For anyone who has observed Barack Obama over the years, it’s obvious that a fundamental part of his self-identity involves seeing himself, and having others see him, as pragmatic rather than ideological, reality-based, driven by reason instead of bias. This has never actually been true. Mr. Obama is, in fact, unusually dogmatic, blind to counter-evidence,

“Of a sudden,” the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in 1981, “the GOP has become a party of ideas.” Senator Moynihan’s statement suggested two things: liberalism was exhausted and conservatives took advantage of the opening by offering an agenda that matched the challenges of that moment: high inflation and interest rates, a top marginal tax

When I was driving my son to school yesterday (there was a two-hour delay in opening), I listened to Mike Gallagher, a talk show host whom I like and on whose show I have appeared. During the portion I listened to, Gallagher was urging Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016, assuming she’d be

In a post last week, I wrote that near the end of his autobiography, the great French journalist and intellectual Raymond Aron, in a chapter on the tenure of Secretary of State Kissinger, wrote, “For a half century, I have limited my freedom of criticism by asking the question; in his place, what would I do?”

At a recent lunch, several friends and I discussed the future of the Republican Party. I argued that the challenges facing the Republican Party, at least at the presidential level, are significant and fairly fundamental. After our conversation, I cobbled together some data that underscore my concern–data based on previously published works, including an essay

The most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey is filled with ominous news for the president. It’s not simply that the president’s approval ratings are near all-time lows for him in this particular poll (43 approve v. 51 disapprove). Or that for the third-straight survey those who view Obama negatively (44 percent) outnumber those who view him positively

In David Remnick’s nearly 17,000-word article in the New Yorker, President Obama spoke about whether the use of drones was radicalizing civilian populations we need to win over: Look, you wrestle with it. And those who have questioned our drone policy are doing exactly what should be done in a democracy—asking some tough questions. The only time I

In an April 21, 1986 lecture at New York University (found in the collection Came the Revolution), Daniel Patrick Moynihan has some words to say about David Stockman. Moynihan quotes Stockman as saying (in his memoir), “To me, [Irving] Kristol was a secular incarnation of the Lord Himself.” Senator Moynihan had great regard for Kristol, referring