Seven years ago, newly elected President Barack Obama addressed lawmakers in the shadow of a devastating economic crisis but buoyed by the promise of change he’d campaigned on. On Tuesday night, Obama returned to the same podium for his final State of the Union address, with an economy in much better shape but other worries clouding the horizon. He reprised that same “change” theme […]
Elections aren’t just about policy, candidates or the national mood – they are about events, by their nature unanticipated, that shift the paradigm of a race. The massacre in Paris, which portends a widening threat here and an expanding conflict in Syria and Iraq, has sobered up the campaign in a hurry (though not entirely) […]
The first debate was the Hillary and Bernie Show, and Hillary received top billing. Not only was Hillary Clinton on the receiving end of the night’s biggest gift — her rival, Bernie Sanders, declaring it time for people to shut up about her email scandal — she also delivered some of the evening’s most stinging retorts. […]
If presidential elections are largely referendums on the White House incumbent or incumbent party, as I have argued in these spaces and in my most recent book, Where They Stand, then the man who will exercise the greatest impact on the outcome of next year’s general election is President Obama. If his second term is […]
Donald Trump’s shortcomings on foreign policy extend way beyond his inability to name terror group leaders on a radio interview. The entirety of his utterances reveal a potential president who would reshape U.S. foreign policy into a mess of conflicting and often incoherent policies, and delegate the most important issues of national security to as-yet unnamed […]
The riskiest gamble of the Obama Presidency, the nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, was basically won today. A rancorous congressional debate is still to come, but thirty-four senators have now vowed to support the deal, effectively blocking efforts on the Hill to eventually kill it. The diplomacy will almost certainly be the […]
With Chinese President Xi Jinping scheduled to visit the United States late this month, U.S. commentators and presidential hopefuls are debating whether Xi’s planned state visit should be downgraded or even cancelled. Organizers of the visit settled on the September timing knowing full well the presidential campaign would likely produce a toxic media environment. Read […]
There are at least three very real scenarios whereby Google—perhaps even without its leaders’ knowledge—could shape or even decide the election next year. Whether or not Google executives see it this way, the employees who constantly adjust the search giant’s algorithms are manipulating people every minute of every day. The adjustments they make increasingly influence […]
The legend of the surge has become this era’s equivalent of the legend that America was winning in Vietnam until, in the words of Richard Nixon’s former defense secretary Melvin Laird, “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975.” In the late 1970s, the legend of […]
Foreign policy was hardly the centerpiece of the Republican candidates’ first debate, but when the topic came up, their answers revealed that none of these White House hopefuls have given the world and its problems an hour of serious thought. Read Here – Slate
looking beyond borders 