Michael Barone from CaglePost.com Columns by Michael Barone from CaglePost.com http://rss.caglepost.com/columns.aspx?name=Michael+Barone Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:00:00 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss RSS.NET: http://rss-net.sf.net/ Firefighter Case Shows Seamy Side Of Racial Politics The Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters, was a ringing endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on racial discrimination and a repudiation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision... http://www.caglepost.com/article/119b7107-9e94-4df0-8c7f-db11d298ebae.html Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:00:00 GMT No Excuse For Dems' Sticker Shock On Health Care Democrats' plans to pass major health care legislation have been stymied, at least for the moment, by the Congressional Budget Office's cost estimates. To the consternation and apparent surprise of leading Democrats, the CBO scored Senate Finance Cha... http://www.caglepost.com/article/7ec6e8e0-4600-4ab0-b62a-74a5bd103818.html Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT The Adolescent Angst Of Barack Obama There is a tendency for newly installed presidents, like adolescents suddenly liberated from adult supervision, to do the exact opposite of what their predecessors did. Presidents of both parties indulge in this behavior, though Democrats who campaig... http://www.caglepost.com/article/5bde395c-eb79-4d6c-89ee-638c914f43c1.html Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Dodge Facts, Skip Details, Govern Chicago-Style We pundits like to analyze our presidents and so, as Barack Obama deals with difficult problems ranging from health care legislation to upheaval in Iran, let me offer my Three Rules of Obama. First, Obama likes to execute long-range strategies but su... http://www.caglepost.com/article/6cdd55b1-bfb4-4f78-acb1-5ebc61fd84fc.html Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT All Politics Is Turnout -- And Enthusiasm Is Key Many psephologists - derived from the word for pebbles, which the ancient Greeks used as ballots - study who wins and loses elections. Lately, I've been looking more closely at turnout. For we live, though most psephologists haven't stopped to notice... http://www.caglepost.com/article/5d1b09f3-8a17-4923-b107-e150293fd69d.html Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT When Detainees Get Rights They Don't Deserve It shouldn't come as a complete surprise that, as Stephen Hayes reported in The Weekly Standard, detainees in Afghanistan are now being advised of their Miranda rights by American interrogators - that they have a right to be silent, a right to a lawy... http://www.caglepost.com/article/32e0bff9-17a9-4fa4-89b4-f52c345e4928.html Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Qualms And Questions About Obama's Health Plan Barack Obama has said he wants to pass a national health care bill this year, with a government insurance policy option. Democratic congressional leaders have called for passage of such a bill before the beginning of the August congressional recess. ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b76652b5-b81f-4a09-9641-b1ae572e7444.html Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Obama Needs To Brush Up On Middle East History For a man of his impressive educational credentials, Barack Obama has sometimes shown a surprising ignorance of history. During the 2008 campaign, when challenged on his pledge to meet with foreign tyrants without preconditions, he said that presiden... http://www.caglepost.com/article/17411bac-1a88-4e72-bb71-ef5c9d325e2b.html Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Advancing Civil Rights By Overturning Old Laws Two cases likely to be decided this month by the Supreme Court - one of them an appeal in a Connecticut case decided by a panel including Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor - could result in significant changes in our civil rights laws. One ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c93787b6-2545-49f8-a6f8-a8c7f90a3a36.html Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT GOP Should Run Against The Power of the Center Move to the center. That's the advice Republicans are getting from quarters friendly and otherwise. It seems to make a certain amount of sense. If opinion is arrayed along a single-dimension, left-to-right spectrum and clustered in the middle in a be... http://www.caglepost.com/article/39c1d6be-8b19-433e-92d8-4fcc5d31d026.html Sun, 31 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT Will Sotomayor's Style Blunt Her Liberal Views? Barack Obama has named his nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. What's the likely fallout, politically and judicially? Politically, Obama gets a plus for naming the first Hispanic justice (unless o... http://www.caglepost.com/article/889d7548-af83-4413-ae59-1f3f22f159d4.html Thu, 28 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT No Time For Tea-And-Crumpet Interrogations When former Vice President Dan Quayle scheduled a big speech, President Bill Clinton didn't hop in and schedule one for the hour before. When former Vice President Al Gore scheduled a big speech, President George W. Bush didn't hop in and schedule on... