obama administration officials. It’s Obama’s favorite Jewish group.

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that House Republicans are going to bring a bill to defund NPR to the floor next week. Colorado representative Doug Lamborn will be the sponsor.

“Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, ‘No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.’”

The Wisconsin state Assembly just passed the budget repair bill as amended by the senate last night. The vote was 53-42. Scott Walker is expected to sign the bill soon.

At last Wednesday’s White House briefing, CNN’s Ed Henry asked new flack Jay Carney why it had taken President Obama so long to speak out about the violence in Libya.

Murad Warfally, of the University of Benghazi, talks to Al Jazeera about today's fighting in the town of Brega in Eastern Libya:

When I was in Cambridge yesterday, a mysterious dark lady approached me in Harvard Yard. She pressed a sheet of paper into my hand, said she was a poet and a WEEKLY STANDARD reader, and asked me to share this effort, apparently based on Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," with our readers.

Two memorable events in Washington, D.C. yesterday afternoon: a recital at the Kennedy Center by the spectacular Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Florez; and a book party at a home in Northwest D.C. for the spectacular American author, our own Andrew Ferguson.

"They are suckers,” one senior Democratic congressional aide told Politico.

At last Wednesday’s White House briefing, CNN’s Ed Henry asked new flack Jay Carney why it had taken President Obama so long to speak out about the violence in Libya.

The phone rang just now at home, where I was (and am) writing this week's editorial on Libya. The voice at the other end said, "Bill, this is John Boehner." We've been so swamped with automated fund-raising calls recently that I started to hang up—but fortunately I realized that automated callers…

From The Cable:

When campaigning for the presidency, Barack Obama often appealed to "what Dr. King called 'the fierce urgency of now.'" And, he would continue, "I believe that there’s such a thing as being too late, and that hour is almost upon us."

A small group of us had an interesting meeting this afternoon at the Pentagon with Defense secretary Bob Gates (unfortunately the most interesting parts were off the record; Steve Hayes will write up the other, still somewhat interesting, parts when we get a transcript). Then I came back to the…

As Ben Smith reports, “here's a situation pretty much without precedent: The Libyan Ambassador to the U.S. just called on the United States to denounce his country's leaders -- and his employers -- more forcefully.”

Read Paul Gigot's interview with Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan in today's Wall Street Journal. Watch Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's press conference from yesterday afternoon. Then get to work on that Ryan-Walker ticket in 2012.

Our friend Charles Krauthammer began his column last week by asking, “Who doesn’t love a democratic revolution? Who is not moved by the renunciation of fear and the reclamation of dignity in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria?”

In strong remarks on the Senate floor this morning, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell points out that President Obama’s spending “freeze” at current levels will result in a bigger deficit this year than last. Simply to put the budget “on cruise control,” as McConnell puts it, ensures ever…

So the much-anticipated pivot to the center in the State of the Union speech has happened. As pivots go, President Obama’s wasn’t the most elegant—there were no triple lutzes or extended camel spins—but he didn’t fall on his face either. It seems clear that, for the next two years at least,…

This is the 3 a.m. phone call. Will President Obama rise to the occasion?

The Obama administration has gradually been adjusting to reality. On Friday evening, President Obama was still exhorting President Mubarak: “I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” By this morning,…

The prestigious and, since its formation less than a year ago, consistently ahead-of-the-curve Working Group on Egypt, co-chaired by Michele Dunne of Carnegie and Robert Kagan of Brookings, has just issued a new statement late Saturday. The Group includes Middle East and foreign policy experts…

Just came from an off-the-record breakfast with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who's as impressive in private as he is in public. He has to attend to big budget and policy matters in Jersey for the next five months, and he is focused on that. But after New Jersey's next fiscal year begins on…

We learned, I think, two important things from last night's speeches. Both had to do with the power struggles within the two parties, and who now has the upper hand in those battles.

After a depressing week—a horrible shooting that killed 6 people and wounded 14 others, followed by days of demagoguery and idiocy surpassing even the normal standards of our power-without-responsibility punditocracy—recent days have brought encouraging news. The medical prognosis for Rep.…

Jeffrey Anderson has a characteristically perceptive piece over at NRO's "Critical Condition" blog on "Three Things We¹ve Learned from Repeal."

Several people have e-mailed to ask why Joe Lieberman is (apparently) going to announce tomorrow that he won’t be running for re-election to the Senate.

The Chinese government chose to answer some questions (though not others) submitted by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, ahead of the visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the U.S.. The first paragraph of Hu Jintao's response to Question 4 could turn out to be historically…

In the past four years, administrations of both parties have had to surge ground troops to war theaters in order to make success possible in missions central to the national security of the United States. Just last week, the Obama administration announced an additional 1,400 Marines would be…

Defense Secretary Robert Gates today tried to put the best face on the White House’s decision to enforce on the military additional cuts beyond an already stringent defense budget, and beyond the reductions Gates had already volunteered. So the military, having uniquely in the government received…

Defense Secretary Robert Gates today tried to put the best face on the White House’s decision to enforce on the military additional cuts beyond an already stringent defense budget, and beyond the reductions Gates had already volunteered. So the military, having uniquely in the government received…

Having just returned from the e21 and Manhattan Institute-sponsored Conversation with Paul Ryan (very ably conducted by Paul Gigot)--and having seen Marco Rubio speak recently as well, I'll just say this: Wouldn't it be easier just to agree now on a Ryan-Rubio ticket, and save everyone an awful lot…

Ryan Streeter, editor of the very interesting and useful new website, ConservativeHome, had an excellent Q and A with Yuval Levin earlier this week. Read the whole thing here —and then read some of the fine articles in the new issue of National Affairs, which Levin edits, here.

Having recently praised Michele Bachmann, and remaining a fan in general, I think it appropriate to register disappointment at her embrace of a silly position. On several conservative websites, you'll find a web ad featuring her and promoting a petition: "Tell Congress, 'Don't Raise the Debt…

I’m told the Speaker’s office is about to announce that the House Rules Committee will meet on Thursday, and that a rule to consider the repeal of Obamacare will be brought to the House floor on Friday.  The House will then vote on the repeal of Obamacare on Wednesday, January 12. In order to…

From Monday's Washington Post Metro section, "Slashed budgets of Montgomery County libraries felt in readers' daily routines," we learn:

There’s been some hyperventilating among conservatives about the effects on the military of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s going to be amazingly difficult to implement, some say. It could well be the end of the U.S. military as a feared fighting force. It’s just another step in the decline…

Over at NRO, you can read Rich Lowry's engaging year-end column about America, "Yes, the Greatest Country Ever."

For what it's worth: When I saw Colman McCarthy's anti-ROTC Washington Post op-ed online Wednesday evening, I e-mailed it to a few friends with the subject line, "it's helpful to have opponents like this." Allahpundit had a similar thought, and has developed it with characteristic wit and verve:

Who knew?

James Cole, recess appointed this week by President Obama to serve as deputy attorney general, famously wrote an op-ed on September 9, 2002, criticizing then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Cole argued:

Amy Goldstein's lead front-page piece in today's print edition of the Washington Post isn't featured on the Post's website. This is unusual—featured pieces in the print edition are most often featured online as well. It’s unfortunate that Goldstein's fine reporting has almost disappeared from the…

’Twas the week before Christmas, and all through

You know conservatives are winning when the most dogmatic and obdurate liberals (inadvertently) throw in the towel.

