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There is much one could say about President Obama’s Rose Garden statement on Wednesday announcing his FY 2014 budget. On the plus side, the president endorsed a “chained CPI”–a measure of inflation that is a more accurate way to factor rises in the cost of living into Social Security benefits.
Read MoreFor many people of my generation–born in the 1960s and who really came of age politically during the 1980s–the two largest figures in our political imagination were Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. President Reagan died in 2004, and early this morning Prime Minister Thatcher passed away at the age of 87.
Read MorePeter Berkowitz has written an outstanding book, Constitutional Conservatism, whose central aim is to “recover the constitutional connection between liberty, self-government, and political moderation.”
Read MoreSome say that the Republican Party needs to find new issues to champion if it hopes to become America’s majority party. There is something to this. But being a conservative party, the GOP should also look to the past, where wisdom often resides. In that spirit, Republicans once again should take a strong stand against
Read MoreThere are, we’re told, five stages of grief. A political party, in the wake of a devastating loss, goes through something similar. Shock gives way to a (short) season of self-reflection–but what emerges on the other side varies. Sometimes people draw opposing conclusions. Such is the state of the Republican Party right now. Republicans seem
Read MoreIn an essay that appears in a book he edited, Imaginative Apologetics, the theologian Andrew Davison tells about being in India and coming across a person with leprosy. As a Christian, he saw the leper and felt compassion and aided him, though much to the unease of Indians. It then struck him that those who
Read MoreThe Republican Party is in trouble: In the wake of the presidential election, everybody has said so, and everybody is right. From there, however, a hundred paths diverge and a thousand voices have been heard. The relevant questions are these: How deep is the trouble? How much of it is self-inflicted and how much is
Read MoreWe’ve both had the honor to work in the White House. We’ve seen presidents, vice presidents, chiefs of staff and national security advisers during moments of international crisis. We know that in these moments human beings make mistakes. There are failures of communication and errors of judgment. Perfection certainly isn’t the standard to which policy
Read MoreOn May 29, 2009, President Obama gave a speech at the National Archives in which he said the following: Now let me be clear: We are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. We do need to update our institutions to deal with this threat. But we must do so with an abiding confidence
Read MorePresident Obama’s inaugural address was eloquent and moving in parts. It was also deeply partisan and polarizing, something that is unusual for a day normally devoted to unity and common purpose. But not in Barack Obama’s America. In his inaugural speech he did what he seemingly cannot keep himself from doing: portraying himself and his
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