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b55ae4c0-1500-4dca-a308-c4d63f606eb6.html Mon, 25 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT Why The U.S. Should Listen To India's Voters Last November, 131 million Americans voted, and the whole world took notice. Over the last month, about 700 million Indians voted, and most Americans, like most of the world, didn't much notice. To be sure, American elections are more important to pe... http://www.caglepost.com/article/10e6b9be-04d1-49da-8b10-a25ae405b6bc.html Thu, 21 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT Obama Offers Security at the Expense of Liberty Republicans and conservatives are trying to grapple with the Obama administration's $3,600,000,000,000 federal budget - let's include the zeroes rather than use the trivializing abbreviation $3.6 trillion - and the larger-than-previously-projected $1... http://www.caglepost.com/article/e518c79d-76a0-4696-ae86-065be1efa9d4.html Thu, 14 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT On Guns and Climate, the Elites Are Out of Touch Many years ago, political scientists came up with a theory that elites lead public opinion. And on some issues, they clearly do. But on some issues, they don't. Two examples of the latter phenomenon are conspicuous at a time when Barack Obama enjoys ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/596e6caf-f91a-4bad-a852-25e723ca90d4.html Mon, 11 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT White House Puts UAW Ahead Of Property Rights Last Friday, the day after Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, I drove past the company''s headquarters on I-75 in Auburn Hills, Mich. As I glanced at the pentagram logo, I felt myself tearing up a little bit. Anyone who grew up in the Detroit area, as I ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/e253493e-f1c3-45b9-ae36-86708c5e335f.html Thu, 07 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT Beware of Mandatory Arbitration in Card Check In his statement explaining his decision to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party, Sen. Arlen Specter assured his listeners that "my position on Employees Free Choice (card check) will not change." In later statements, Specter was explic... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b320bd8b-8ce0-4566-9c81-c7939415c352.html Mon, 04 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT Specter's Party Switch Is All About Winning Only his most sycophantic admirers might compare Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter with Winston Churchill, but the two do have something in common. Both had long and turbulent political careers, and both switched parties twice. Churchill crossed aisles... http://www.caglepost.com/article/90b0ddba-5541-4f42-b057-23d8056dba19.html Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Moving Toward Europe -- But Do Americans Want To Go? Ninety-nine days in, with 1,362 days to go, and we can see with some clarity the trajectory on which Barack Obama wants to take the United States. To put it in geographical terms, he wants to move us some considerable distance toward Europe. This is ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/9dc754c5-0795-4cb5-ab69-3eb7f1959046.html Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Obama Lets Congress -- And Lobbyists -- Do The Work The balance between the executive and legislative branches in writing laws has changed over the centuries. In the 19th century, Sen. Stephen Douglas wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act, with President Franklin Pierce just an interested bystander. In the 20... http://www.caglepost.com/article/ede85f00-177c-4720-a3e1-212d982ce518.html Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Back To The Future: Obama's Foreign Policy As Barack Obama finishes up his second major foreign tour, a pattern in his approach to foreign policy seems to be emerging. On pressing matters of obvious importance, he has made responsible decisions that have not been far out of line with the poli... http://www.caglepost.com/article/40f7e5d0-191c-48c6-9d22-574d0cc7d5ee.html Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT On Climate And Health, Beware Of Easy Formulas Beware of geeks bearing formulas. That's the lesson most of us have learned from the financial crisis. The "quants" who devised the risk models that induced so many financial institutions to buy mortgage-backed securities thought they had reduced ris... http://www.caglepost.com/article/1c55e308-c8a4-4708-b4a1-076a51162128.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Unions Can't Move the World If you have a long enough lever, you can move the world. That's an old saying attributed to Galileo. But what Galileo didn't add is that a long enough lever may splinter in your hands if the material is not strong enough. You may end up not moving th... http://www.caglepost.com/article/e0fa2fb2-2bf3-4a14-bc46-a54a1781fc10.