There’s been some hyperventilating among conservatives about the effects on the military of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s going to be amazingly difficult to implement, some say. It could well be the end of the U.S. military as a feared fighting force. It’s just another step in the decline…

Now that the lame duck Democratic Congress has repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), the new Congress will have to see to it that the Obama administration manages the implementation of repeal responsibly, and that the concerns of military leaders and troops are taken seriously. But over the next…

I can't believe the Democratic Congress will be foolish and hubristic enough to go ahead and jam though the omnibus appropriations bill with its 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion. But if they do: Shouldn't the Republican House leadership commit to making H.R. 1 in the next Congress a bill…

The criminal and anti-American enterprise WikiLeaks said in a Twitter message this morning that it was under a “distributed denial of service attack," a method often used by hackers to slow or bring down websites. If this is the U.S. government at work, good for our civil servants. If this is…

Yesterday, Secretary of State Clinton called the disclosure of the WikiLeaks documents "an attack on America's foreign policy interests." She and her colleagues in the Obama administration have proceeded, as they must, to try to limit the diplomatic damage, to reassure allies, to improve security…

The editors at Der Spiegel can’t contain themselves. Even before publication of the WikiLeaks documents, they’ve taken to their website to announce jubilantly that the leaking of these documents “is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.”

At his November 12 press conference in Seoul, President Obama was asked the following question by CBS’s Chip Reid: “What was the number-one complaint, concern, or piece of advice that you got from foreign leaders about the U.S. economy and your stewardship of the economy?”

As this press release from the House Republican Whip’s office (see below) suggests, Republicans seem intent on defunding NPR. They presumably won’t be able to act on this until January, when they take control of the House. This gives us all time to suggest catchy names for this bill, which could be…

In a moving ceremony yesterday at the White House, President Obama presented Army Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta with the Medal of Honor. Allahpundit has an excellent write-up (with many links) of the event and of what Sgt. Giunta did to merit the honor. As he points out, Giunta is the first living…

At his November 12 press conference in Seoul, President Obama was asked the following question by CBS’s Chip Reid: “What was the number-one complaint, concern, or piece of advice that you got from foreign leaders about the U.S. economy and your stewardship of the economy?”

On Friday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD called MSNBC’s suspension of Keith Olbermann “ludicrous,” and urged, “Republicans of the world, show you believe in the free expression of opinion! Tell the crony corporatists at NBC—keep Keith!”

On Friday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD called MSNBC’s suspension of Keith Olbermann “ludicrous,” and urged, “Republicans of the world, show you believe in the free expression of opinion! Tell the crony corporatists at NBC—keep Keith!”

THE WEEKLY STANDARD was already in good cheer after Tuesday’s election. But then came the news at the end of the week, as the magazine went to press, that Nancy Pelosi has decided to try to retain her position as the top House Democrat, and will stand for House minority leader in January.

MSNBC’s suspension of Keith Olbermann is ludicrous.

1. Nancy Pelosi will presumably step down as Democratic leader in the House. Steny Hoyer could be challenged from the left as he seeks to move up to replace her, and he could lose--partly because the defeat of Democrats in swing districts throughout the country yesterday will move the…

In the midst of a deluge of correspondence from learned readers correcting, amplifying and elaborating on my little post yesterday comparing the passage of Obamacare, next week’s elections, and November 2012 to Borodino, Leipzig, and Waterloo (I’m learning a lot about the historiographic…

I was reminded, reading Fred Bauer's interesting post, that on the day after Obamacare passed, I'd compared President Obama's legislative success to Napoleon's catastrophic victory at Borodino.

Sometimes it takes a woman to say, “Be a man.”

The Washington Examiner reports that Virginia congressman Jim Moran (VA-8) was videotaped speaking at an October 6th meeting of the Arlington County Democratic Committee, saying: "What [Republicans] do is find candidates, usually stealth candidates, that haven't been in office, haven't served or…

My Fox News Sunday colleague Juan Williams has been fired by NPR for telling an inconvenient truth.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained the results of a private poll conducted last night in Ohio-10, the Cleveland-area district held for seven terms by Democrat Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich has been widely viewed as safe—even though he fell short of 60 percent of the vote in 2008, and the district has a…

Now we know who constitutes the real Israel lobby: the American public. Especially the Republican-leaning part of it.

Need a break from poring over polls from endangered Democratic congressional districts? It's a lot of fun, but you can't really do it twelve hours a day. So when you need that change of pace, pick up the witty, clever, and thought-provoking Rules for Radical Conservatives: Beating the Left at Its…

On October 1, Rahm Emanuel announced his departure as White House chief of staff, ending the shortest and most hapless tenure in that position since Bill Clinton replaced his childhood friend, Mack McLarty, in 1994. McLarty is a nice guy who wasn’t tough enough to bring order to Clinton’s White…

The New York Times reports that national security adviser Jim Jones’s departure, long expected to take place at the end of the year, was accelerated because of “statements that he apparently made to Bob Woodward” that were reproduced in Woodward’s Obama’s Wars.

Now we know who constitutes the real Israel lobby: the American public. Especially the Republican-leaning part of it.

From a Wall Street Journal article about Barney Frank's re-election contest:

First J Street denied receiving money from George Soros—then they had to admit he is a major donor. First J Street claimed it was overwhelmingly supported by domestic donors—then it turned out they had received more than $800,000 from a mysterious woman from Hong Kong. First J Street claimed it had…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained excerpts from the prepared text of Sen. Joe Lieberman’s speech, “The Future of American Power in the Middle East,” to be delivered Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. It should cause quite a stir.

Everyone’s talking about the competitive governor’s and senate races in New York, with Carl Paladino surging against Andrew Cuomo and Joe DioGuardi pulling close to Kirsten Gillibrand. Given the nature of this year’s political environment, and Cuomo’s and Gillibrand’s weaknesses (see Hot Air’s…

A savvy political veteran emails:

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, spoke at three Washington, D.C. synagogues on Yom Kippur—at Adas Israel at Kol Nidrei services last Friday night, then at Washington Hebrew Congregation Saturday morning and at Kesher Israel in the afternoon. Conservative, Reform and Orthodox…

At Monday's town hall in Washington, President Obama was asked whether his top economic adviser, Larry Summers, and his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, would be staying through the end of this term. Obama's answer makes one think the answer is no:

This year’s election looks to be a repeat of 1994. The GOP is likely once again to win 50-plus House seats and thereby take control of that chamber. Republicans are on track to pick up something like the 8 Senate seats they won in 1994—if they fail to win control of the Senate, it will only be…

The seven-month primary season, which began on Feb. 2 in Illinois, is over. Republicans and conservatives should be pleased by the results.

Less than a week ago, on September 2, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor had an op-ed in USA Today. It was a perfectly good statement of GOP opposition to President Obama's plan to raise taxes on upper-income Americans. Though Cantor mentioned GOP alternatives, his piece was fundamentally a statement…

Jay Cost, who joins THE WEEKLY STANDARD today, leaves RealClearPolitics with a bang. In an excellent piece, he shows that the "conventional wisdom that the decline of the Democrats has mostly to do with the economy and little - if anything - to do with health care" is wrong.

