Our recent health care debate has failed to tackle the real challenges.

There are three Democratic predecessors in whose footsteps Barack Obama could follow: Jimmy Carter, who was seen as a failure in both domestic and foreign policy; Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded at home but failed abroad; and Franklin Roosevelt, who achieved great things on both fronts. If Obama gets a reasonable health care reform bill through […]

Hans Morgenthau years ago warned a generation of American idealists against imagining that at some point “the final curtain would fall and the game of power politics would no longer be played.” Yet such hopes are hard to quash for children of the Enlightenment, who believe fervently in human progress and perfectibility. Similar hopes ran […]

The Obama Administration is a work in progress, and a fair-minded report card would feature far more incompletes than letter grades. Still, one may venture some interim judgments.On the positive side, the President has put in place a competent White House and Executive Branch, which seem to be functioning reasonably smoothly and with no more […]

President Obama inherited the most daunting and intractable tangle of foreign policy challenges of any American leader since the early years of the Cold War. The new Administration found itself saddled with crises and festering problems complex in character and long in the making: unfinished and unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stalled peace talks […]

Barack Obama is a symbol—a truly inspiring example of what a half-African, half-American man can achieve in the United States. He is also a gifted orator, if a little over-reliant on the teleprompter. Into the bargain, he is a streetwise Chicago politician who outsmarted Hillary Clinton in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. Above […]

Following the money reveals the growing dangers of an unlikely partnership.

A letter from an expat describes a beautiful, baffling country.