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Obama Abroad: In Some Ways, Much Like Bush Barack Obama's foreign policy is beginning to take shape. Semantically, it's a sharp repudiation of the policies of the George W. Bush administration. In reality, it's something like a continuation of Bush policies. Or, if you want to distinguish bet... http://www.caglepost.com/article/8f4a36a7-1f98-4217-a3f4-e6f708b34387.html Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Not Yet Ready for a Welfare State Roadblocks. That's what Barack Obama has been encountering on the audacious path toward a European-style welfare state he has set out in his budget and other proposals. He continues to insist that America cannot enjoy real prosperity again without hi... http://www.caglepost.com/article/affc72c2-0ad8-4173-8e21-531389a5d0da.html Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT Card Check: Good for Unions, Bad for America The Obama administration's budget is full of proposals that threaten to weaken our staggering economy. Higher taxes on high earners and reduced deductions for their charitable contributions and mortgage interests. A cap-and-trade system that will imp... http://www.caglepost.com/article/bea37559-15c0-479b-9b6f-23bac553cae4.html Sat, 21 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT Criticism Shows Obama Is Losing Focus We've been hearing a lot of criticism of Barack Obama in recent days from pro-Obama corners - from celebrity investor Warren Buffett, from moderate conservative columnist David Brooks, from one of the Democratic Party's deepest thinkers, William Gals... http://www.caglepost.com/article/342cf20c-a28b-4870-a30b-7d9921763873.html Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT Crushing Those Animal Spirits "Animal spirits," said John Maynard Keynes, are the essential spring of capitalism. We depend on the animal spirits of investors, high earners and entrepreneurs for a growing economy. Keynes, a subtler analyst of market economies than the single-mind... http://www.caglepost.com/article/d4841d4d-ca7a-47a8-9ee8-4e7a495b5dcc.html Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT Liberals Turning Blind Eye To Human Rights On the last day of her trip to East Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke briefly of the place of human rights in American policy toward China. "Our pressing on those issues" - issues she didn't identify any more fully - "can't interfere wit... http://www.caglepost.com/article/1cabfd6d-715c-4328-a1df-bde8ceb6788c.html Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:00:00 GMT Count On The Constitution All of America was watching Barack Obama on Jan. 20 as he promised to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." But few thought that, within a month, controversy would arise over the Constitution's census clause. "Represen... http://www.caglepost.com/article/fe26a147-e89d-45b8-b49d-a40fd3ff7a76.html Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT The Real Lessons Of The Great Depression "Not since the Great Depression." "Not since the 1930s." You hear those phrases a lot these days, and with some reason. As Congress prepares to pass the Democratic stimulus package, it may be worthwhile to look back at Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal a... http://www.caglepost.com/article/7613d63c-62b8-409a-a9a2-a4d0e2ec06a7.html Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT Calm And Cool On A No Good, Very Bad Day Tuesday, Feb. 3, was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Barack Obama. First, his appointee for White House chief performance officer resigned, apparently because she had failed to pay unemployment taxes on household help several years ag... http://www.caglepost.com/article/694459e8-6ab1-45f0-9b7c-27de0ae3aa4d.html Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT The GOP Should Go Upscale There's a debate going on in some Republican circles over which groups of the electorate the party should target. This debate starts off with some uncomfortable realizations. One is that while John McCain's 46 percent share of the vote is not as dism... http://www.caglepost.com/article/db0feb7b-9b95-4cef-99b8-d81ac7a060f3.html Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT The Obama-Kennedy Connection Last Tuesday, for the 22nd time in 220 years, Americans saw the peaceful post-election transfer of power from one political party to another. In our great outdoor national ceremony, scheduled for some reason on a day that is as likely as any other to... http://www.caglepost.com/article/9de29a06-c388-49c4-b92b-c87978c6054e.html Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT Is A Change In Migration Patterns At Hand? Evidence keeps accumulating that the tide of immigration is ebbing. Tough enforcement laws passed by states like Arizona and Oklahoma and localities like Prince William County, Va., have reportedly spurred Latino immigrants to move elsewhere. Tougher... