Commentary by Michael Barone

November 17, 2015

An Unhappy History Seems to Be Repeating Itself By Michael Barone

Riots in black neighborhoods. Rebellions on campus. The news these past few months and particularly in the past week has been full of stories that remind us, as William Faulkner wrote a little more than half a century after the Civil War, "the past is never dead. It's not even past." We're seeing something that looks eerily like the recurrence of events that led, half a century ago, to the destruction of much of our cities and much of our campuses.

November 13, 2015

Rubio and Cruz Look Like Top Contenders in Debate By Michael Barone

Tuesday night's Fox Business/Wall Street Journal debate in Milwaukee provided clues as to why Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have been climbing, not by wide margins but perceptibly, into the top-polling positions of the candidates behind the two poll leaders, Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

November 10, 2015

Surge of Democratic Turnout Has Yet to Appear by Michael Barone

You don't have to wander long in the liberal commentariat to find projections that the Republican Party is in a death spiral, doomed by demographics, discredited by the dissension among House Republicans, disenchanted with its experienced presidential candidates and despised by the great mass of voters.

November 6, 2015

Liberals' Response to Dissent: 'Shut Up' by Michael Barone

'Shut up,' he explained. That's a sentence from Ring Lardner's short story "The Young Immigrunts." It's an exasperated father's response from the driver's seat to his child's question, "Are you lost, Daddy?"

November 3, 2015

What Happens When an Irresistible Force Meets an Immoveable Object? By Michael Barone

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immoveable object?That's one question raised by the 2016 presidential campaign.

October 30, 2015

Free Stuff Can Turn Out to Be a Bad Buy By Michael Barone

Free college! That's what the Democratic candidates were offering in their presidential debate. And it's likely that, if the subject had come up, they would have offered something like free home mortgages as well, to judge from Hillary Clinton's statement that she had urged Wall Street to stop mortgage foreclosures. Sounds a lot like free houses!

October 27, 2015

Clinton Paying a Price Now for Her 2012 Lies About Benghazi By Michael Barone

Nothing new there. Nothing to see here. Time to move on for good.

October 23, 2015

Biden Decision Leaves Both Parties in Disarray by Michael Barone

Joe Biden has made it official: He is not running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. It's the latest development in a presidential campaign cycle that has not been going according to script.

October 20, 2015

Democrats' Debate: No Solution for Economic Inequality, No Interest in Economic Growth By Michael Barone

You may not have noticed, but Lincoln Chafee, the erstwhile Republican U.S. senator and Independent-turned-Democratic governor, had one penetrating comment at the Democrats' debate Tuesday night. "But let me just say this about income inequality," he said toward the end. "We've had a lot of talk over the last few minutes, hours or tens of minutes, but no one is saying how we're going to fix it."

October 16, 2015

Hillary Scores Debate Win -- Among Democrats By Michael Barone

Going into the Democrats' first presidential debate Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton seems to have banked on one thing: that far fewer Americans would be watching than watched the Republican debates in August and September.

October 13, 2015

Are Both Parties Incapable of Governing? by Michael Barone

Important parts of our two great political parties seem bent on demonstrating that their parties are incapable of governing coherently.

October 9, 2015

Clinton's Leftward Tack on Immigration and Guns Has Risks for November By Michael Barone

You win the presidency, Richard Nixon supposedly observed, by tacking to the right in the primaries and to the center in the general election. Hillary Clinton seems to be following that strategy except, as a Democrat, she is tacking to the left.

October 6, 2015

Policy Reform That Comes From Outside (and in Spite of) Washington by Michael Barone

Not all important public policy reforms come from Washington. Really lasting reforms can percolate from the bottom up, brewed by citizens with a grievance pushing state and local governments to act.

September 29, 2015

Is There Any Precedent in History for Donald Trump? By Michael Barone

In November 1964 a crowd of 5,000 attended the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, then the longest suspension bridge in the world. Presiding were New York Mayor Robert Wagner, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and transportation and parks czar Robert Moses. Also in the crowd was a teenager named Donald Trump.

September 25, 2015

Walker Withdrawal Shows Changes in Republican Contest by Michael Barone

Scott Walker's abrupt withdrawal from the Republican presidential race Monday afternoon shows how different, in ways noticed and unnoticed, this campaign cycle is from those of recent years.

September 22, 2015

Are Our Familiar Political Alignments Suddenly Changing? by Michael Barone

As the 2016 presidential selection process proceeds, there is increasing evidence that the political patterns we have grown used to, that we have come to consider permanent, might be suddenly changing.

September 18, 2015

Europe's Humanitarianism Is, Sadly, Not Humanitarian By Michael Barone

Human beings are hard-wired to protect young children. That's the easiest explanation of the rush of Europeans -- especially, but not only, elites -- to welcome huge numbers of refugees after publication of the picture of a dead three-year-old boy on a Turkish beach.

September 16, 2015

How Obama Has Fundamentally Transformed American Politics by Michael Barone

In this presidential cycle, voters in both parties, to the surprise of the punditocracy, are rejecting experienced political leaders. They're willfully suspending disbelief in challengers who would have been considered laughable in earlier years.

September 11, 2015

In Praise of Monarchy By Michael Barone

Some time in the early evening of Wednesday, London time, Queen Elizabeth II broke a record: she became the longest-serving monarch in British history, beating her great-great-grandmother Victoria's reign of 63 years and 216 days. She is also, at 89, by a solid stretch the longest-lived British monarch.

September 8, 2015

Black Lives Matter's Agenda Is Costing Black Lives By Michael Barone

I've seen this movie before. And for the last 25 years, I thought I'd never have to watch it again. But now it's playing, not in theaters, but all over mainstream media, with something like rave reviews from the president and his administration.

If it's in the News, it's in our Polls. Public opinion polling since 2003.

Most Recent Releases