With his just-announced departure from the Obama White House next month, Dennis Ross will be the last of the “special envoys” installed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in early 2009. Although Obama has enjoyed his share of important foreign policy successes–the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, the new Strategic Arms Reduction [...]
Yes, yes, Rick Perry….uh….what was I going to say……about…..Rick…..uh….oh, I remember! Those of us who have achieved a certain, ah, maturity can certainly sympathize with the Texas Governor’s aphasic moment, although the Republican electorate can’t afford to be so kind–there is, I suspect, zero chance that Republicans will allow Perry to go toe-to-toe with Barack [...]
This really happened. You will never be the same after watching it. Make it your new ringtone. For context, watch the full clip here.
Rick Perry’s astonishing and tragic brain freeze was last night’s most enduring debate moment. But given that it makes Mitt Romney all the more likely to be the Republican nominee, it’s worth returning to an answer he gave about perhaps his greatest vulnerability–that he’s a shameless flip-flopper–and which told us a lot about his political [...]
In the two years since he resigned from the government, under fire from conservatives for having once embraced “Marxist” ideology and other controversies, Van Jones has been seeking a way to recreate the grassroots energy of the Tea Party for the left. Since the Occupy Protests began, he has become one of their biggest cheerleaders, organizing a broad swath of liberal institutions, from labor unions to Planned Parenthood, to help support the cause and magnify the Occupy message.
Are Republicans caving on tax hikes? The short answer is no. But the more nuanced answer is that there’s been some significant movement. No one has been talking about tax hikes per se. Allowing George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts to expire simply returns taxation to previous levels, and no one, Republican or Democrat, has [...]
In this week’s print column, which can be found here if you’re a TIME subscriber, I deal with two foreign policy challenges that may well crash through the all-economy, all-the-time nature of the coming presidential campaign–China and Iran. The President is thinking long and hard about both right now, but these are not easy issues [...]
James Fallows places ‘oops’ in the debate canon. An autopsy or two or three of Rick Perry’s failed campaign if we must. Top supporters say stick a fork in him, tell him to go back to Texas. For those who missed it or just like to rubbnerneck at highspeed wrecks on the interstate:
CNBC sets the mood: A deep-voiced narrator. A video montage of struggling Detroit. The grim facts of American decline. “Massive unemployment,” the script reads. “Foreclosures in every neighborhood.” That’s right. In this land of lost opportunity, it’s debate night. Send the little ones off to bed. Pop another Xanax. Open the box wine spigot. This thing is going to last almost two hours, and it’s probably going to hurt.
Watching Rick Perry fail to recall the third part of his own answer in tonight’s debate was like seeing a thoroughbred get euthanized on the track after a fall. It was shocking, grisly and impossible to look away. Seems like the race is over for this horse.