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b650484c-e5f5-4e55-b3a2-4907886be6ba.html Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT Obama'S Economic Strategy How will Barack Obama govern as president? One clue, I think, is the site where he chose to make his first post-election policy speech, laying out his economic stimulus plan last week. Presumably he had many invitations and could have made it anywher... http://www.caglepost.com/article/6de88c93-64c3-4f76-8eb5-33cb27572c2d.html Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT No Permanent Majorities In America As we approach the change from a Republican to a Democratic administration, I have been thinking about the differences in the basic character of our two historic parties - the oldest and third oldest free political parties in the world (number two, a... http://www.caglepost.com/article/16b26639-bce1-421e-a47f-345847719b25.html Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT Obama May Be An Aloof President Barack Obama and his family are vacationing in his native Hawaii, far from the wintry snows of Chicago - and far from almost every other American politician. There's a metaphor here for how I think Obama is going to conduct himself as president: He's... http://www.caglepost.com/article/7cc1ce94-aac9-40e6-a3d4-81add0fa9157.html Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT Expectations Of Hope And Change A new generation is coming to the White House. Barack Obama, born in 1961, is technically a baby boomer. But his early years were straight out of Generation X - abandoned by his father and, for a time, his mother; experimentation with drugs; a sense ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/e8068ac9-3db4-459e-96af-c439a41b3509.html Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT Chicago Politics Stains Obama I have not seen it recorded whether John F. Kennedy, after he was elected president in 1960, held conversations with Massachusetts Gov. Foster Furcolo as to who would be appointed to fill his seat in the Senate. History does record that Furcolo, just... http://www.caglepost.com/article/53a5e902-1604-4927-a911-47f8a06e2c83.html Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT Message From Georgia: This Too Shall Pass The world doesn't stand still. Case in point: the Georgia runoff election last week made necessary because Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss failed, barely, to win an absolute majority on Nov. 4. In that contest, Chambliss led Democratic challenger Jim... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b7d1cbcd-e807-4332-8be8-3f9a21dd71ba.html Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT Managing Risk In An Unstable World How can we reduce risk for individuals? That's a natural question when a financial crisis has vaporized trillions of dollars of personal wealth in residential real estate and financial instruments. The problem is, when you try to reduce risk for indi... http://www.caglepost.com/article/4050fe72-58c9-48d8-8c6b-0cfe01320f68.html Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT The Limits Of Success -- And Failure We Americans are blessed with a history that teaches that things work out right. Our first president set the precedent of relinquishing power he could have had for life and returning to his farm. Two of our greatest presidents were struck down, Abrah... http://www.caglepost.com/article/78dab790-d795-4518-876c-db593ddd1945.html Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT Detroit Automakers A Relic Of The Past Barack Obama has noted, carefully and correctly, that we have only one president at a time. Yet on at least one issue he has taken the lead and nudged the man who will soon be his predecessor in a direction that he might not have taken without prompt... http://www.caglepost.com/article/0b16393c-2779-4670-baff-948e207f1e18.html Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT Triumph Of Temperament, Not Policy The Democrats' victory - and Barack Obama's - was overdetermined and underdelivered. Overdetermined: Huge majorities believe the country is on the wrong track and disapprove of George W. Bush; voters prefer generic Democrats over Republicans by 10 pe... http://www.caglepost.com/article/a6053e7d-73f6-4e43-bb12-9980659a8348.html Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT Obama's New New Deal No Better Than the Old One With victory in sight, Barack Obama's supporters are predicting that he will give us a new New Deal. To see what that might mean, let's look back on the original New Deal. The purpose of New Deal legislation was not, as commonly thought, to restore e... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c19fa27f-520b-45f8-8890-6079aa8bdd54.html Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT A Reality Check On Obama's Wish List What will an Obama administration and a Congress with increased Democratic majorities do? That's a relevant question, given the Democrats' leads in the polls. And it's a little hard to answer, given the financial crisis that has been raging and the r... http://www.caglepost.com/article/df3a771d-075b-4876-9e76-b2de1eb554b9.html Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT Can Joe The Plumber Turn It Around? Can Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber from Ohio, change the course of this campaign? That's one question that was raised at the third presidential debate. Wurzelbacher is the man who, in a moment caught on YouTube, confronts Barack Obama on his plan ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/4d01e05b-1a4f-445e-b902-986e5147aa7c.html Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Coming Obama Thugocracy "I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in thei... http://www.caglepost.com/article/8e31f447-273e-4b10-b1b1-dce38a96cdab.html Mon, 13 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Year