History does not repeat itself exactly, but polling evidence indicates that Americans today, like Americans in the late 1930s, see big government spending programs as an impediment, not an aid, to job creation.
Republicans may find it difficult to convert the increasing unease with Democratic policies into Republican (or Conservative) victories across the board.
Obama, who found time to go on a twenty-four-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on October 2 to seek the 2016 Olympics games for Chicago, apparently cannot find the time for a twenty-four-hour trip to Berlin on November 9 for a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Having encountered un-Chicago-like dissent and disagreement in Washington, Obama has responded with classic Chicago brass knuckles.
Last year America elected a president who, in attitudes and policies, is closer to the elites of Western Europe than any of his predecessors.
Legislators would like to provide generous, gold-plated health insurance coverage to almost all Americans, but no one wants to pay for it.
The headlines that the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus will cut the federal deficit by $81 billion over the next ten years are not worthy of belief.
If things seem to be moving in an entirely different direction, it's time to discard the narrative and look for another.
In his twenty-five minutes on Air Force One, General McChrystal may have used his knowledge and experience to convince Obama that his judgment was better than that of the armchair generals that the president had listened to for three hours the day before.
The Democrats are having trouble passing convoluted and plainly imperfect health care and carbon control bills.
The U.S. Census Bureau's recent announcement on the nation's foreign-born percentage of the population may prove a landmark in American demographic history.
Obama has based his policy toward Iran on the hope that its leaders would see the problem as he does--projection--and was apparently discounting contrary evidence like the Qom facility--cognitive dissonance.
As Obama's record emerges his motivating principle seems rooted in an analysis that America has too often been on the side of the bad guys.
It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down.
The administration and congressional Democrats would be well advised to turn their attention back to the economy and ask themselves whether there is anything more to be done to jumpstart job creation.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats are much more beholden to their base than are Republicans.
Be wary when media, university, and corporate elites warn that we must change our ways or face disaster fifty years hence.
There is an element of convenient fantasy in Obama's health care statements that we are going to save money by spending money.
Barack Obama is going to have to make some tough choices this month, choices that could antagonize his base.
The surge of illegal immigrants into the United States, which seemed to be unrelenting for most of the last two decades, seems to be over, at least temporarily, and there's a chance it may never resume.
The royal status the Kennedys temporarily achieved will seem bizarre to future generations--perhaps it already does even for those of us who can remember the 1960s.
A big government president, Obama is learning, needs to be a war president first.
While Ted Kennedy leaves the contemporary political stage, the man who served longer in the U.S. Senate than all but two others is now an indelible part of our political history.
Democrats captured both houses of the legislature and a Senate and House seat in 2004, the governorship in 2006, and a Senate and House seat in 2008.
Robert Novak, in his half-century of Washington reporting, found that the fondest hopes of optimists usually turned out to be unrealistic and that the astringent analysis of pessimists often turned out to be accurate.
Young voters who voted for hope and change should look at the president and see if his policies are leading to change or entrenching more of the same.
Obama has ignored the fact that in our system neither party ever has all the advantages.
As the battle over the Democrats' various health care bills takes place in town hall meetings across the country, it's becoming clear that the focus of our politics has changed utterly in the first seven months of the Obama administration.
Public statements by three advocates of single-payer health insurance--including President Obama--explain that a health care bill with a "government option" would move America toward a single-payer government health care system.
It is ironic that an administration that promised hope and change is instead pursuing policies that could stifle American creativity.
Cash for Clunkers is a prime example of the unanticipated consequences of hastily drafted legislation.
We knew that President Obama was good at aura, at generating enthusiasm for the prospect of hope and change, but it turns out that the president is not so good at argument.
With polls showing a drop in Barack Obama's job rating and sinking support for the Democrats' health care plans, there is evidence of collateral damage where you might not expect to find it, in the standing of Democratic governors.
This month, Thursdays have been very bad days for the Obama administration's attempt to pass health care bills concocted by House and Senate committee chairmen.
A change in government does not always result in major changes in policy.
Deferring to a Democratic Congress on the stimulus seemed like smart politics--but nothing is free in politics.
The likely confirmation of Sotomayor and the possibility of future Obama appointments could change the balance on a court that has been closely divided on many major cases. But that seems unlikely to change the thrust of Thomas' jurisprudence.
The solitary atmosphere of the Supreme Court runs counter to Clarence Thomas's sociable nature.
