Here’s a bit of advice when considering Barack Obama second inaugural address on January 21: Don’t take anything he says very seriously. For all the hype they receive, inaugural addresses rarely foretell what a president will accomplish in office. In fact, the men who utter grand principles and make big promises every four years often contradict […]
This past fall was not kind to U.S. President Barack Obama‘s foreign policy. It became increasingly clear that Afghan security forces were not going to be ready for the 2014 transition. The New York Times highlighted the administration’s failure to persuade the Iraqi government to allow a residual U.S. force to stay in the country, leaving Baghdad […]
On this, the 100th birthday of Richard Nixon, the slogan from his first campaign for Congress is the salient fact: “One of us.” His dreams were ours — and so, in the end, were his sins. The life of no president says more about this country. Nixon’s accomplishments sing of the finest American attributes — […]
As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, […]
AMERICA, it appears, will go over the fiscal cliff after all, if only for a few days. But if all goes as planned, the worst of the cliff, a withering combination of tax increases and spending cuts, will be avoided. A deal nearing completion in the Senate would make permanent the tax cuts first enacted […]
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a close confidante of President Barack Obama, withdrew her name from consideration as secretary of state on Thursday in the face of what promised to be a contentious Senate confirmation battle. Rice has drawn heavy fire from Republicans for remarks she made in the aftermath […]
President Barack Obama is expected to announce his nominees for secretaries of state and defense in the next two weeks, with former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel on the short list of potential choices to head the Pentagon, senior administration officials said on Tuesday. Hagel, whose appointment would give Obama’s reshuffled second-term Cabinet a bipartisan cast, […]
In foreign affairs, the central challenge now facing President Barack Obama is how to regain some of the ground lost in recent years in shaping U.S. national security policy. Historically and politically, in America’s system of separation of powers, it is the president who has the greatest leeway for decisive action in foreign affairs. He […]
President Barack Obama may announce his nominees for secretaries of state and defense and head of the CIA in the coming weeks, according to an administration official. Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, is among Obama’s top candidates to head the Pentagon, replacing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. […]
After a hard campaign against Hillary Clinton, Bobby Jindal has emerged as America’s next president in 2016. An essay from the future. The date is November 8th, 2016. Polling stations have closed and the outcome of the US presidential election is becoming increasingly clear: the first African-American president isn’t succeeded by the first female president, […]
looking beyond borders 