Israel’s Prime Minister: Bad bets

ISRAEL‘S prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, suffered not one but two vicarious electoral defeats on Tuesday. Twice this week he has had to swallow hard and congratulate candidates he hoped would lose. The winners were equally cordial to him on the phone. If they enjoyed his discomfiture, they concealed it well. Politics is about interests, not […]

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Now, Hug a Republican

LET him savour, for a day or two, a victory that many had said could not happen. No president since FDR had been re-elected with unemployment so high. The country seemed pessimistic and bitterly divided, on racial grounds even more than on economic ones. His best-known achievement, health-care reform, had turned out to be deeply […]

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Is China Better Off Than It Was Ten Years Ago?

For the first time since 1992, the United States’ and China’s political calendars are syncing up, with presidential elections in the former and a leadership transition in the latter. But unlike in the United States, where Mitt Romney would have had to defeat President Barack Obama in a national election to win the White House, Xi […]

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Friends With Benefits

At the final presidential debate of the 2012 campaign season, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney mentioned Israel some 30 times, more than any other country except Iran. Both candidates called the Jewish state “a true friend,” pledging to stand with it through thick and thin. Some political commentators criticized these effusive declarations of […]

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The Sun Sets on American Empire

Throughout the campaign season, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama alike insisted that the 21st century must be another American century—that the U.S. should continue to be the world’s predominant military, economic, and political power for generations to come. After ten years of shattered hegemonic dreams, leaders of both parties still feel compelled to declare their […]

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In The End, Obama Won On The Economy

In the end, President Barack Obama won re-election on the issue that was supposed to send him packing: the sluggish U.S. economy. The United States is still digging out from the deepest recession in 80 years, and employers are barely adding enough jobs to keep pace with population growth. Trillions of dollars of household wealth have vanished in […]

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Obama Wins Re-election With Romney Defeated in Key States

Barack Obama, the post-partisan candidate of hope four years ago who became the first black U.S. president, won re-election by overcoming four years of economic discontent with a mix of political populism and electoral math. Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney, with the Associated Press projecting the president winning at least 303 electoral votes in yesterday’s election, with 270 […]

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