Of Campaign Chaos Politics ordinarily has a certain predictability. Yet presidential politics this year has often seemed to resemble what science writer James Gleick described in his book "Chaos." "Chaos," he quotes one physicist as saying, "eliminates the Laplacian f... http://www.caglepost.com/article/bbc2ecf3-a846-4974-919f-c92be714b07a.html Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT Are We At An Inflection Point? You can sum up much of 20th century history by saying that in the 1930s Americans decided that markets didn't work and government did, and that in the 1970s Americans decided that government didn't work and markets did. The protracted and painful exp... http://www.caglepost.com/article/ecf05962-69da-4eab-b1f3-fc1731f73030.html Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Old Economic Rule Doesn't Work The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the 500-point plunge of the Dow, the government takeover of AIG - all these have got the presidential candidates talking about the economy. But both Barack Obama and Joh... http://www.caglepost.com/article/47357b8b-18fe-4cba-ae2a-dc2880051c79.html Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT McCain Flies His Campaign Past Obama John McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. In his selection of Sarah Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days: He has gotten inside Barack Obama's OODA loop. Tha... http://www.caglepost.com/article/48354056-cc60-435d-ba06-62c87cadc026.html Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Battle of The Party Themes The national conventions are political shows staged to influence voters. Soon, we can measure the bounce that the two tickets have received from their gatherings. But the more important question is whether the conventions establish arguments that are... http://www.caglepost.com/article/cf4a4980-2f6b-4d6d-82d6-be630cd7af7d.html Mon, 08 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT Outrageous Vulnerabilities As this is written, with a deadline looming, I have not heard Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field and have not learned who is John McCain's choice for vice president. You know more about these things than I do. So I will write about som... http://www.caglepost.com/article/d893045c-199b-4cd0-8511-30d638b32a5a.html Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Chosen Obama Narrative Once upon a time, the two parties' national conventions chose presidential nominees. Now, they are television shows that try to establish a narrative - one that links the long-since-determined nominee's life story with the ongoing history of the nati... http://www.caglepost.com/article/a0c42366-c936-4762-8c4b-7b8ceeb2bb93.html Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT Echoes of Berlin Last week, the two erstwhile communist superpowers were in the spotlight. Starting on Aug. 8, China staged the Olympics - an event on the schedule for years. Also on Aug. 8, Russia invaded the independent republic of Georgia - which apparently caught... http://www.caglepost.com/article/0163817a-970c-4144-8b86-4a6debff7612.html Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Ghosts of Political Leanings To understand changes in the political map, we naturally tend to look for contemporary explanations. But American political alignments are not written on an empty slate. Beginnings matter, and the civic personalities of states tend to reflect the cul... http://www.caglepost.com/article/36ad6bec-d964-4609-b02c-71b38f628572.html Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT Polls Continue To Show An Unstable Presidential Campaign Just when you think you've got the presidential race figured out, something comes along to upend your carefully wrought conclusions. Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama's trip abroad the week of July 21-25 and predicted he would... http://www.caglepost.com/article/d0407702-74e2-44d5-b4f2-61d08a6e6043.html Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT A Step Back From Enviro Lunacy Sometimes public opinion doesn't flow smoothly; it shifts sharply when a tipping point is reached. Case in point: gas prices. $3 a gallon gas didn't change anybody's mind about energy issues. $4 a gallon gas did. Evidently, the experience of paying m... http://www.caglepost.com/article/682a610c-31b3-4fb1-944f-0a1c8e2c6e04.html Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT Ghosts of 1976 In Today's Campaign Looking back over the last 40 years, the presidential campaign that most closely resembles this year's is the contest between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976. The Republicans were the incumbent presidential party that year, as they are now, but ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b21349fa-3897-44f6-bb11-ab1e59ba874c.html Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT We're Not Leaving Sixty years ago this month, the top story in campaign year 1948 was not the big poll lead of Republican nominee Thomas Dewey or the plight of President Harry Truman. It was the Berlin airlift. On June 23, the Soviets cut off land access to West Berli... http://www.caglepost.com/article/d215e725-1950-4057-afff-8f3895aa908c.html Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT