The politics of budget cuts
06/15/2010
Few Americans devote any time to contemplating Dutch politics. But in a win that seems to American ears like a candidate for Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Holland’s Liberals won…
BP, Katrina: A world of difference
06/08/2010
Is the BP spill President Obama’s Katrina? To ask the question is to raise doubts in the public mind – doubts about competence and empathy – doubts that may not…
Navigating troubled waters
05/25/2010
Last week, writing before Tuesday’s election, I laid out some lessons about public opinion that could be derived from the results that were to come. Nothing that actually transpired changed…
The public attitude’s four antis
05/18/2010
Regardless of Tuesday’s results (I am writing before the votes have been cast), the fundamental contours of public attitudes shaping this year’s electoral environment are already etched in bold relief.…
Label it, Decade of the Black Swan
05/11/2010
Were we to label decades the way the Chinese name years – by reference to animals – this would qualify as the Decade of the Black Swan. In Roman times,…
Between results and realism
05/04/2010
Last week, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine told reporters that he will sell Democrats as the “results party” in 2010, trumpeting our party’s myriad accomplishments. Kaine articulated his message…
Days of future past
04/27/2010
With commentators offering a dizzying array of perspectives on the relationship between the economy and voting, it is hard to separate fact from fable, analysis from anecdote, history from hypothesis.…
Wall Street banks and the big lie
04/20/2010
Having helped bankrupt the country, big Wall Street banks are now revealing their intellectual and moral bankruptcy in slogans and ads that massively misrepresent reality in a desperate, and frankly…
Healthcare history lessons
04/13/2010
President Obama recently and rightly chastised poll-waving pundits for parroting premature conclusions about the popularity of healthcare reform, based on the absence of a post-passage surge in support. Wait until…
On to financial reform
03/30/2010
Americans are angry at Wall Street, holding the big banks responsible for the recession and demanding action on financial reform to forestall more job loss. For most Americans, financial reform…