Like many Democrats over the past 40 years, Barack Obama has hoped that his association with unpopular liberal positions on cultural issues would be outweighed by pushing economic policies intended to benefit the ordinary person.
When I drive from downtown Washington to Reagan National Airport, I often encounter delays on the George Washington Parkway due to construction of a small bridge over an inlet of the Potomac.
The deaths this week of two political Old Bulls has inspired some harsh commentary.
"The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated." Those were the carefully chosen words of the Federal Reserve Board after its meeting Tuesday. Translation into English: We wuz wrong.
Republicans are starting to think about how to answer the Robert Redford question.
Everybody, even White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, agrees that Republicans are going to pick up seats in the House and Senate elections this year. The disagreement is about how many.
Let's put government on a diet. That's what voters seem to be saying in response to the Barack Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government.
Democratic spin doctors have set out how their side is going to hold onto a majority in the House. They'll capture four at-risk Republican seats, hold half of the next 30 or so Democratic at-risk seats, and avoid significant losses on target seats lower on the list.
Grass somehow manages to grow up through small cracks in the sidewalk. Similarly, the American private sector somehow seems to be exerting itself despite the vast expansion of government by the Barack Obama administration and congressional Democrats.
Many years ago, I was privileged to attend a dinner with James Rowe, one of the "passion for anonymity" young aides to Franklin Roosevelt, original author of the winning strategy for Harry Truman's 1948 campaign and close confidante of then-President Lyndon Johnson.
One of the interesting things about the Obama administration is the strange dominance of labor unions. Yes, Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders do owe the unions something: Unions gave $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle, and they expect to get something in return.
Home mortgage interest rates are the lowest in history, but house sales are plunging. Banks can make money easily because of the Federal Reserve's low interest rates, but they're not making many loans. Major corporations are sitting on something like $2 trillion in cash, but they're not investing.
In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell wrote an opinion in the Bakke case asserting that the need for diversity could justify racial preferences in university admissions. No other justice joined this opinion, but because the other justices were split 4-4, Powell's opinion decided the case, and in time his argument has been embraced by a majority of the court. A regrettable result, in my view, but a consequential one.
About 10,000 men and women have served in the United States Congress. Robert C. Byrd, who died Monday at age 92, served longer than all the rest - -more than 57 years, with six in the House and 51 in the Senate.
We didn't need this. By "we," I mean the large majority of citizens who want America to succeed in Afghanistan. By "this," I mean the Rolling Stone article that quoted Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his aides saying uncomplimentary things about Barack Obama, Joe Biden and other civilian officials.
Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP's gulf oil spill.
"Government in New York is too big, ineffective and expensive," the candidate's website proclaims. "We must get our state's fiscal house in order by immediately imposing a cap on state spending and freezing salaries of state public employees as part of a one-year emergency financial plan, committing to no increase in personal or corporate income taxes of sales taxes and imposing a local property tax cap."
How bad a defeat did labor unions suffer when Sen. Blanche Lincoln defeated their candidate and won the Arkansas Democratic runoff last week?
Republicans are encountering some speed bumps on what they hope is the road to victory in the November elections. Their candidates for Republican open Senate seats in Ohio and Missouri are running no better than even in recent polls. The independent candidacy of Gov. Charlie Crist is threatening Marco Rubio's bid to hold the Republican Senate seat in Florida.
An interesting thing about Barack Obama is that he chose, on two occasions, to live in Chicago -- even though he didn't grow up there, had no family ties there, never went to school there.