President Obama opposed the war in Iraq. He still thinks it was a mistake. It's therefore unrealistic for supporters of the war to expect the president to give the speech John McCain would have given, or to expect President Obama to put the war in the context we would put it in. He simply doesn't…

Where was Sarah Palin last Friday night, before coming to Washington to speak at the Glenn Beck gathering Saturday?

Mr. President,

A politically experienced friend of TWS writes:

Peter Baker reports in the New York Times--"As Mission Shifts in Iraq, Risks Linger for Obama"--that President Obama has so far marked the official end of America's combat mission in Iraq only with a written statement, and one sentence at a pair of fund-raisers: "We are keeping the promise I made…

A savvy friend with lots of political experience writes:

News item: "COLUMBUS, Ohio-- Despite criticism from Republicans and others, President Barack Obama said Wednesday he has 'no regrets' over the comments he made about the right of Muslims to build an Islamic center near the former site of the World Trade Center in New York."

Nancy Pelosi yesterday: "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded."

TWS readers in Massachusetts seem particularly energized this year. Yesterday, one had interesting advice for GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker. Now another e-mails about the race in Massachusetts’s 5th Congressional District:

A column (h/t, MEMRI) in the August 16, 2010 London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, director of Al-Arabiya TV and the paper's former editor, “A House of Worship or a Symbol of Destruction?” should mean the end of plans for a mosque near Ground Zero. Mr. Al-Rashid supports…

Jim Manley, Harry Reid’s press secretary, has announced that “The First Amendment protects freedom of religion. Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.”

Feisal Abdul Rauf is in the news primarily as the sponsor of the Ground Zero mosque. But leave aside the planned mosque. What about the fact that Rauf is now touring the Middle East on a trip sponsored and paid for by our State Department? Is he delivering the message we want foreigners to hear…

Here’s an e-mail from Alex Vuckovic, a TWS reader from Massachusetts who was way ahead of the curve last December when he wrote to say that, yes, Scott Brown could win. He has some advice for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in his state, and it seemed worth passing on:

Last Tuesday, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke on the subject of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. His remarks will be read with curiosity by future generations of Americans, who will look back in astonishment at the self-deluding pieties and…

Today in Florida President Barack Obama "backed off" (as Politico’s Carol Lee put it) his defense of the Ground Zero mosque. Obama now claims that last night he was only defending the legal rights of the organizers: "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision…

Penetrating commentary on President Obama's remarks last night on Islam, 9/11, and Ground Zero is already available.

A failed presidency is a terrible thing to witness. A failed presidency with more than two years left to run is also dangerous for the country. So, even though it would be easy for The Weekly Standard to allow your administration to continue on its current path to perdition, thereby ensuring…

If my ears didn't deceive me, I heard Juan Williams say this morning, seated only a few feet away on Fox News Sunday, that "everyone likes Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels." He said this, of course, as a prelude to arguing that Christie and Daniels are much more reasonable than those wacky…

Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal features an op-ed by Dan Senor, "An Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque: The location undermines the goal of interfaith understanding."

President Obama has offered this patronizing advice to Rep. Charlie Rangel:

Just before noon on Sunday, July 18, 2010, Sarah Palin enriched the English language. Referring to the planned Islamic center near the 9/11 site in New York, she tweeted: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims,…

Last month, we published an editorial under the title “A Period of Consequences.” The phrase was taken from a speech in the House of Commons in late 1936 in which Winston Churchill warned: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its…

Let us now praise Barack Obama.

Dear Michael,

"They are overwhelmingly white and Anglo, although a scattering of Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans combine to make up almost one-fourth of their ranks."

Bill Clinton's had an awfully good week.

Jules Crittenden calls attention to this excellent op-ed by the U.S. ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, defending and explaining the American and Australian commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

It’s worth reading President Obama’s two answers on Afghanistan at the press conference yesterday at the conclusion of the G-20 summit in Toronto. The second, reproduced below , is especially striking.

Gen. David Petraeus is getting lots of advice from all quarters--public and private, wanted and unwanted, helpful and unhelpful. This, from Jason Thomas, an Australian just returned from eight months working on the civilian side of the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, was recommended to me…

Here’s the statement by Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), which suggests they think Gen. McChrystal ought to offer to resign, and that the president should probably accept the offer:

CNN published a story at 9:25 a.m. this morning titled "Haley's path to Christianity leaves some evangelicals uneasy." The story informs readers that Nikki Haley, who was raised a Sikh and converted to Christianity, "still attends Sikh services occasionally with her parents and extended family."…

Everything Mark Steyn writes is worth reading. Much of what he writes is terrific. This piece, "The Very Model of a Modern Major Generalist: Like most multiculturalists', Obama's ideological worldview doesn't depend on anything so tedious as actually viewing the world," is spectacular--way off the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that senior Obama administration officials have been telling foreign governments that the administration intends to support an effort next week at the United Nations to set up an independent commission, under UN auspices, to investigate Israel's behavior in the Gaza…

In an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, President Obama said this:

Today marks the launch of what will be an invaluable website for elected officials, candidates, journalists, and, really, all Americans: ObamaCareWatch.org.

Cassy Fiano has a fine D-Day anniversary post at hotair.com, with clips of the invasion, FDR's speech, and Reagan's 40 years later.

So the one part of government the Obama administration—which is spending unprecedented amounts on every domestic department of government—has decided to squeeze is the military. This is outrageous and pathetic—taking money out of the already inadequate baseline defense budget to pay for a domestic…

There are interesting statewide primary races on the Republican side in California and Nevada and South Carolina on June 8. But conservatives shouldn’t neglect some of the congressional primaries and other races further down the ballot.

All the well-deserved praise for Campbell Brown’s classy statement announcing her departure from CNN prompts a thought: Brown is now a free woman, she's a well-spoken and impressive one, she lives in New York, and she has moderate political views. And she's a patriot who wants to serve her country.…

They both have primary opposition (and, for all I know, their opponents are fine and well-qualified candidates), but based on their ads, you've got to like Nikki Haley, a South Carolina state legislator running this year for governor, and Dale Peterson, a businessman running for Alabama Ag…

In his comically disingenuous Washington Post op-ed today, "How I know Kagan isn't anti-military," Walter Dellinger claims:

I’m confident there’s a stronger intellectual case against the Greek bailout than conventional wisdom acknowledges. And I suspect the issue will have more political resonance than many insiders expect.

A politically savvy Massachusetts friend writes:

Financial regulatory “reform” has been wending its desultory way through Congress for quite a while, and one can lose track of where things stand and what’s important.

The issue of Elena Kagan’s discrimination, as Harvard Law School dean, against the military—and her (and her predecessor’s) blaming of the military for a congressional/presidential policy choice—has provoked an uncommonly strong response from the Hill, and from TWS readers.

In today's Wall Street Journal, former Harvard Law School Dean Robert Clark, defends the policy of refusing the U.S. military the assistance of the school's Office of Career Services, which was continued by his successor, Elena Kagan.

