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, th ...

There were two extraordinary disclosures in Thursday's testimony of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey before the Senate Armed Services Committee. One is that there was no communication between them and Barack Oba ...

The House Republicans, in serious trouble with public opinion as they blinked facing the "fiscal cliff" over New Year's, seem suddenly to be playing a more successful game -- or rather, games -- an inside game and an outside game. The inside game can ...

Our major public policies are based on the assumption that America will continue to enjoy growth. Economic growth and population growth. Through most of our history, this assumption has proved to be correct. These days, not so much. Last week, the Co ...

These days, our political parties are defined by their presidents. Their policies and their programs tend to become their respective parties' orthodoxies. And the perceived success or failure of those policies and programs tends to determine how the ...

Commentators both left and right agree that Barack Obama's second inaugural speech Monday was highly partisan, with shoutouts to his constituencies on the left and defiance of his critics on the right. Obama quoted the Declaration of Independence and ...

Have the House Republicans come up with a winning strategy on the debt ceiling and spending cuts? Or just a viable one? Maybe so. They certainly need one that is at least the latter, if not the former. Barack Obama is up in the polls since the electi ...

It's often good fun and sometimes revealing to divide American history into distinct periods of uniform length. In working on my forthcoming book on American migrations, internal and immigrant, it occurred to me that you could do this using the Ameri ...

Barack Obama, we have been told by his admirers on the left and right, is an instinctive centrist, a moderate always ready to negotiate compromises, a politician deeply interested in the nuances of public policy. His image as a centrist took hold at ...

Over the next year, we will probably see much controversy over the implementation of Obamacare. Health insurance is something that almost every adult has some acquaintance with, and there seem to be glitches aplenty in the legislation, much delay in ...