Do we have a president or a perpetual candidate? It's not an entirely unfair question.
Even as Barack Obama was warning of the dreadful consequences of the budget sequester looming on March 1, he spent days away from Washington, apparently out of touch with Democratic as well as Republican congressional leaders.
In the meantime, Obama fans were lobbing verbal grenades at none other than The Washington Post's Bob Woodward.
The latest dispatch from the food wars: For those at high risk of heart disease, following the Mediterranean diet results in 30 percent fewer heart attacks and strokes. Focused on nuts, beans, fatty fish, fruits and vegetables -- all washed down with olive oil and wine (separate glasses, please) -- the diet is said to be more effective in combating cardiovascular disease than the low-fat regimens now in vogue.
To borrow a phrase, Mainstream America and Washington's Political Class have become two nations separated by a common language. This gap was highlighted by a recent Pew Research Center poll showing that "for 18 of 19 programs tested, majorities want either to increase spending or maintain it at current levels."
Indebted America is in danger of turning into destitute Greece, or so congressional Republicans and conservative commentators have been warning us for years now. For many reasons, this is an absurd comparison -- but it may not always be quite so ridiculous if Washington's advocates of austerity get their way
The Republicans actually want to impose Greek-style budget slashing on the United States. And the federal budget sequestration scheduled to take effect next week could represent the first serious step here toward the kind of fiscal policies that have proved so ruinous not only in Greece -- raising unemployment, destroying hope and encouraging extremism -- but across Europe.
Barack Obama is said to believe that he can win the political fight over the sequester. That's certainly the conventional wisdom.
Last week, Conservative pundit Ann Coulter told me and a thousand young libertarians that we libertarians are puss- -- well, she used slang for a female body part.
We were in Washington, D.C., at the Students for Liberty conference, taping my TV show, and she didn't like my questions about her opposition to gay marriage and drug legalization.
"We're living in a country that is 70 percent socialist," she says. "The government takes 60 percent of your money. They take care of your health care, your pensions ... who you can hire ... and you (libertarians) want to suck up to your little liberal friends and say, oh, we want to legalize pot? ... If you were a little more manly, you'd tell liberals what your position on employment discrimination is."
When folks pan the Affordable Care Act for being nearly 3,000 pages long, here's a sensible response: It could have been done in a page and a half if it simply declared that Medicare would cover everyone.
The concept of Medicare for All was pushed by a few lonely liberals. And it would have been, ironically, the most conservative approach to bringing down health care costs while maintaining quality.
For years, most Americans' vision of history has been shaped by the New Deal historians. Writing soon after Franklin Roosevelt's death, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others celebrated his accomplishments and denigrated his opponents.
They were gifted writers, and many of their books were bestsellers. And they have persuaded many Americans -- Barack Obama definitely included -- that progress means an ever bigger government
There's a panic bubbling to the surface in Washington, D.C.
It's being brought about by the so-called sequester, scheduled to take effect next Friday, March 1. The sequester, a series of automatic across-the-board spending reductions, is a gimmick the politicians came up with in 2011 to force themselves to reach some kind of long-term deficit reduction deal.
One of the interesting things about recent elections is that Republicans have tended to do better the farther you go down the ballot.
They've lost the presidency twice in a row, and in four of the last six contests. They've failed to win a majority in the U.S. Senate, something they accomplished in five election cycles between 1994 and 2006.
But they have won control of the House of Representatives in the last two elections, and in eight of the last 10 cycles.
And they've been doing better in elections to state legislatures than at any time since the 1920s.
Savvy Republicans know that something is deeply wrong with the GOP -- frequently mocked these days by Republicans themselves as "the stupid party" -- which has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Some have noticed as well that their congressional majority is so widely despised -- its main achievement being historically low public approval ratings -- as to be sustainable only by gerrymandering. During the last election cycle, those fearsome Republican super PACs, funded by the overlords of Wall Street and Las Vegas, spent hundreds of millions of dollars -- with no discernible impact on an alienated electorate.
President Obama has new priorities. That means new spending.
In his State of the Union, he said, "The American people don't expect government to solve every problem." But then he went on to list how, under his guidance, government will solve a thousand problems, including some (like climate change and a loss of manufacturing jobs) that are probably not even problems.
SEATTLE -- Lunch hour in the South Lake Union neighborhood. Workers walk dogs they can take to the office. Lines form in hip restaurants. Something big is going on here, but the only sure sign of a major employer is the many blue ID cards hanging out of jackets.
Barack Obama has said that he wants to help Democrats win back a majority in the House of Representatives. He says he looks forward to Nancy Pelosi being speaker again.
If he does work hard to elect House Democrats, it will be a change from 2010 and 2012, when he didn't do much at all for them.
But let's say he does. What are the chances of success?
Certainly not zero. Democrats need to gain 17 seats to win a House majority of 218. That's fewer than the number of seats that changed party in 2006, 2008 and 2010.
MEDFORD, Ore. -- "Obama says he's going to make middle-class jobs," the breakfast room troubadour bellowed at the Holiday Inn Express to those who wanted to listen -- and to those who didn't. "Did he make your job?" he went on, cornering a female employee. "Private companies make jobs."
There's still a lot of confusion in the Republican Party in the aftermath of the 2012 election. Part of the confusion stems from the struggle between the party establishment based in Washington and the party's base of voters all over the country. Sixty-three percent of Republican voters nationwide recognize that their leaders in Washington have lost touch with the base.
Added to that challenge is the debate over what type of change is needed. Some argue that the party needs to simply change the message and find a better way to sell its product. Others argue that more substantive policy changes are needed.
No doubt President Obama was deeply stung over the weekend to hear Dick Cheney criticize his new national security team. At a Wyoming Republican Party dinner, the former vice president briskly dismissed Obama's choices as "dismal," saying that America needs "good people" rather than the "second-rate" figures selected by the president, particularly Vietnam veteran and long-time U.S. senator Chuck Hagel, nominated by the president as Secretary of Defense.
For sage advice on security policy and personnel, after all, there is no living person whose approval could be more meaningful than Cheney. It is hard to imagine a record as profoundly impressive as that of the Bush-Cheney administration, back when everyone knew that he was really in charge of everything important -- especially the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.
Presidents' State of the Union addresses are delivered in the chamber of the House of Representatives in the Capitol. The classical majesty of this building where laws are made symbolizes the idea that we live under the rule of law.
Unfortunately, the 44th president is running an administration that too often seems to ignore the rule of law.
"We can't wait," Barack Obama took to saying after the Republicans captured a majority in the House and refused to pass laws he wanted. He would act to get what he wanted regardless of law.
One example: his recess appointments in January 2012 of three members of the National Labor Relations Board and the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
We've heard another State of the Union speech, and my president said grand things like:
"Think about ... a future where we're in control of our own energy ... I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China ... I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning ..."
Actually, he said that in 2012. I write before this year's speech, but he says basically the same thing every year: With more spending, government can fix everything.
The following is a crashing generalization, but here goes: When it comes to how we dress, there are serious gender inequities -- in standards of comfort and in body exposure. Valentine's Day underscores a third that rankles just as much: inequality of effort.
