During the recent foreign policy debate, the president presumed to instruct his opponent: “Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature […]
The southern Indian city of Hyderabad is home to the 500-year-old Chilkur Balaji Temple, which features a statue of Lord Vishnu, the Hindu deity. The monument has become a magnet for workers such as Ravi Shanker, who seek divine help in securing a work permit from Washington, D.C. Shanker, who lives in Bangalore, works for […]
The green shoots of recovery are growing a little taller. Newly released gross domestic product estimates measuring consumer and government spending, investments and net exports show the economy growing at 2 percent in the third quarter, up from 1.3 percent in the second. In normal times, this would be nothing to get excited about; average GDP growth between […]
While energy is not a top-tier issue for the American public, Obama and Romney present very different visions for how the United States will generate and consume energy over the next four years – and perhaps set the stage for the next twenty. They provide a clear choice for American voters and explicit differences for […]
The morning was cold and the sky was bright. Aretha Franklin wore a large and interesting hat. Yo-Yo Ma urged his frozen fingers to play the cello, and the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, a civil-rights comrade of Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s, read a benediction that began with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the segregation-era lamentation […]
The defining image from the October 22 debate between President Obama and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is of the two candidates passionately disputing their prescriptions for the U.S. domestic economy. The moderator, veteran TV journalist Bob Schieffer, caught the spirit of the evening with his final words before inviting the debaters to make their closing […]
The Iraq War might seem a thing of the past. But nearly ten years after combat began, the United States and its allies are using policies to address the Iranian nuclear challenge that are eerily similar to those it pursued in the run-up to Operation Enduring Freedom. Just as they did with Saddam Hussein, concerned […]
Throughout the U.S. presidential campaign, Republican and Democratic political operatives have strived to articulate major foreign-policy distinctions between President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney. Several close foreign-policy watchers, however, have struggled to identify any such differences. The final presidential debate on Oct. 22 finally cemented what has been apparent to many over the course of the campaign: […]
After the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where four Americans (including the U.S. ambassador) were killed, the debate about what went wrong has grown into a heated partisan debate. From it, a refrain of sorts has emerged: we should not “politicize” foreign policy. People of the left and of the right preach that talk of the Benghazi […]
Mitt Romney has a George W. Bush problem. In fact, that’s Romney’s biggest problem. It’s George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, who has made voters skeptical of many of Romney’s core policies. It’s George W. Bush, not Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe, who persuaded voters that our economic troubles aren’t mainly Obama’s fault. And so it is, in a sense, […]
looking beyond borders 