Disarray--that's one word to describe the status of the Obama administration's legislative program as Congress heads into its final four weeks of work before the August recess.
In the last quarter-century, the United States experienced relatively long periods of trench-warfare politics, during which the divisions between the parties were stable and the political battles were fought along familiar lines.
Since the housing bubble burst and the economy tanked, college graduates, with no job offers and not enough money to afford a studio, have found themselves having to make the choice of living with Mom and Dad.
Voters continue to think pretty highly of Barack Obama, but numbers suggest that they are responding more negatively to Democratic proposals.
The proposal to make the Federal Reserve a "systemic risk regulator" is deeply misguided.
Thanks to Justice Alito for pulling back the curtain and showing the ugly reality of racial discrimination in America.
The Ensign and Sanford scandals are beside the point. The Republican Party is going to have a hard time coming up with a strong presidential nominee in 2012.
The CBO's cost estimates for health care reform came in higher than Democrats expected, but they might not have been so unpleasantly surprised had they paid attention to the director of the CBO.
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.
Obama likes to execute long-range strategies but suffers from cognitive dissonance when new facts render them inappropriate.
Obama is giving up a small but nontrivial chance of advancing regime change for a zero chance of achieving a change in regime behavior.
Over the past decade, voter turnout has been increasing due to rising political polarization, greater organizational activity on the part of the political parties, and enthusiasm in the electorate.
The extension of Miranda rights is a symptom of two larger maladies that threaten to harm the body public.
What Democrats want more than anything else is a government insurance program that will tend over the next few years to crowd out private insurance.
For a man of his impressive educational credentials, Barack Obama has sometimes shown a surprising ignorance of history.
The outlook is good for Chris Christie in the New Jersey governor's race.
Two cases likely to be decided this month by the Supreme Court could result in significant changes in our civil rights laws.
Republicans are being advised to move to the center, but they should instead run against the center--that is, centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day.
Should she be confirmed, Judge Sonia Sotomayor may not prove an effective advocate for her liberal views on the Supreme Court.
The war against terrorism, like civilian law enforcement, is filled with no-win choices.
India is more important to America than most Americans realize.
Step by step, Barack Obama has been reversing himself on antiterrorist policy.
The policies of the Obama administration are designed to subject the people to what Alexis de Tocqueville called "soft despotism."
Global warming and gun control are two issues that counter the conventional wisdom that elites lead public opinion.
Through Chrysler's proposed bankruptcy settlement, the Obama administration is seeking to transfer the property of one group to another group that is politically favored.
Mandatory arbitration would be a major, massive change in American labor law, giving bureaucrats power to determine wages, fringe benefits, and working conditions.
Arlen Specter's crossover says interesting things about Specter himself and about the state of the Republican Party.
To put it in geographical terms, Barack Obama wants to move the United States some considerable distance toward Europe.
President Obama, it appears, is of two minds on the so-called "torture memos."
Barack Obama spelled out his positions on the issues during the campaign, but he is letting members of Congress do almost all the heavy lifting now that he is in office.
President Obama has chosen to emphasize initiatives that seem more relevant to the late 1970s and early 1980s than to the threats America faces today.
Do not allow a whole system to become hostage to the workings of some geek's formula.
The unions thought they had a long enough lever, but now it seems they might not move the world after all.
Barack Obama's foreign policy is beginning to take shape, and it is something like a continuation of Bush policies.
Christopher Dodd has had an easy career as Connecticut's senator, but his political troubles now entail danger for the Democrats.
Former senator Ted Stevens was a good senator for Alaskans, and he did service to the nation.
Barack Obama has been encountering roadblocks on the audacious path toward a European-style welfare state.
I hope Timothy Geithner's plan works, and I fear that it will not.
A significant bloc of voters seems to have soured on the Democrats since Barack Obama took office and the 111th Congress went to work.
The inaptly named Employee Free Choice Act may be the most grievous threat to future prosperity.
None of the issues addressed in the Obama budget was in any way a cause of the financial crisis.
The animal spirits of high earners are going to be directed away from productive investment and toward tax avoidance.
Has the United States given up on championing human rights and democracy altogether?
Reducing the value of the charitable deduction is a threat to voluntary associations.
Few people thought that controversy would arise in the new administration over the Constitution's census clause.
Those making policy should be careful not to apply New Deal-style policies in an attempt to fix the current economic crisis.
Tuesday, February 3, was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Barack Obama.