"Elena Kagan’s America is a land in which government-subsidized abortions would take the lives of millions of innocent children, blacks would have preference in law school admissions, rogue bureaucrats could curb citizens' liberties in the name of progressive policies, schoolchildren would not be…

For me, the key obstacle to Elena Kagan's confirmation is pt. 5 in Ed Whelan's NRO post, which is also the question raised by Peter Berkowitz in these pages several years ago and by Peter Beinart just recently: Her hostility to the U.S. military.

In last week's cover story, Jennifer Rubin described the run around she received in response to her Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documentation of recusals by Justice Department lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees. The official responsible for documents from the…

I've been looking at the polls and playing around with the ways in which different national percentages can translate into seats in the House of Commons--and for what it's worth (not much!), I think the Tories have a very good chance to win a clear majority (perhaps 25 seats) in the Commons today…

Last night, Columbia University Hillel honored New York lawyer and former Bush administration official (and Columbia grad) Jay Lefkowitz.

Citigroup Inc Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit has written President Barack Obama endorsing “strong regulatory reform” for U.S. banks. What’s more, Pandit wrote, “You can count on me and the entire Citi organization to support” Obama’s reform efforts.

In the New York Times today, Roger Cohen reports that George Mitchell told him: "[N]o one in the world knows American politics better than me, and this I will say. There has never been in the White House a president that is so committed on this [the Israel-Palestine] issue, including Clinton who is…

Mary Katharine Ham has noted President Obama's lame attempt to rally his supporters for the 2010 elections, as he appealed in a DNC video to "young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008" to repeat their performance in 2010.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told a forum at  Columbia University yesterday, "Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome...In an area that's so unstable right now, we just don't need more of that."

In light of Erin Sheley's appreciation of William Stuntz in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, readers might be interested in the (if I may say so, terrific) articles Stuntz has published in this magazine. They all have intrinsic merit, but the first two were also of some historic…

You’ve read Elliott Abrams in the new issue on the myths of the peace process. You’re alarmed by the Obama administration’s turn against Israel. But, with Passover and Easter upon us, you might want to reflect a little more about the meaning of Jewish history, Israel, and Judaism.

After his 1851 coup d’état, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the real Napoleon, pronounced himself Napoleon III. It was the rise to power of this great-man-wannabe that prompted the famous opening of Karl Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis-Bonaparte: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great…

Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday, and I find the Haggadah an endlessly interesting text.

In Iowa City today, President Obama mocked Republicans' efforts to repeal his new health care law. He dared them to "Go for it," and asserted, "I welcome that fight. Because I don't believe the American people are going to put the insurance industry back in the driver's seat."

Yes, as Jeffrey Anderson acerbically points out at NRO, “Repeal Means Repeal.” Not partial repeal or repeal of pieces of Obamacare or some repeal and some acceptance and some tinkering with the legislation Obama just signed. Repeal. Of course, coincident with repeal Republicans will pass health…

Last Thursday, Athens was paralyzed by rioters protesting the government’s austerity program, which is needed to keep the Greek nation solvent. The protesters chanted “No sacrifice” and “Higher pay.”That same day, near Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority honored Dalal Mughrabi on what would have…

Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter have come up with a parliamentary maneuver -- "deem and pass" -- reeking of evasiveness and trickery that Democratic members are going to have to embrace. But it gets better! The point of "deem and pass" is to allow representatives to vote directly only on the…

Thank you, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter.

Unlike Attorney General Eric Holder, Stanley McChrystal is no fool. He knows that there is a more-than-”infinitesimal” chance Osama bin Laden could be captured alive, and he knows how valuable it would be if one could get him to talk (or even how valuable it would be if his subordinates thought he…

Democratic leaders in the House are apparently moving towards the "Slaughter Solution" of avoiding a direct vote on the health care legislation and instead passing the Senate health care bill by voting to "deem" it passed. As they do so, they keep reassuring the media--and each other--that the…

"We need courage," President Obama said in Ohio yesterday, imploring Congressional Democrats to pass his health care bill.

I'm not a lawyer (though a few of my best friends are). But I gather there's an old legal dictum that goes: If you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue the law, argue the facts. If you can't argue the law or the facts, blow smoke.

Why the hysterical reaction to the Keep America Safe Internet ad asking why Eric Holder wouldn't release the names of lawyers now at the Justice Department who had done pro bono legal work for al Qaeda terrorists? Why the desperate effort to find establishment Republican lawyers to legitimize the…

The American Civil Liberties Union has an amusing full-page ad in the New York Times today (p. 8 of the Week in Review section). It morphs a photo of their onetime favorite, Barack Obama into...George W. Bush! What has President Obama done to deserve this comparison, the greatest insult the left…

She sometimes disappoints, and occasionally can miss the mark—but when she’s good, she’s very, very good.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD is happy to welcome a new kid on the magazine block--especially because he (she?) is smart, engaging and attractive. So we welcome the Jewish Review of Books--a new print and web publication for serious readers with Jewish interests, in which writers and scholars praise,…

Nancy Pelosi will say at the health care confab today that "inaction and incrementalism are simply unacceptable."

Arnold Beichman has died, at age 96. One somehow thought he would live forever. He certainly was forever young—and entirely in the good sense: He was young in energy and enthusiasm and zest for life. He was at the same time wise in the ways of the world. It’s a rare combination. And I very much…

Paul Krugman is, I think, right to be amazed by Obama's embrace of the $17 million bonus given to JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon and the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Life doesn’t simply imitate art. There are important differences between the Scott Brown story and Jefferson Smith’s. And the differences make Brown’s actual achievement more impressive than Smith’s fictitious one. For example, Smith (Jimmy Stewart) was appointed to his seat in the Senate. Scott…

Late in the speech, Obama says (according to the text that's been released):

The instinctive Republican response (see, e.g., this RNC release) to President Obama’s call for a domestic discretionary spending freeze is to dismiss it as not serious—saying, oh, no, it’s not a real freeze because the baseline is high, and anyway he doesn’t mean it, and here’s what he said in the…

Regarding President Obama's extraordinary "Well, the big difference [between] here and in '94 was you've got me" comment to Arkansas congressman Marion Berry: Well, in '94 they had Bill Clinton--who had won statewide in a pretty conservative state (Arkansas) something like seven times, and who was…

President Obama’s response to the Haitian earthquake has been sure-minded and swift. He saw the situation as “one of those moments that calls out for American leadership” and has acted accordingly.

An e-mailer makes a good point regarding my "Obama’s Condescension" post, which commented on Obama’s statement: "Here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.”

"Here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office," President Obama said today in an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos.

From the New York Times website:

A Republican tracking poll shows—amazingly—a slight uptick for Scott Brown over the weekend. He leads—amazingly—outside the margin of error in virtually every turnout model. The “rape” charge seems to be backfiring among independent women. While there is some increase in partisan Democratic…

On the first day of Christmas, we were attacked.

In a Republican tracking poll, last night Scott Brown held on to a stable if narrow lead. Even if the results are adjusted to reflect a more Democratic-friendly turnout model than the pollsters expect, Brown maintains an edge.

So the Massachusetts Democratic Party is alleging, in a mailer, that "1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away."