Obama's Candidacy Is A Test "They're going to try to make you afraid of me," Barack Obama told the audience at a Jacksonville fundraiser last month. "He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?" Obama was doing here by inference what ma... http://www.caglepost.com/article/0fd01dc2-8049-475c-b31a-ebc3c4d41f87.html Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT Why Veeps Now Matter "Not Exactly a Crime" is the title of a book on America's vice presidents published in 1972 - a year before Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign for actually committing a crime. The office of vice president has long been the butt of jokes ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/f7ec603c-aefb-49d3-a52d-c9876c66479e.html Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Facts In Iraq Are Changing As we enter the second half of the campaign year, facts are undermining the Democratic narrative that has dominated our politics since about the time Hurricane Katrina rolled into the Gulf coast - most importantly, the facts about Iraq. During the De... http://www.caglepost.com/article/75c37869-59ae-4ff8-b392-c8c409a6c88a.html Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT In Defense of Lobbyists Barack Obama has long said that his campaign will not accept contributions from lobbyists, and now that he is the presumptive nominee, the Democratic National Committee won't accept them, either. John McCain says that his campaign won't employ lobbyi... http://www.caglepost.com/article/76749005-0846-40b1-a490-9df489a14e6c.html Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT General Election Campaign Begins With New Playing Field Almost precisely at the midpoint between the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and the general election on Nov. 4, the general election campaign is on. Neither party's nominee swept the primaries. John McCain's narrow popular vote margins in New Hampshire, Sou... http://www.caglepost.com/article/177df398-3156-4231-86ca-cd922063e630.html Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Economy: A Reality Check "It's the economy, stupid," James Carville famously said during the 1992 campaign, when a young Bill Clinton was running against the other President Bush. The same could be said during this presidential campaign. The headlines are full of economic ba... http://www.caglepost.com/article/9ef5ba34-13ee-4133-99ad-e840efc4e036.html Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Rev. Wright Connection Still Haunts Obama As Barack Obama makes his slow but steady way toward the Democratic nomination, the assumption in the admiring precincts of the press corps is that voters have dismissed as irrelevant his longtime association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But that m... http://www.caglepost.com/article/a7901ffd-beb6-4b7f-aef1-3082b7e40e6f.html Mon, 26 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT An Unconventional 2008 Election Season What makes this presidential election different from all other presidential elections? And different from what we expected when the year began? First, neither party's presumptive nominee was chosen by massive support from primary voters, as John Kerr... http://www.caglepost.com/article/84573d22-ecf1-4b62-a416-99d93af82a01.html Mon, 19 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT Rethinking The Iraq Critics In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after th... http://www.caglepost.com/article/61324d5d-31ba-4173-b7e8-44caf3933ce7.html Mon, 12 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT Wright Controversy Affects The Polls Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama? It's too early to say that, but there are some disturbing signs. On the positive side, superdelegates still are breaking his way. Rep. Baron Hill, whose southern Indiana district almost certainly will vote ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/8ca737f7-eeb7-4823-a6bc-6a4273ba7833.html Mon, 05 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT Popular Vote Gives Clinton An Edge One thing many people haven't noticed about Hillary Clinton's 55 percent to 45 percent victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary is that it put her ahead of Obama in the popular vote. Her 214,000-vote margin in the Keystone State means th... http://www.caglepost.com/article/2705ab20-6c4f-4c77-a04e-cf8da9a6a4b9.html Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Rules Are Changing for Obama Barack Obama seemed puzzled. Angrily puzzled. The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question. At the April 16 Philadelphia debate, George Stephanopoulos, longtime aide to Democratic politicians, was asking about his longtime ass... http://www.caglepost.com/article/ace1da52-c64c-4d9b-b96f-457dfd23033d.html Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT Uncle Sam Pays? Sure, Whatever "It's the economy, stupid." Those immortal words of the political philosopher James Carville in 1992 have been reverberating increasingly in the 2008 campaign. Polls show the economy as the top issue for voters, far ahead of Iraq. The general assumpt... http://www.caglepost.com/article/85f880d5-20c7-4efc-b314-aabc3f52d556.html Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT