Ever since Richard Nixon found a way for conservatives to win the presidency, Democrats have struggled to win the nation’s highest office.  (Nixon’s trick, for those who aren’t up on their history, was to unmask the national Democratic Party to the South, thereby forever giving the Republicans a solid electoral base – the southern […]

                As President Obama starts to sound a little more like an incumbent who will wage an aggressive campaign for re-election, the future of his principal legislative achievement thus far in his presidency is becoming a legitimate, if not yet fully appreciated, issue.                 I am referring, of course, to the 2010 Patient Protection and […]

            In the lead column in last Sunday’s New York Times “Review” section, Professor Drew Westen of Emory University asked, “What Happened to Obama?”  But the lengthy essay did far more than raise a question about the current president.  It indicted Obama’s leadership qualities and his record as president.             And, while it didn’t call […]

            “Our Constitution is in actual operation.  Everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” -Benjamin Franklin (1783)             That Franklin quote has held up for over two hundred years, but much about it may be in question now that the deal has been […]