The debate among Republicans is whether to go after downscale or upscale voters.
You have to give Obama some credit for journeying to Capitol Hill to talk with House Republicans.
Unemployment trends vary nationwide. Job losses have especially affected areas with fast-growing populations.
The response to Barack Obama since his victory in November is similar to the response to John F. Kennedy after his narrower victory in 1960.
Evidence keeps accumulating that the tide of immigration is ebbing.
Barack Obama's presentation of his proposed stimulus package indicates that he will try to separate himself from the Democratic Party and garner support from both parties.
Ignore talk of a new "permanent majority." The more natural state of partisan politics, in this country at least, is something less like party dominance and more like uneasy equilibrium.
Barack Obama is showing signs that he may keep his distance from the Democratic Party as president.
A new generation is coming to the White House;in time, the rest of us will be making critical judgments on how Barack Obama conducts business.
Taylorism begat the adversarial labor relations that now bedevil the Detroit automakers. Today, hostile labor politics are counterproductive for both firms and unionized employees.
The Blagojevich scandal is an unwanted distraction for the Obama team.
Welcome to open-field politics.
When you try to reduce risk for individuals too much, you end up making things much more risky.
American successesand failures are rarely as complete as they may seem.
Should the federal government bail out American-based auto manufacturers?
One possible consequence of Barack Obama's election is a substantial change in the relationship between government and the private sector in the United States.
The Democrats' victory--and Barack Obama's--was overdetermined and underdelivered.
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.
What will an Obama administration and a Congress with increased Democratic majorities do?
Reading polls right is more art than science.
Can Joe the Plumber change the course of this campaign?
Presidential politics this year has often seemed to resemble what science writer James Gleick described in his book "Chaos."
Voters tend to consider only the history they know. They might do well to look back a little further.
Our economic problems are concentrated in the finance sector, and that isthe part of the economy the average voter knows least about.
InJohn McCain'sselection of Sarah Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days.
Will the arguments established by the political conventions be sustainable?
Barack Obama is in danger of causing his campaign as much damage as the furlough ads caused Michael Dukakis and the Swift Boat ads caused John Kerry.
The field is still open for the 2008 presidentialcandidates to define themselves and their opponents.
The vice presidency is now an important position and Joe Biden would be no exception.
Barack Obama will probably get a bounce out of the Democratic convention, but it is unclear whether his narrative can be sustained in the weeks and months ahead.
There are echoes of history in the Beijing Olympics and the Russian invasion of Georgia.
There is a long history of political jostling at conventions, and the Democratic confab in Denver will be no exception.
John Zogby's The Way We'll Be is not a precise national roadmap, but it does offer tantalizing clues about where we are headed.
American political alignments are not written on an empty slate. Beginnings matter, and the civic personalities of states tend to reflect the cultural folkways of their first settlers.
Nothing about an election is harder to predict than turnout, and experience shows that the balance of enthusiasm can change abruptly and in unpredicted ways.
The Stevens indictment is the latest rumble in the Alaskan shakeup that began in 2006.
Lobbyists and litigators for environmental restriction groups have produced energy policies that future generations may regard as lunatic.
The 2008 presidential campaign most closely resembles the race between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter back in 1976.
Just like President Truman and hisdecision to stay in Berlin, President Bush has hadthe foresight to stay committed in Iraq.
We should repeal the War Powers Act and replace it with a framework for consulting with Congress on extended military action.
The vice presidency--an office that was long the vermiform appendix of American government--has become a useful organ.
A few thoughts on recent research about the resilience of the economy and the need for financial regulation.
There are a lot of Americans who are not willing to vote for Obama for reasons that have nothing to do with race.
The vice presidency has become a useful part of American government.
The majority of Americans not voting for Obama are doing so because of the issues he stands for, not his race.
Senator Barack Obama has been wrong aboutthe surge policyfrom January 2007 to today.
Lobbyists can help lawmakers understand how the words they write will affect "real Americans."
The 2008presidential race will be unlike any other.
The economy matters in politics, but not in the way it used to.
Barack Obama's campaign is wounded from the fallout of the Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle.
Much is different in this election than before, from the geographic flavor of the race to the impact of fundraising.
A new book by an architect of the Iraq war exposes the decision-making process leading up to and during the conflict.
Obama's relationship with his former pastor will be tested in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.
Hillary Clinton has regained the lead in overall popular votes--and the underlying numbers help her make the case for the nomination.
It has been a long time since Pennsylvania has mattered in the presidential election.