Missing A Generation Most people's views of the world are shaped by the times in which they came of age. That's why we speak of a baby boom generation or a Generation X. But some people miss out on the formative experiences of most of their peers. That's the case, I thin... http://www.caglepost.com/article/5c73b8fc-af63-487f-a34a-0ba3e671c425.html Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT Will Wright Damage Obama's Millennial Support? It's a generational thing. That was the theme of Barack Obama's speech last Tuesday, in which he both failed to renounce and at the same time separated himself from the man he has described as his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama sai... http://www.caglepost.com/article/6c9c9b37-a0e8-4fac-98cc-527ee9cf8044.html Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Importance of Fallon's Fall The abrupt resignation of Adm. William Fallon as the head of Central Command almost got lost amid the breaking news of Barack Obama's victory in the Mississippi primary and Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York. But it's a much more con... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c0a2aee0-5168-4f1c-806c-780476ad4400.html Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT Clinton Has Only One Plausible Path To The Nomination Barack Obama won 11 out of 11 primaries and caucuses from Super Tuesday to Feb. 19. Hillary Clinton won three out of four contests on March 4. Suddenly, the look and feel of the Democratic presidential race were different. Yet the delegate count has ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/58da7421-0807-4724-83ec-10f63f774412.html Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT Throw Out The Old Electoral Maps In 2008 It's time to throw out that old map with the red states and blue states. The map that implies that all but a handful of states will definitely vote Republican or Democratic and that the real contest will be decided in Florida or Ohio or whatever. For... http://www.caglepost.com/article/f519b398-45a6-4d67-9d2b-4503dc189273.html Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:00:00 GMT General Election Campaign Has Already Started It's starting to feel like the general election. Rising to claim victory in the Wisconsin Republican primary before the networks could declare Barack Obama the winner on the Democratic side, John McCain started right in on his general election oppone... http://www.caglepost.com/article/8587a66f-6cca-4d90-af7a-f3c5c9f01701.html Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT A Super Fight Down The Road It's appropriate that our two major political parties are depicted as different animals. Forty days and forty nights out from the Iowa caucuses, the elephant and the donkey seem very different indeed. The Republicans have been split on attitudinal li... http://www.caglepost.com/article/62308b3b-a5d9-44e0-80b3-52d436ec9f9c.html Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT The Verdict of Super Tuesday Well, Super Tuesday is over, and now we have two major party presidential nominees. That's the lead sentence I thought five weeks ago I'd be writing for this column. But the 33-day round of caucuses and primaries that seemed likely to produce decisio... http://www.caglepost.com/article/71cf4dd3-74c5-4092-a858-1057b3f77a40.html Sat, 09 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT The Parties Change Places Just shy of a month ago, after the first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, it seemed that the Republican Party faced a fluid and fractious nomination contest, while the Democrats faced a clear-cut choice between two not particularly adversar... http://www.caglepost.com/article/72f471ff-e1c2-40ca-9c3c-a754e5b42311.html Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT South Carolina Has Set the Stage for General Election South Carolina: In 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000, it was the state that, with its early primary, determined the winner of the Republican nomination for president. It gave George H.W. Bush the nomination over Bob Dole, determined that he would not be upse... http://www.caglepost.com/article/f606ff59-06a2-46e5-bf53-05c38ca5ae3c.html Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT Mostly Decent Politics My campaign and election memories go back to 1960, when I was one of the few who backed John Kennedy at an election night party that my parents were throwing. The early broadcasts had him winning big (they extrapolated that his gains in heavily Roman... http://www.caglepost.com/article/40151b98-57f9-42e6-8731-d8a473ec7858.html Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT The Political Landscape After Iowa And New Hampshire Five elections. Five winners. Barack Obama (Iowa Democratic caucus), Mike Huckabee (Iowa Republican caucus), Mitt Romney (Wyoming Republican caucus, held Jan. 5 when no one was watching), Hillary Clinton (New Hampshire Democratic primary) and John Mc... