The Week: Most Recent News & Opinion:Bullpen

The messy tax fight that will ruin Christmas

The Week — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:15:00 -0400

Up and up they go, America's twin pillars of profligacy: The $1.3 trillion annual federal deficit and the $15.7 trillion total national debt. The numbers, so massive that they are nearly incomprehensible, grow ever larger while politicians in Washington blame each other for the mess.

It's about to get messier. Because Republicans and Democrats can't agree on how to soak up this ocean of red ink, automatic tax hikes and spending cuts — enormous and indiscriminate — are scheduled to rock the economy starting in January 2013. There's still time to avoid this meat cleaver approach, but...

What the Chen Guangcheng debacle reveals about Obama

The Week — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:40:00 -0400

Talk about poor timing. Last week, during President Obama's well-deserved bin Laden anniversary victory lap, he handed Mitt Romney and his Republican friends a pretty good reason to question the incumbent president's competence on foreign affairs.

The issue: The administration's handling of the case of Chen Guangcheng, the human rights activist famous in the People's Republic of China for exposing forced abortions.

Chen's story is worthy of any Hollywood thriller. In late April, he fled the provincial home where he and his family had been under house arrest for 20 months (after serving four years...

The many misconceptions of Mitt Romney's veepstakes

The Week — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 06:30:00 -0400

Now that Mitt Romney has the Republican nomination in the bag, the pundits have been yakking up a storm about whom he'll pick as his running mate. Romney has already enlisted Beth Myers, a trusted lieutenant from his days as governor of Massachusetts, to do the vetting. So whom will Team Romney choose?

Eager to forecast Romney's pick, the supposedly smart crowd, as they do every four years, will do the electoral math, scan voting patterns, read the tea leaves, and then generate some all-too-easily-predictable guesses that Mitt's No. 2 will be someone from a swing state with lots of electoral...

Why you're wrong about gas prices and politics

The Week — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:00:00 -0400

I recently wrote about the many myths and misunderstandings Americans have about gas prices, oil companies, and the presidency. A few folks got upset because the facts and figures I mentioned weren't what they wanted to hear. But as John Adams said: "Facts are stubborn things." With that in mind, here are a few more myths and misunderstandings — about gasoline, renewable energy, politicians — and the facts:

Myth #1: Presidents have major power over gas prices
Gasoline prices have more than doubled on Obama's watch, from $1.89 on Inauguration Day in 2009 to last week's $3.93 (AAA data...

The 'super seven' swing states that will determine the presidency

The Week — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:00:00 -0400

Take your pick, folks: A recent New York Times/CBS News poll put President Obama's approval rating at 41 percent, the lowest of his presidency. The same day, a Gallup survey said Obama's approval was 49 percent, a nine-month high. Which is right? If you support the president, you'll say Gallup's 49 percent; if you don't, the 41 percent number sounds good. (And aren't the Times and CBS part of the "liberal media elite" that loves Obama? Not much love in 41 percent.)

Let's face it: Poll numbers don't mean all that much. But here's a pair of numbers that mean everything: 247 to 206. That's the number...

5 myths about gas prices, Big Oil, and the presidency

The Week — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:30:00 -0500

When it comes to presidential elections, gas prices aren't as important as you think. Sure, they're a relevant data point, but a study by Yale economist Ray Fair shows that dating back to 1948, there is little correlation between election results and your pain in the gas.

Take 1992. Gas prices were at their lowest levels in decades. The economy was pulling out of a recession. And the president had just won a war in convincing fashion. What happened next? Voters gave President George H.W. Bush the boot.

Fast forward to 2004. The economy was again pulling out of a recession — but gas...

Obama's cynical, unpassable budget

The Week — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:37:00 -0500

Here's a Barack Obama sound bite, from Feb. 23, 2009, that you're likely to hear oh, about a zillion times this fall — but not from the Obama team:

"Today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we've long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control."

When you see this clip, it will end with, ...

Obama's 5 biggest mistakes

The Week — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:30:00 -0500

As I wrote last week, President Obama can point to several successes as he runs for re-election. But like all presidents, he has made his share of mistakes as well. I promised to list what I think are his five biggest errors. Here they are:

5. Jamming through health-care reform
In last week's article, this made the list of the president's biggest successes. But it also makes his list of mistakes. The president spent most of his political capital in his first year in office on health care, which he saw as a defining issue of his presidency. Aside from lingering questions over the constitutionality...

Obama's top 5 successes

The Week — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:38:00 -0500

President Obama gives his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. But let's call it what it is: A campaign speech. The president is looking at an uphill battle to keep his job, and the SOTU is the ultimate bully pulpit. Last year it drew an audience of 42.8 million people. Obama will tout his accomplishments, of course, and make the case for another term. But what are those accomplishments? Here they are, in descending order. (And before all you Obama detractors bombard me, at least wait until my next column, when I'll take the opposite side and point out President Obama's top five mistakes...

A forecast for divided government in 2013

The Week — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:55:00 -0500

The new political year promises to be momentous, filled with plenty of surprising, compelling twists and turns. This time next year, Barack Obama will either be preparing for his second term, or Mitt Romney will be planning his first. There, I've already made my first (pretty easy) prediction: Romney will win the Republican nomination. What else will happen? My picks are below. Make your own — and be sure and remind me in a year what a great (or lousy) job I did.

1. Republicans will take back the Senate
The math here is pretty easy. Currently, there are 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans...

The payroll tax shell game

The Week — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:30:00 -0500

I hate to be a Grinch, I really do. But the payroll tax bill passed last week by Congress and signed by President Obama is one of the worst and most disingenuous pieces of legislation to emerge from this town in years. It hurts many of the very same people — the middle class — that these pandering politicians claim to be helping.

The bill extends a 2 percent payroll tax cut through January and February. This keeps an extra $166 in the pocket of an average wage earner for two months — badly needed for millions of cash-strapped Americans in a tough economy....

Americans don't really want spending cuts

The Week — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:02:00 -0500

The sound of metal on asphalt is becoming painfully familiar to many Americans. It's the sound of the can being kicked down the road by our feckless lawmakers. The latest can to be booted, of course, is that $1.2 trillion in debt reduction the super committee was supposed to have come up with by Thanksgiving. Now, supposedly, an automatic budget ax will drop in a year, cutting $600 billion from defense and $600 billion from domestic spending, most of the latter portion from Medicare.

The less-than-surprising inability of the overhyped super committee to accomplish anything set off the usual...

Be thankful for messy politics and noisy protesters

The Week — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:10:00 -0500

Some Americans might not see much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. After all, 48 million of our fellow citizens are on food stamps. Unemployment grinds along at 9 percent. Housing prices — the source of most people's wealth — have fallen to 2002 levels. Economic uncertainty, even fear, is spreading. And, in a most un-American thought, there is a gnawing suspicion that the next generation won't live as well as the preceding one.

Fair points all — and a humble reminder to those who are blessed that millions of our fellow Americans, tens...