I spoke with two pros, each of whom has seen tracking polls from last night. The data are similar. There’s a stable Brown lead at around the Suffolk/7 News public poll level (+4). Brown lost some Democrats and saw some increase in his negatives (what you’d expect, given a massive, late partisan…

The Boston Herald reports that a Suffolk University/7News survey conducted Monday through Wednesday has Republican Scott Brown ahead of Democrat Martha Coakley by 50 percent to 46 percent. This is the first major independent public survey I’ve seen with Brown in the lead—though one should note the…

For what it’s worth:

I’m told reliably:

In Massachusetts, Anxiety for Favored Democrats By Abby Goodnough  New York Times  January 8, 2010   BOSTON — Martha M. Coakley, the Democrat running for Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, had seemed so certain of winning the special election on Jan. 19 that she barely campaigned…

The estimable Allahpundit is pretty fatalistic about Obamacare: Nancy Pelosi says the House and Senate are "very close" to a deal, Obama's weighing in to pressure House Dems to accept something close to the Senate bill, you can't rely on Blanche Lincoln to stop it--and, so, "Dude, I think it's…

A former intelligence officer called my attention to the, as he put it, "creepy" statement Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair issued yesterday:

President Obama wants to close Gitmo. Closing Gitmo means sending terrorists abroad or to the United States. Both are serious mistakes—the terrorists abroad can go rejoin the fight, the ones taken to the U.S. would get all kinds of consitutional rights which might then allow them to rejoin the…

Another Massachusetts resident writes:

A correspondent from the Bay State writes:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported last night that a private poll last week had the Massachusetts Senate race at 50-39 for the Democrat, Martha Coakley. Scott Rasmussen will apparently soon report that his survey last night has Republican Scott Brown down by nine points, 50-41. Two weeks to go, Brown…

We survived 2009.

A piece in Politico claims "Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama's popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency." In fact the piece quotes only one Democratic…

President Obama said in his radio address today that "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." He also reported about the latest attack, on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, that "an affiliate of Al Qaeda...Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained…

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, Dec. 29: "Abdulmutallab remains in a Detroit area prison and has restricted his cooperation since securing a defense attorney, according to federal officials. Authorities are holding out hope that he will change his mind and cooperate with the inquiry, the…

The Obama apologists are pushing back at the cascade of justified criticism by attacking Republican Senator Jim DeMint for placing a hold on Obama's nominee to head TSA, Erroll Southers. DeMint is concerned Southers would support the unionization of TSA screeners. There's no evidence that having…

Unable to defend themselves on the merits, the administration and Democratic leaders are trying to change the topic to blaming Bush and Republicans. This is pathetic. First of all, Obama is president. He has been for almost a year. Whatever mistakes Bush did or didn't make, Obama is in charge --…

It's worth reading (don't worry, it's short) Janet Napolitano's op-ed in USA Today. As if to confirm Dick Cheney's claim that the Obama administration doesn't understand we're at war, Napolitano never uses the word...war. Nor does she mention Islam, Yemen or Nigeria -- nor any of the details of the…

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded the obvious this morning: "WASHINGTON (AP) - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on…

From the article now up on the Washington Post website: "But authorities are -- for now -- operating on the theory that he acted alone, according to an American law enforcement source. "'At this point, there's nothing to suggest that he was part of a wider conspiracy involving others,' said the…

In the generous and forgiving spirit of Christmas, let me recommend an article from The Huffington Post. It's an interesting piece by Miles Mogulescu, on "The Democrats' Authoritarian Health 'Reform' Bill and the Ascendency of Corporatism in the Democratic Party," and suggests an increasing degree…

A TWS reader e-mails: "Hey Mr. Kristol, is there some supersecret plot to ignore the Massachusetts Senatorial election scheduled for JANUARY 19, where an actual REPUBLICAN has a chance to become the 41ST member of the Republican caucus, which might find it in its interest to...persuade a certain…

Senate leaders Reid and McConnell have agreed that the first order of business when they get back will be to take up, on January 20th, the debt limit increase needed for next year (they'll pass a small-$290 billion!-increase Thursday to tide them over for a month). The agreement allows for several…

I've assumed for the last couple of days that the Democrats would succeed in passing the health care bill, and that our job was to make sure it turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory. Now I'm not so sure the legislation can't still be derailed. Two reasons: First: the reaction to the deal-making. One…

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana has issued an excellent statement on the health care bill. He calls it "Washington at its worst," and especially urges "Senators with the privilege of representing the great state of Indiana, to give special consideration to Hoosier families and their values and reject…

'I liked what he said. I talked too in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times.'

A D.C. area friend--tired of shoveling snow--called today to chat, and to say he agreed with the notion that 2010 looked to be shaping up as a populist, anti-establishment, and anti-incumbent year. And he called my attention to last week's polls on the Florida Senate race. Everyone noticed the…

There are lots of embarrassing little things to mock in the Senate bill (e.g., the special provision for Nebraska), and lots of bad provisions to attack (the tax hikes and federal funding for abortion, to mention two). But Republicans shouldn't lose sight of a core point, embodied in this passage…

When a fellow conservative tried to cheer me up this morning by assuring me that the Senate Democrats' victory on health care was going to be a Pyrrhic one, I realized I didn't remember much about Pyrrhus.

There's a really big snowstorm coming to D.C.tonight. It would be unsafe to ask all the staffers and Hill employees who'd be needed at the Capitol if Congress stays open all hours this weekend, as Harry Reid intends, to drive to and from work--especially since many will have to do so at night, and…

The Senate Democrats' legislation is a Medicare-cutting, tax-hiking, no-real-reform, 2,000-page monstrosity opposed by the majority of the American people. The only winners would be Big Government, Big Pharma, and Big Insurance. Big Government would grow in immeasurable ways and would gradually…

The Senate Democrats' legislation is a Medicare-cutting, tax-hiking, no-real-reform 2,000 page monstrosity opposed by the majority of the American people. The only winners would be Big Government (which would grow in immeasurable ways, and would gradually assume ever more responsibility for our…

President Obama has ordered sufficient reinforcements to Afghanistan to execute a war strategy that can succeed. We applaud this decision. And we urge everyone to rally round the effort to defeat our enemies and accomplish objectives vital to America's national security.

On Face The Nation, Sens. Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson made it pretty clear they weren't inclined to support the Reid "compromise" featuring a Medicare buy-in. Nelson said he thought such a buy-in is a bad idea, and Lieberman noted that on "the so-called Medicare buy-in -- the opposition to it has…

The result from the most recent Public Policy Polling Survey that's getting all the attention is that only 50% of voters now say the prefer having Barack Obama with 44% preferring Geroge W. Bush. But more interesting to me are these results: On health care, only 39% approve of Obama's health care…

The much hyped (if utterly incoherent) deal that Harry Reid is touting doesn't look as if it's doing the trick -- the trick being to cobble together anything (and I mean anything) that can get 60 votes in the Senate, introduce it as a manager's amendment later this week, and jam it through. And…

After his speech tonight, I seem to be more upbeat about the prospects for the war in Afghanistan under President Obama's leadership than some of my friends. Obviously, the July 2011 date for beginning a drawdown deserves criticism. On the other hand, the pace and character of the drawdown is to be…

Say it ain't so, Joe: Not invited to the climactic Afghanistan meeting? Not even a phone call? Speaking Monday to reporters at the White House, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama met Sunday evening in the Oval Office with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the…

Can the United States win the war in Afghanistan? The antiwar left has long held the war is unwinnable. Now some conservatives are arguing that President Obama's weakness and indecision forecast American failure--and that, if we're going to fail, we should just get out now.

