debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Of all the sins to which an American can succumb, the worst may be dependence on the state. Think back for a moment to the two biggest missteps in the 2012 presidential election: Mitt Romney’s dismissal of the “47 percent” of people “dependent on the government,” and President Obama’s “you didn’t build that,” intended to [...]
“Our biggest problems over the next ten years are not deficits,” the President told House Republicans Wednesday, according to those who attended the meeting. The President needs to deliver the same message to the public, loudly and clearly. The biggest problems we face are unemployment, stagnant wages, slow growth, and widening inequality — not deficits. The major [...]
Imagine a plot to undermine the government of the United States, to destroy much of its capacity to do the public’s business, and to sow distrust among the population. Imagine further that the plotters infiltrate Congress and state governments, reshape their districts to give them disproportionate influence in Washington, and use the media to spread [...]
In less than two months we come to the eightieth anniversary of the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the thirty-second president of the United States (4 March 1933). With some confidence I predict that the anniversary will be celebrated by very few in the United States and only noted in passing by President Obama [...]
As US President Barack Obama begins his second term, he needs a simple way to express his vision and policies for the economy – a metaphor around which support for his policies might crystallize, thereby boosting his administration’s political effectiveness. So, what makes a successful metaphor work? The 2008 Obama campaign used the slogan “Change [...]
Two previous recent postings explored the parameters and the prerequisites for a progressive second presidential term for Barack Obama. Each of those postings triggered three broad responses from a largely skeptical audience. One broad response, from conservative or libertarian bloggers, was that since progressive answers to America’s contemporary ills could only make those ills worse, the hope [...]
Amid the scampering up and down the fiscal cliff that has recently dominated political life in Washington, some more important and basic questions are in danger of vanishing from view, questions about the general character and progressive potential of Barack Obama’s second term. Questions such as these. Will this administration in the end prove to [...]
The year 2012 turned out to be as bad as I thought. The recession in Europe was the predictable (and predicted) consequence of its austerity policies and a euro framework that was doomed to fail. America’s anemic recovery – with growth barely sufficient to create jobs for new entrants into the labor force – was [...]
Are House Republicans – now summoned back to Washington by Speaker John Boehner — about to succumb to public pressure and save the nation from the fiscal cliff? Don’t bet on it. Even if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cooperates by not mounting a filibuster and allows the Senate to pass a bill extending the [...]
After a hard-fought election campaign, costing well in excess of $2 billion, it seems to many observers that not much has changed in American politics: Barack Obama is still President, the Republicans still control the House of Representatives, and the Democrats still have a majority in the Senate. With America facing a “fiscal cliff” – [...]
The odds are now about 36% that the United States will be in a recession next year. The reason is entirely political: partisan polarization has reached levels never before seen, threatening to send the US economy tumbling over the “fiscal cliff” – the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will take effect at the [...]
The Pacific or the Middle East? For the United States, that is now the primary strategic question. The violence in Gaza, coming as President Barack Obama was meeting Asia’s leaders in Phnom Penh, perfectly encapsulates America’s dilemma. Instead of being able to focus on US foreign policy’s “pivot” to Asia, Obama was forced to spend [...]
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