Say what you want about Niccolò Machiavelli. He’s the champion of chicanery, the sultan of schemes. But the 16th-century author of The Prince, a how-to guide for the power-hungry, also identified the political truths that dominated the midterm elections earlier this month. And more often than not he didn’t just say it first — he [...]
The press reports about Iraq’s new government have things backwards: before some Sunni Delegates staged their walkout, the parliament actually voted for a new government in Iraq–a solid government, including all factions (including Ayad Allawi’s secular shi’ite/Sunni coalition). The final deal was cut, I am told, by the three main principals–Allawi, Prime Minister Malaki and [...]
The President’s Asia trip doesn’t seem to be going well. The Times says he’s lost his overseas mojo–and it’s true that much of the rest of the world seems to be turning against the Keynesian path of deficit-spending as a ladder out of a recession, even Keynes’ homeland which saw French-style rioting yesterday as the [...]
Speaker Pelosi offered the following on-the-record response to the post below, by way of denying that she is backing off her opposition to the proposal presented yesterday by the chairmen of the President’s Fiscal Commission: “Any viable proposal from the President’s Fiscal Commission must achieve the goals of reducing the deficit, promoting economic growth, and [...]
Mark Thompson’s excellent story in this week’s TIME magazine, Bringing Dogs to Heal, is not yet online, but you should take the time to watch the accompanying video below. This is after all a day to praise and remember those who have served our country. And we tend not to remember exactly what so many [...]
Is Nancy Pelosi backing off her opposition to the proposal by the chairmen of the President’s debt commission? Pelosi aides are trying to send that message. “In the end I think we’re going to be OK with it,” one top Pelosi aide told me this afternoon. Politically speaking, the most striking thing about the draft [...]
You can find reasons to slam the guy from both the left and the right. But not every member of Congress chooses to spend their spare time trudging through Africa on missions like this one: Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and a delegation of Pentagon officials visited the laboratories on Wednesday for the [...]
There is a fantastically tricky (and admittedly nerdy) board game called Ex Libris that I used to play with the other English teachers at Winchester College. The title is a Latin phrase meaning, roughly, “out of book.” And the object was to concoct a first line — based on a given title, author and plot [...]
Interesting tidbit from a HuffPo chat with Axelrod*: A student of history and a onetime political reporter, Axelrod expressed curiosity and even some optimism about the tea party, suggesting that Obama could work with them on matters such as a ban on spending earmarks and on winding down the war in Afghanistan. This comes at [...]
