LADY LAKE, Fla. -- Lunching at Applebee's in this hyper-groomed shopping center, I'm tempted to buttonhole some of the retirees enjoying their leisure as Fox News jabbers down from the bar. This, after all, is a gathering place near the storied retirement community known as The Villages, a huge conservative enclave smack in the middle of Florida's I-4 corridor.
"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside," Barack Obama said in an interview Thursday on the Spanish-language Univision network. "You can only change it from the outside."
A better way to put it is that Barack Obama has proved he can't change Washington from the inside.
One case in point is the comprehensive immigration legislation Obama promised to steer to passage in his first term. The Univision interviewers, who asked tougher questions than the president has been getting from David Letterman or various rappers, zeroed in on this issue.
Mitt Romney's comments about 47 percent of Americans being dependent on government and locked in to vote for President Obama highlight a fundamental reality in American politics today...
People, not least himself, have often compared Barack Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt. You know the narrative. He came to office in a financial crisis and proceeded to take government action to revive the economy and expand government to help the little guy.
Liberals strain to understand why so many blue-collar whites have made their home in the Republican Party. Yes, the GOP better connects with this group on social and lifestyle levels. Still, with working people under so much economic strain these days, it seems odd that they'd let a culture war centered on emotion trump their bread-and-butter concerns.
All political candidates call themselves freedom-lovers, but they are not. Neither major party really opposes government control of the economy or of our personal lives. I'm a libertarian because I see the false choice offered by political left and right: Democrats talk about personal liberty; Republicans talk about economic freedom. But what they do once in power belies their words.
Robots don't take bathroom breaks, and that's one reason why, all else being equal, they may make better factory workers than the human version. But all else is getting less equal. New generations of super "smart" robots are doing more and more complex tasks, their needle arms going into tiny spaces the most delicate human hand can't reach. And just as the machines leap forward in sophistication, their price is coming down.
In Libya, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were murdered Tuesday. Earlier that day, protesters in Egypt stormed the U.S. embassy and tore down the American flag.
During the festival of falsehood held by Republicans in Tampa, Fla., two weeks ago, perhaps the very biggest lie emanated from the mouth of Jeb Bush, the Florida politician, entrepreneur and potential heir to the GOP presidential dynasty.
The health care debate is a great example of why Americans hate politics. Both Republicans and Democrats pursue their plans with ideological zeal and reckless disregard for the truth....
Letting homeowners deduct interest paid on their mortgages from taxable income makes no sense. It encourages taking on more debt, discriminates against renters, subsidizes one kind of spending over others and favors the upper incomes. It advances the questionable public goal of making more Americans into homeowners. And it costs the Treasury about $100 billion a year.
One of the services of the Simpson-Bowles Commission was to set out a path for tax reform, with lower income tax rates and removal of many tax preferences -- or, to use the commission's term, tax expenditures.
Bill Clinton got rave reviews for his speech at the Democratic National Convention. My wife said: "Clinton was great. He made Republicans look like liars and losers." Clinton, now a sainted elder statesman, also gets credit for the booming economy of the '90s.
What Mitt Romney truly believes is anybody's guess. Whether Romney as president would act on those beliefs is also a guess. And we can't rule out the possibility that he doesn't have any beliefs outside of religion and investment strategies. Why he's running for president remains unclear, though commander in chief looks impressive on a nametag.
The consensus on Barack Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night, and in effect on the Democratic National Convention as a whole, is that it was a bust.
One reason may be optics. Obama was scheduled to deliver the speech in a stadium seating 64,000 people. But on Wednesday, after Charlotte, N.C., had been pummeled by periodic rainstorms all week, organizers moved the event to the convention hall.
Perhaps the reason for President Obama’s flat and energy-less speech Thursday night -- TV cameras panning the convention floor actually showed delegates falling asleep -- was that he already knew Friday’s jobs numbers were going to be a disaster. The August unemployment report completely punctured his argument that if you just give him four more years, his policies will solve the economy.
Whenever the Library of America -- the publisher that releases those elegant volumes with white, cursive writing on black covers -- comes up with its next book of classic political oratory, we’ve got a pretty good idea of two speeches that won’t be included.
Bill killed. Nominating Barack Obama for a second term, the former president brought to bear the full weight of his political experience and forensic skill Wednesday night, on behalf of a man who was once his adversary.
Mercifully, the political conventions have ended. The political press will keep buzzing over whether Clint Eastwood's unconventional speech helped or hurt Mitt Romney and whether the snafu over Israel and God...
"One question, Mr. President," read the words on the front cover of this week's Economist, behind a silhouette of the back of Barack Obama's head, "just what would you do with another four years?"