It occurs to me that WEEKLY STANDARD readers, sitting at home and avoiding the malls this weekend, may be wondering: What presents should I be giving to my discerning friends, discriminating acquaintances, and benighted relatives for the holidays? Answer: Gift subscriptions to THE WEEKLY STANDARD,…

President Obama chose not to travel to Germany for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead, he graced the occasion with a video address. He didn't have time in his two-and-a-half minutes to mention Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher or Pope John Paul II. But somehow he did find…

The new Rasmussen poll for the 2010 Arizona GOP Primary-John McCain 45%, J. D. Hayworth 43%-will generate a fair amount of buzz. But August is a long way away, and I assume that when McCain gets back to Arizona and campaigns, he'll pull it out. Still, who could help McCain beat back a populist…

One of several e-mails I've received on the KSM trial: "I'm an attorney and a former civilian and military prosecutor. Congress can indeed remove jurisdiction for Article III courts to try this case or any other terrorism case. I think Republicans should get a bill going fast on this and make the…

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, Sen. John Cornyn asked Attorney General Eric Holder about the decision he announced Friday to try some detainees, including the 9/11 plotters, in Article III courts: "Does the president agree with you?" Holder's response: "I believe he does. I…

In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, Eric Holder will say, according to the Associated Press, that "I have every confidence the nation and the world will see him for the coward he is....I'm not scared of what (Mohammed) will have to say at trial and no one else needs to be…

About six weeks ago, as Obama was dithering over Afghanistan, I reported that he worried, at a meeting with congressional leaders, about the cost of sending reinforcements. And I wrote that "this particularly pathetic excuse for ducking his responsibility for doing the right thing in Afghanistan…

Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday that the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in New York will be "truly the trial of the century." It's unbelievable that the attorney general would use that phrase in the course of justifying his decision. As Wikipedia helpfully explains:…

In his speech Saturday at Tokyo's Suntory Hall, Barack Obama called himself "America's first Pacific President." His basis for that claim seems to be that he was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia as a boy, and, "when I was a young boy, my mother brought me to Kamakura, where I looked up at that…

This AP story explains how a federal civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four associates poses legal and political risks for Barack Obama: "Hauling the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen to a New York courthouse is a risky proposition for President Barack Obama. The…

Debra Burlingame--the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and my fellow board member of Keep America Safe--emails: Today Attorney General Eric Holder will announce that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and…

Must reading: A powerful cri de coeur by an Army officer, Major Shawn Keller, about Ft. Hood. Major Keller is angry, and he's right to be: "But as angry as I am at what happened, I'm even angrier that it was allowed to happen. Apparently, there was no shortage of warning signs that this guy…

It was too much to hope, I suppose, that Army Chief of Staff George Casey, appearing on the Sunday talk shows, would signal a re-thinking of the regime of political correctness that seems to have penetrated the Army. It was disappointing that he reinforced that regime with his silly-and…

In 1993, a newly elected Democratic president and a Democratic Congress pushed through a tax increase on a party-line vote. The next year Democrats lost control of Congress, with House Speaker Tom Foley defeated in his reelection bid and the Senate seat of retiring majority leader George Mitchell…

A friend e-mails that he came across this Obama quote from the 2004 convention, which seems pertinent in light of his pending Afghanistan decision: "When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about whey they are…

A friend e-mails that he came across this Obama quote from the 2004 convention, which seems pertinent in light of his pending Afghanistan decision: "When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about whey they are…

There's a very interesting Rasmussen poll out today: 49 percent of Americans now blame George W. Bush for our economic troubles, 45 percent blame President Obama. For the last several months, that number has hovered roughly at 55 percent blaming Bush, 35 percent Obama. This could be a big moment.…

Answer: the people. First of all, the new Rasmussen survey finds 42 percent favoring the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats -- down a bit from a week ago. 54 percent of the public is opposed. 23 percent of all voters strongly support the plan, with 44 percent…

The McChrystal review was done by August 1st. It is now the end of October. According to today's Washington Post ("Obama seeking options on forces; President looks to send fewer additional troops"), we'll get a decision by the end of November. That's four months. And it's evident that the review at…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to release the text of the Democratic health care proposal tomorrow, with the hope of bringing it to the floor as early as next Friday. Pelosi will claim that the Congressional Budget Office has scored the Democratic bill as deficit neutral over the next ten…

Alert to the New York Times, NPR, and other enlightened folk: The GOP's anti-intellectualism has reached new heights -- or new depths! Take a look at today's press release from House Republican leader John Boehner. It mocks the House's lax work schedule, and chides the Democrats for wasting…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that veteran and widely-respected Rep. Tom Cole (R, Okla.), former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and a member of the GOP Steering Committee and a Deputy GOP House Whip, will be endorsing Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 race. This is…

Today is the first anniversary of the death of our friend and colleague Dean Barnett. We loved him, and we miss him. But we are inspired by his memory-by his strength of character, his extraordinary courage, his gift for friendship, and his zest for life. Here's a link to what we wrote about Dean a…

Needless to say, if you're going to watch only one Sunday talk show, you should watch Fox News Sunday. But, as a fair and balanced kind of guy, I have to admit there are occasional moments of insight on the others. Today, sometime TWS contributor Dan Senor appeared on the Meet the Press roundtable,…

Dick Cheney that is, who will be speaking at the Center for Security Policy tonight. The speech is a real humdinger. Check back here at 6 for the full text of the former vice president's remarks. Update: Highlights from the Cheney speech... Most anyone who is given responsibility in matters of…

My colleague John McCormack called me last night, as I was watching the Phillies-Dodgers game, from his car in a parking lot in Lowville, N.Y. He had attended a Scozzafava campaign event, tried to ask the candidate a few questions -- and the Scozzafava campaign had called the police. John was…

Yesterday, in light of Rahm Emanuel's comments on delaying the decision on troops for Afghanistan, I asked: "Are Sunday talk show declarations by Emanuel and political advisor David Axelrod an appropriate way to announce the considered judgment of the president at this stage of a long Cabinet-level…

"It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop level if, in fact, you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing the Afghan country." -- White House Chief…

My colleague Michael Goldfarb is too modest to call attention to this, but I know he wears the scorn of the disreputable pseudo-pro-Israel organization, J Street, as a badge of honor. Here's a taste of a desperate J Street email, reacting to undisputed reporting on positions J Street has taken and…

A new poll in the November 3 special election for the congressional seat, NY-23, vacated by Army Secretary John McHugh, confirms what knowledgeable observers have suspected for a while: The candidacy of the official Republican nominee, liberal Dede Scozzafava, selected by local party officials and…

Here's a poll of purple-state (and Harry Reid's home state) Nevada that suggests the tax hikes needed to pay for Obamacare could doom it. Incidentally, the 77 percent of Nevadans who think Obamacare (or Baucus-care) will require tax increases are right. The Baucus bill has $500 billion of tax…

A new Rasmussen poll suggests that the task now is to educate the public about the Senate Democrats' health-care legislation--to show that "it's a tax hike dressed in a lab coat," and in particular that it's a middle-class tax hike masquerading as middle-class-friendly health reform. If the tax…

Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. A year later, he was out of power and the Soviet Union had dissolved. I don't mean to compare Barack Obama to Gorbachev, who was, whatever his faults, a truly historic and courageous figure. But let's hope the parallel extends this far: that a…

At today's White House meeting, President Obama, I'm told, reminded the congressional leaders that every thousand troops sent to Afghanistan would cost about a billion dollars a year, and asked whether the lawmakers would really support $40 to $50 billion a year of additional spending for the war.…

The following remarks were delivered by William Kristol at the funeral service for Irving Kristol, Congregation Adas Israel, Washington, D.C., September 22, 2009.