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b448fbcc-3aaa-40bf-a847-63d96a46b810.html Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT Lessons From The Surge There are lessons to be learned from the dazzling success of the surge strategy in Iraq. Lesson one is that just about no mission is impossible for the United States military. A year ago it was widely thought, not just by the new Democratic leader... http://www.caglepost.com/article/3d3af401-e431-4ad5-993b-a6e5ef9638d0.html Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:00:00 GMT Looking at Iraq in Macro-time When my father returned from service as an Army doctor in Korea in 1953, he brought back slides of the photos he'd shot, showing a war-torn country of incredible poverty. We would have laughed if you had told us that Americans would one day buy Korea... http://www.caglepost.com/article/2b75444b-d963-4391-a28a-71a007c99878.html Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:00:00 GMT Iowans Start Choosing Favorites Every so often, I page through my copy of the Constitution, searching for the section that says Iowa and New Hampshire vote first. I've yet to find it. But Iowa and New Hampshire are set to lead off the presidential voting on Jan. 3 and Jan. 8. Right... http://www.caglepost.com/article/340b2f1c-abbe-46a0-8b90-b88686db8c58.html Mon, 03 Dec 2007 08:00:00 GMT A Wide Range of Possibilities in the Race for President Six weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, the presidential race looks more uncertain than ever. Only last week did the schedule of contests become certain: The day before Thanksgiving, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner set the state's primary... http://www.caglepost.com/article/89c53869-cc70-4edf-bb33-0baf80299917.html Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:00:00 GMT Teacher Unions' Gain Is Children's Loss Education is not ordinarily thought to be in the purview of a Federal Reserve chairman. So it's striking when Alan Greenspan in his memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," raises the subject. "Our primary and secondary education system," he writes, "is d... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b85577c5-118a-42b2-9d0e-fb664a6f7193.html Mon, 12 Nov 2007 08:00:00 GMT A Watershed Moment on Immigration October 2007 may turn out to be the month that immigration became a key issue in presidential politics. It hasn't been, at least in my lifetime. The Immigration Act of 1965, which turned out to open up America to mass immigration after four decade... http://www.caglepost.com/article/761152bb-cf95-426e-869e-f2e1cce04eac.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:00:00 GMT When There's No Life in the Party ""Pray take away this pudding,"" Winston Churchill commanded one night at dinner. ""It has no theme."" Our two political parties, facing the first election in 80 years in which neither the incumbent president nor the incumbent vice president is runni... http://www.caglepost.com/article/656e6bd2-5e51-4cf8-9bd4-4aa5effb3120.html Mon, 29 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT We're Not in 2006 Anymore Things are not working out as Democratic congressional leaders expected. For the first eight months of this year, they struggled to find some way to shut down the American military effort in Iraq. They took it for granted that we were stuck in a q... http://www.caglepost.com/article/41df86db-efb1-4f59-98eb-d92132764e3e.html Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT Is the Tax Issue Back? British politics sometimes moves in tandem with American politics. Ronald Reagan's administration was informed by the success of Margaret Thatcher's governance, and vice versa. Tony Blair's New Labor drew inspiration from Bill Clinton's success... http://www.caglepost.com/article/3ebc8995-15a0-4193-9449-27ad1809fc64.html Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT Ivory Tower Decay I am old enough to remember when America's colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America's colleges and universities ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/66594ce4-8e3b-48ed-8f96-48fd54565bcf.html Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT GM Strike End of an Era The United Auto Workers' strike against General Motors last week turned out to be brief. The company and union negotiators reached agreement not much more than 48 hours after union members started picketing. It barely made the front pages of most new... http://www.caglepost.com/article/058c27b9-9ffe-47c8-9abb-f7273e42ba9b.html Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT Return on Success? For most of the last year, the dominant narrative in most media, and for most voters, has been that we are getting nowhere in Iraq and that the Democrats, after their victory in last November's elections, are going to get out of Iraq. But events a... http://www.caglepost.com/article/68cca921-4abb-4117-ae0e-b6b3be850f51.html Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:00:00 GMT The Overlawyered War ""Never in the history of the United States had lawyers had such extraordinary influence over war policy as they did after 9/11."" Those are the words of Jack Goldsmith, the Harvard law professor who was one of those lawyers, as head of the Justice D... http://www.caglepost.com/article/6bd336c4-f830-4969-9eae-8ad121f1cb75.html Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:00:00 GMT

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