Michael Barone from Creators Syndicate

The End of America's Experiment With Royalty for 08/31/2009

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Edward Kennedy was buried Saturday, the last son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the only royal political family our democratic republic has ever produced. Those who remember the 1960s understand viscerally, even if they do not share themselves, the almost mystical devotion the Kennedys inspired. Those who do not find it harder to understand, and those who c ...

Updated: Mon Aug 31, 2009

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New Facts Undercut Old Positions on Immigration for 09/03/2009

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Before leaving for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Barack Obama said the next big item on his legislative agenda — well, after health care and cap-and-trade and maybe labor's bill to effectively abolish secret ballots in union elections — was immigration reform. What he has in mind, apparently, is something like the comprehensive immigration bills that foundered in the House in 2 ...

Updated: Thu Sep 03, 2009

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Obama Cannot Escape Hard Choices in September for 09/07/2009

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Very active." That's what White House aides say Barack Obama is going to be this month. That's probably an understatement. Obama faces September deadlines on three issues, on each of which he could get himself in political trouble, not only with those on the right and center but also those on the political left.

Only one of those issues is domestic: health care. Obama's speech ...

Updated: Mon Sep 07, 2009

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The Convenient Fantasies of President Obama for 09/10/2009

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The resignation over the Labor Day weekend of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones tells you some interesting things about the Obama administration.

One of them is that a man who proclaimed himself a "communist" in the 1990s and signed 9-11 "truther" petitions suggesting Bush administration complicitity in the Sept. 11 attacks was considered fit for a Whi ...

Updated: Thu Sep 10, 2009

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Tom Friedman Hails China's One-Party Autocracy for 09/14/2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The dwindling number of readers of The New York Times were treated Wednesday to a column by Thomas Friedman extolling China's "one-party autocracy," which, he told us, "is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people."

China's leaders, he reported, are "boosting gasoline prices" and "overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, bat ...

Updated: Mon Sep 14, 2009

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Job-Killing Policies Could Doom Democrat Hopes for 09/17/2009

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"The level of unemployment is unacceptably high. And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years."

Who do you suppose said that? A Republican political operative? A Fox News political analyst? One of those several hundred thousand Tea Partiers who assembled in Washington on Sept. 12? No, it was Lawrence Summers, the director of Barack Obama's National ...

Updated: Thu Sep 17, 2009

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Strangers to Dissent, Liberals Try to Stifle It for 09/21/2009

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down. Thus President Obama in his Sept. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress told us to stop "bickering," as if principled objections to major changes in public policy were just childish obstinacy, and chastised his critics for telling &q ...

Updated: Mon Sep 21, 2009

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Obama's Time Warp: The U.S. Is Still the Bad Guy for 09/24/2009

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In the early 1980s, while planning a vacation in Latin America, I went to bookstores to look for histories of the region. All I could find were Marxist tracts arguing that "the people" were exploited by greedy corporations and military dictators, all propped up by the United States.

Available literature on Latin America today includes much more sensible accounts. But some peopl ...

Updated: Thu Sep 24, 2009

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With Obama, Too Much Nuance, Not Enough Power for 09/28/2009

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"It is my deeply held belief," Barack Obama told the United Nations General Assembly, that "in the year 2009 — more than at any point in human history — the interests of nations and peoples are shared."

That is, of course, the year Obama became president, and he wasn't shy about referring in his second paragraph to "the expectations that accompany my ...

Updated: Mon Sep 28, 2009

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Democrats Win Lobbyists but Lose Basic Reforms for 10/01/2009

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

As Sen. Max Baucus tries to squeeze a health care bill out of the Senate Finance Committee, and as Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry race to meet their latest deadline to introduce a bill to reduce carbon dioxide, some Democrats wonder whether their congressional leaders and the president who has deferred to them have sought only limited changes rather than more fundamental reform on both heal ...

Updated: Thu Oct 01, 2009

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A War of Necessity Turns Out Not So Necessary for 10/05/2009

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"This is not a war of choice," Barack Obama told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 17. "This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to t ...

Updated: Mon Oct 05, 2009

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Weak Himself, Obama Draws Strength From Bush for 10/08/2009

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In trying to understand what is happening in the nation and world, we all employ narratives — story lines that indicate where things are going and what is likely to happen next. We can check the validity of these narratives by observing whether events move in the indicated direction. If so, the narrative is confirmed. But if things seem to be moving in an entirely different direction, it' ...

Updated: Thu Oct 08, 2009

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'Conceptual Language' Hides Health Care's Costs for 10/12/2009

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Some of the headlines in recent days are not worthy of belief. No, I'm not referring to the headlines that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, however odd that many seem to many (including, it seems, Obama himself). I'm referring to the headlines earlier in the week to the effect that the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus will cut the federal deficit ...

Updated: Mon Oct 12, 2009

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The Trouble With Health Care Is Paying for It for 10/15/2009

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The legislative process can also be a learning process, and as Congress considers health care legislation — the latest act being the Senate Finance Committee's vote in favor of Chairman Max Baucus' bill, or "conceptual language" — we have been learning something useful. It's that legislators would like to provide generous, even gold-plated health insurance coverage to almo ...

Updated: Thu Oct 15, 2009

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Unlike Obama, Americans reject European model for 10/19/2009

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

An interesting paradox. Last year, America elected a president who, in attitudes and policies, is closer to the elites of Western Europe than any of his predecessors. Yet in the nine months that he has been in office, ordinary Americans have been moving away from those attitudes and policies and have increasingly embraced positions that over the years have made Americans distinctive from those ...

Updated: Mon Oct 19, 2009

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Obama Hits Opponents With Chicago Brass Knuckles for 10/22/2009

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"His father was a great friend of my father." The reference to William Ayers' father was how Mayor Richard M. Daley began his defense of Barack Obama for his association with the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist. Daley's father, of course, was Richard M. Daley, mayor of Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976. Ayers' father was head of Commonwealth Edison, the Chicago-based ...

Updated: Thu Oct 22, 2009

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Obama at Odds With His Own Vision for the World for 10/26/2009

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Barack Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympics games for Chicago, apparently cannot find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can't be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will sure ...

Updated: Mon Oct 26, 2009

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Four Races Will Test the Strength of Obama's Majority for 10/29/2009

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Five days from now the voters of New Jersey and Virginia will elect governors. Voters in the 23rd district of New York and the 10th district of California will elect new members of the House of Representatives to replace incumbents, a Republican and a Democrat, who were appointed to positions in the Obama Defense and State departments.

All four of these constituencies voted for Barack Ob ...

Updated: Thu Oct 29, 2009

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Hold the Champagne -- Happy Days Aren't Here Again for 11/02/2009

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The recession is over, we are told. The Commerce Department announced Thursday that the economy grew in the third quarter of 2009 by 3.5 percent. Great, huh?

Maybe not. About half that growth came from the Cash for Clunkers program, which transferred into the third quarter auto sales that would have occurred later. The expiring tax credit of $8,000 for first-time homebuyers stimulated so ...

Updated: Mon Nov 02, 2009

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Virginia, New Jersey Races Showing Voters Changing Course for 11/05/2009

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

As the final votes were being counted, it was possible to draw some lessons from Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia and the close, three-way governor's race in New Jersey, never mind that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has taken to saying that the elections don't mean much.

The odd-year elections — held in the first year of a presidency — have been meani ...

Updated: Thu Nov 05, 2009

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