A prediction: President Obama will add a "surprise" visit to Afghanistan to his Olympics-lobbying trip to Copenhagen. The president and his advisers must realize, in Mark McKinnon's words, that "people elected Obama to be president--not the head of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce," that a large…

The single most damning story about President Obama so far is one we know courtesy of his national security adviser, Jim Jones. Visiting the newly installed military commanders in Afghanistan in late June, Jones told General Stanley McChrystal that if he requested more troops any time soon, Obama…

In his 60 Minutes interview to be aired tonight, President Obama apparently says, "I intend to be president for a while and once this bill passes, I own it....I'm the one who's going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to get this right." No, Mr. President. It's not about you. If…

An e-mail from my friend Michael Anton, who gave me permission to pass it on: I visited West Point today for a series of business meetings, mostly with faculty and some with Cadets. Not to go into too much boring detail, but the purpose was to get some feedback for some work my boss and colleagues…

Two of my favorite bloggers -- Jim Ceaser of the University of Virginia, and Sarah Palin of the University of Real America -- were particuarly struck by one line in President Obama's speech last night. As was I. This is it: "Now, add it all up and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900…

The Washington Post has been trying to paint Bob McDonnell as a right-wing extremist this summer by printing dozens of pieces related to the Republican's 20 year-old socially conservative thesis. With all of their reporters digging through Deeds past comments, the Post seems to have overlooked…

In his pro-autocracy New York Times column today, Tom Friedman complains that "on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying 'no.'" Friedman has been…

Let us be among the first to welcome, with trumpets and fanfare, the new quarterly, National Affairs.

Let us be among the first to welcome, with trumpets and fanfare, the new quarterly, National Affairs.

Last week I speculated as to which member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) might have been the source of a leak of classified information that, as first reported by the Washington Times, the CIA has now referred to the Department of Justice for further investigation.…

Former Democratic party presidential candidate and National Chairman Howard Dean appeared today on Fox News Sunday. Advocating the use (or rather the abuse) of budget reconciliation to jam Obamacare through the Senate, he said: "I don't think the American people care about the process. They care…

In late March, when President Obama announced a first wave of reinforcements for the war in Afghanistan, an Obama administration official said approvingly, "He's gone all in." Now the New York Times reports that Defense Secretary Gates and President Obama are likely soon to receive a memorandum…

Six months into the Obama presidency, conservatives and Republicans have occasion for some good cheer.

There's one point of overlap in today's statement by Attorney General Eric Holder and tonight's by former Vice President Dick Cheney. Holder: "The men and women in our intelligence community ... deserve our respect and gratitude for the work they do." Cheney: "The people involved deserve our…

Palma de Mallorca, Spain We're about halfway through the TWS cruise--and so far, so good. Some great sightseeing in Rome, Tuscany, Monte Carlo and Barcelona; some great panels starring my colleagues and our special guests Elliott Abrams and Anne-Elisabeth Moutet; interesting and lively informal…

Here's President Obama yesterday: "And I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care, I don't want socialized medicine, and don't touch my Medicare.' (Laughter.) And I wanted to say, well, I mean, that's what Medicare is, it's a government-run health…

In re Obamacare: The facts are bad, and public opinion is bad. Otherwise it's doing fine! Chuck Blahous of the Hudson Institute has an important article in today's Politico. He points out that President Obama makes it seem as if his health insurance reforms won't add to the deficit over the next…

Today, on Fox News Sunday, Juan Williams came up with a fine formulation, in the context of the Henry Louis Gates imbroglio: "But in this situation, the president spoke without the facts. And so you can't have a teachable moment if it's based on a lie." Amid all the blather about "teachable…

A friend sends along this link, apropos my comment last night on the Special Report panel that President Obama's instinctive identification with Professor Gates (and his willingness to attack Sergeant Crowley without knowing the facts) was as much about class as race. In a short note in the August…

Here's a piece of advice for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: I'm sure it's been frustrating being cut out of decisions by the Obama White House. But it's not worth currying favor with your boss by following in his footsteps and, when abroad, boosting him and his administration at the expense of…

"The time for talk is through." -- President Obama, talking to liberal bloggers on a conference call Monday night. The Democratic bills in the House and Senate are a thousand pages long. They're still changing as committees try to mark them up, or as they mark up other versions of health insurance…

With Obamacare on the ropes, there will be a temptation for opponents to let up on their criticism, and to try to appear constructive, or at least responsible. There will be a tendency to want to let the Democrats' plans sink of their own weight, to emphasize that the critics have been pushing…

The air is seeping out of the Great Liberal Hot Air Balloon. American liberals have been hoping, wishing, and praying--okay, maybe not praying--for over a quarter-century for an end to the ghastly interlude of conservative dominance ushered in by Ronald Reagan. Surely it was all a bad dream, a…

Newsweek Managing Editor Daniel Klaidman explains that his magazine decided to ask Sen. Ted Kennedy to author a cover piece on health care, because "his absence during this historic debate had been so palpable, yet here was a way for this respected voice on health care to weigh in and be part of…

Newsweek Managing Editor Daniel Klaidman explains that his magazine decided to ask Sen. Ted Kennedy to author a cover piece on health care, because "his absence during this historic debate had been so palpable, yet here was a way for this respected voice on health care to weigh in and be part of…

Kaboom goes Obamacare: Just 35% of U.S. voters now support the creation of a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurers. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% of voters oppose setting up a government health insurance company as President…

"The president, and certainly I and our entire administration, are 100 percent committed to the closure of Guantanamo and to proceeding with the transfer of those who can be transferred, the trial of those who can be tried, and the continuing detention of those who pose a grave threat," Secretary…

Haaretz reports today: "Obama to U.S. Jewish leaders: Israel must engage in self-reflection" And not just any old self-reflection. According to the article, Obama told Jewish leaders at the White House yesterday that Israel would need "to engage in serious self-reflection." "Serious…

On June 20, after a week of post-Iranian-election presidential mealy-mouthing, and a day after both houses of Congress had passed resolutions condemning the behavior of the Iranian regime, the White House put out a statement from President Obama. It began:

In President Obama's op-ed on the topic of the economy, here are some words you won't find: profits, investment, incentives, taxes, risk, enterprise or markets. Or freedom, or liberty. So, though he claims to want to build a "foundation for growth," Obama ignores the real drivers of economic…

