Mark Mellman

It’s time for my now annual reminder that no one should expect the State of the Union speech to bolster the president’s approval ratings. The SOTU bounce is largely a…

Political theories originally heralded as “the new new thing” often disappear without notice. So it was with the “investor class,” once a bedrock of GOP thinking. As more Americans became…

Last week I argued that income equality in the U.S. has reached historic highs (and also is greater than in any other advanced country) and that such inequality is neither…

The rich get richer. Andrew Jackson may have been the first to register the complaint in those terms. “When the laws undertake ... to make the rich richer and the…

I believe in accountability; and I believe there is far too little of it in our world. People say anything they please, with little or no consequence for crazy talk.…

Once upon a time, a barber stopped cutting hair and devoted himself full time to cutting people — not to kill, but to cure. Émile Durkheim taught us the history…

As America sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, it suffered from an almost unparalleled case of political whiplash. The whiplash was induced by what seems like the most rapid reversal of…

Somehow, an accident of history has become enshrined as a principle of democratic governance. As I’ve noted before, the filibuster is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, nor was it contemplated…

Last week, I surveyed the damage done to the Republican brand by the recent shutdown. Some faulted “the Tea Party” for the wreckage, though, as I noted earlier, not one…

While there were no winners in the government shutdown, the Republican Party was clearly a big loser. No one can say with certainty how long the damage will last or…