Silvio Berlusconi has won a third term as Italy's prime minister. His victory may have important consequences.
The revealing of Barack Obama's relationship with William Ayers left Obama puzzled at the April 16 debate.
The rise of communication has made the old-style of convention a thing of the past.
It is not clear on what position millennials will take on issues ofhealth care and the current economy.
Millennials could spark a political realignment; they have already revolutionized campaign and fundraising techniques in ways that may reverberate for years to come.
The Democratic Party has beenseparating into two different tribes with alliances to either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
Barack Obama and John McCain have both missed a generation during their lives, but Hillary Clinton has experienced it all.
Barack Obama is appealing to younger voters while embracing his radical preacher at the same time.
The resignation of Adm. William Fallon affirms the problems that President Bush has had with the relationship between civilian commanders and military leaders.
The presidential election has become a more even race between John McCain and the Democratic candidate that he will be running against in the general election.
As the presidential primaries continue, the tension between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is growing.
The general election may have already started because Hillary Clinton has continued to fall farther behind in the Democratic primaries.
The parties' complicated formulas are a mixed bag: the GOP race is settled, but for the Democrats, trouble may be brewing.
BothRepublicans and Democrats have changed into different animals since the Iowa caucuses.
Two presidential nominees were expected to emerge fromSuper Tuesday, but the race is too close to decide, especially for the Democratic Party.
The eyewitness story of the 1967 riot: how programs that were supposed to create a heaven turned Detroit into a hell.
The fact that every campaign's experts came up with losing strategies suggests that, in this year's open-field politics, all the old rules may be broken.
Whereas it was thought that the Republicans would have a fractious nominating process, it seems the Democrats have fallen into that fight.
South Carolina does not seem likely to determine either party's nominee this year, but it may have done a lot to shape the fall campaign.
Americans' views of macroeconomic trends are increasingly a product of their political leanings.
After a life observing politics, there is something more noble about our presidential campaigns than popular opinion suggests.
The presidential primaries are not building consensus about who the parties' nominees will be.
What is missing fromthe 2008 primary elections and caucusesis a rigorous debate on public policy.
New voters, taking the good things of the present for granted and ignorant of the bad things of the past, are willing to take unusual risks.
Two candidates that almost no one in the country had heard of four years ago have emerged victorious in Iowa.
New voters, taking the good things of the present for granted and ignorant of the bad things of the past, are willing to take unusual risks.
There are lessons to be learned from the dazzling success of the surge strategy in Iraq.
Uncertaintyover theRepublican presidentialnominee could help Democrats in a year when voters already say they would prefer a Democratic president to a Republican.
An AMT patch would also only patch the tax dilemmasthat will facethe Democrats when the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010.
As Christmas approaches, we have more to be thankful for than we did this time last year.
As Iowa and New Hampshire are set to lead off the presidential voting, itis stillunclear how each state will vote.
The presidential race looks more uncertain than ever.
AEI Online
November 20, 2007
Immigration is becoming a key issue in presidential politics.
Progress for teacher unions will result in decreased accountability.
Immigration is becoming a key issue in presidential politics.
Republicans and Democrats have begun attacking the opposing party, losing a sense of their own greater narrative.
With the recent improvements in Iraq, Democrats are seeing a decline in support.
Could conservative successes in Britain and a Massachusetts race have portents for 2008?
A bipartisan, pre-primary presidential debate may be just the ticket to elevate political discourse and draw the interest of independents.
Five works that illuminate the shared heritage of America and Britain.
Once the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions, America's colleges and universities have become close-minded and dishonest.
The General Motorsstrike did not last long enough for any Democratic presidential candidate to walk the picket line.
The dominant narrative is that we are headed to defeat in Iraq, and George W. Bush’s political adversaries want him to acknowledge that.
Politics have changed. Even competitive presidential primaries are not going to produce a decisive result
Politics have changed. Even competitive presidential primaries are not going to produce an indecisive result.
The increasing role of lawyers in recent war policy will hamper the efforts of our current president and his successors in responding to a threat.
Will the United States be safer from terrorism if it confronts the countries and groups that promote terrorism or if it stays out of other countries' affairs?
Is the surge still working in Iraq?
Divesting from companies doing business in Iran will not stop the regime from threatening America, but it will certainly impede it.
What legacy will Karl Rove leave behind?
Trading in the past.
Evenwar criticsandsurge opponents are coming around.
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