"Interracial Roommates Can Reduce Prejudice," the New York Times informs us today. That's terrific. Who knew, when Alan Keyes (black), Steve Rosen (half-Korean), and I decided to live together for the 1973-1974 academic year that we would be contributing so much to the public good? We thought we'd…

I've heard from many people regarding Palin in the last 24 hours. About 80 percent think my somewhat pro-Palin take is crazy. But I was heartened that a couple of those inclined (more or less) to agree with me are among the most astute of my friends. One (we'll call her "A") was terse. She emails:…

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble - but it could be a shrewd one. After all, she's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others,…

Lefty journalist Todd Purdum has a hit piece in the new Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin. You don't have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the…

Here's how President Obama concluded an interview in the Oval Office today: "But, look, I just think that what we've been doing over the last six months is getting people back into fighting trim. This is a town where there was just a belief that nothing could get done....I'll use just the workout…

The Washington Times reports: The White House has rescinded the invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at U.S. embassies around the world. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said nobody from Iran RSVPed to come, and at this point, the invitations are no longer valid.…

As long as the health care reform plan envisioned by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats was just a series of slogans, it was easy for the left to build support for it and difficult for the right to imagine how it could be stopped. It is hard, after all, to object to vague promises…

Late yesterday, President Obama chose to repeat the words of State Department spokesman Ian Kelly earlier in the day: Both said they were "deeply troubled" by events in Iran. When asked if the U.S. would go beyond that to condemn the actions of the regime, Kelly answered: "I haven't used that word,…

There have been very good grounds to criticize President Obama's foreign policy so far. There will be much more to criticize over the next three and a half years. But he is our president. We could be at an historical inflection point in Iran. The United States may be able to play an important role.…

From niacblog, the the blog of the National Iranian-American Council, tonight: In response to a question of what the Iranian people want the U.S. and American people to do, his [a resident of Tehran's] response was as follows: The most essential need of young Iranians is to be recognized by US…

Steve Hayes asks: Administration officials talk about their belief in "smart power." But what good is "smart power" if you don't exercise it? "Smart power" is a modification of "soft power," which the Obama-ites are also huge fans of. Well, isn't this the time to try some soft power? For example:…

There's an article in the May/June Boston Review on an interesting study that seems (I wonder why?) to have gotten little attention. Neil Malhotra, of Stanford Business School, and Yotam Margalit, who teaches political science at Columbia, report on a survey of 2,768 American adults in which they…

"First Latina Picked for Supreme Court; GOP Faces Delicate Task in Opposition," blared the four-column headline on the front page of the May 27 Washington Post. Leave aside the Post's odd failure to put in the headline the name of the person nominated--itself a nice example of the…

Barack Obama spoke at the National Archives last Thursday on the war on terror (not that he used that term). After paying tribute to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and before turning to a defense of his policies, the President of the United States said:

"I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor," said White House press spokesperson Robert Gibbs un-empathetically today. Wasn't Gibbs's comment on his boss's Supreme Court nominee a bit harsh? Isn't a poor choice of words kind of a problem for a judge? But Gibbs had just begun his…

Any doubts I had that it was not just right in principle but also politically smart to challenge the Sonia Sotomayor pick disappeared this morning: The National Journal reports that its survey of "GOP Insiders" shows 64 percent advising that Republicans dodge a battle, with only a quarter…

"Where policy is made." That's how, in 2005, reported Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor characterized the Court of Appeals, where she now serves. It's undoubtedly even truer, in her eyes, about the Supreme Court. The debate over her confirmation could be an interesting "teaching moment"--a…

When accused of being too aggressive on behalf of the United States at the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of repeating a French proverb: "Cet animal est fort méchant, / Quand on l'attaque il se défend." Imagine--an animal so mean that, when attacked, it defends itself!

I've read both speeches. Obama's is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor--platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way. This sentence was revealing: "On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained an advance copy of VP Cheney's remarks as prepared for delivery later this morning at the American Enterprise Institute. I've read it quickly. I think fair-minded people will find it very well-argued and powerful. Thank you all very much, and Arthur, thank you for…

The excuse some universities give for not permitting ROTC on campus is don't-ask-don't-tell. This is of course a policy the military follows pursuant to legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1993--but the universities choose to blame the military. Now it turns out that…

From White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs's press briefing today: Q ... Is this something that is being considered, by the president, for reversal? Or is this the policy that will go forward? And does he have any anxiety about the potential consequences of the release of these photographs? MR. GIBBS:…

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave one heck of a commencement speech Saturday at Butler University. Highlights: We Boomers were the children that the Second World War was fought for. Parents who had endured both war and the Great Depression devoted themselves sacrificially to ensuring us a better…

To both departing Justice David Souter and party-switching Senator Arlen Specter, one is tempted to say: Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

"We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history," President Obama said when he ordered the release of the Justice Department interrogation memos. Actually, no. Not at all. We were attacked on 9/11. We responded to that attack with remarkable restraint in the use of force, respect…

Jack Kemp--American patriot, fighter for freedom, apostle of opportunity, and a kind and generous man--has died at age 73. Our thoughts and prayers are with him, his wife Joanne, and his children and the rest of his family. "He was a man, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like…

Those of us in the Cheney-Hayden-Mukasey, pro-reasonable-interrogation, anti-making-mock-of-those-who-guard-us camp, might wish to remind our fellow citizens: The OLC memos reminded their recipients that torture is illegal, and conscientiously advised their recipients how to carefully conduct…

Of course, everyone's first choice for president in 2012 is Dick Cheney. But Liz Cheney's boffo performance yesterday in the lefties' den, MSNBC, defending sensible interrogation policies in the war on terror, surely puts her in contention for the runner-up position.

Rasmussen reports: While half the nation has a favorable opinion of last Wednesday's events, the nation's Political Class has a much dimmer view-just 13% of the political elite offered even a somewhat favorable assessment while 81% said the opposite. Among the Political Class, not a single survey…

It wasn't really a surprise that President Obama sided with leftist lawyers in his Justice Department and released, over the objections of the intelligence community, four Office of Legal Counsel memos that concluded certain interrogation techniques used in the last several years by CIA officers on…

It wasn't really a surprise that President Obama sided with leftist lawyers in his Justice Department and released, over the objections of the intelligence community, four Office of Legal Counsel memos that concluded certain interrogation techniques used in the last several years by CIA officers on…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has been off this week, so there won't be a new issue posted tomorrow. But you can begin to make up for that grievous loss by reading the Exurban League exclusive, "Obama reaches out to Moderate Pirate Community," along with the follow-up post on Vikings.

Paul Singer's op-ed in the Journal is a must read. Here's an excerpt: In the past decade, most global financial institutions built highly leveraged balance sheets -- sometimes as high as 30 to 1 -- that were stuffed with risky assets. These institutions also bought on a large scale for their own…

"Liberty" isn't a word you'll find in President Obama's Iranian New Year message to "the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Nor is "freedom." Nor "democracy." Nor "human rights."

"Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste," chief-of-staff-designate Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times the Sunday after Barack Obama's election. "They are opportunities to do big things."

Here's President Obama, Wednesday night at his town hall meeting in California: The same is true with AIG.... It was the right thing to do to step in. Here's the problem. It's almost like they've got - they've got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger. You don't want…