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While listening to an NPR report out of Moore, Okla., this week, I was genuinely shocked.
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We know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation's capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about -- jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education -- it's worth...
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“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms occur.”
—Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
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Charles Michael Andres Clark
Throughout this year’s campaign season, the Republican Party promised to reduce the nation’s rapidly growing debt by slashing federal spending for everything but the military.
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Charles Michael Andres Clark
One of the most damaging effects of the current deficit hysteria is that it distracts our attention from the more serious problems our elected officials should be trying to solve.
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During the Middle Ages—the historical context for the rise of what would come to be known as the “just war” tradition—violence under any circumstance was deemed a great evil by the church. In official Catholic teaching, combat was accepted as...
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Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?
Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans...
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"What if the government starts enforcing the espionage statute whenever there's a leak?" Steve Roberts, a former New York Times journalist who teaches at George Washington University, observed to the Baltimore Sun.
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On February 1, the Department of Health and Human Services released a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” that included two important changes to its controversial requirement th
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"I want to publicly acknowledge God's role in all of this," declared a victorious Mark Sanford as he celebrated an unlikely political reb
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The gun lobby and the weapons merchants are counting on our notoriously short national attention span.
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Cathleen Kaveny, Douglas Laycock, Mark Silk, Michael P. Moreland, Peter Steinfels, William Galston
In April, the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S.
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Benjamin Wittes, Ritika Singh
Political parties in the United States, like a spatting couple in a bad marriage, have been fighting over the law of counterterrorism for more than a decade. And like the spatting couple, they have developed an almost rote script for their fight....
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When it comes to the role and functioning of the United States Senate, my rather dyspeptic views could not be more at odds with those of Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is retiring at the end of the year.
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More than any other recent U.S. president, Barack Obama has succeeded in puzzling the pundits.
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In late December, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, despite having “serious reservations” about provisions allowing those suspected of terrorist connections to be detained indefinitely without trial—...
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In the late 1920s, a devastating religious war tore Mexico apart. Catholic militants--known as “Cristeros” from their battle cry ¡Viva Cristo Rey!--took up arms against the government of Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles.
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The strangest aspect of Wednesday night's debate was Mitt Romney's decision to change his tax policies on the fly. Having campaigned hard on a tax proposal that called for $5 trillion in tax cuts, he said flatly that he was not offering a $5...
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Everyone knows what the Catholic Church teaches about abortion, right? It is an “intrinsically evil act.” Yet the answers of Joe Biden and Paul Ryan in the recent vice-presidential debate suggested, each in its own way, that knowledge of this...
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The U.S.
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Last December, in the course of an interview on Meet the Press, President Barack Obama was asked about the shootings at Newtown, Connecticut. He reflected that “something fundamental in America has to change.” It was doubtless an aspect of the...
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What will the nation’s politics look like if, as expected, the Republicans take back the House of Representatives on November 2? Indiana’s Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, issues a warning and a prediction. “There will be no...
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A specter is haunting the affluent societies of the West. Across the rich countries, and across the political spectrum, there is an unstated but palpable longing for a return to the 1950s.
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It is no secret that President Barack Obama has conducted a very aggressive—and by many measures effective—campaign of targeted killings against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. It is less well known that the...
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Is the international intervention in Libya a justifiable use of military force? A review of just-war criteria provides a mixed picture. Protecting civilians is certainly a just cause. The air strikes have already saved lives and helped...
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If Paul Ryan were a liberal, conservatives would describe him as a creature of Washington who has spent virtually all of his professional life as a congressional aide, a staffer at an ideological think tank, and, finally, as a member of Congress. In...
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The disclosure that current U.S. drone warfare operations are directed from the presidential office in the White House, with the president himself selecting persons to be assassinated by unmanned aircraft in Muslim countries where the United States...
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As he tries to engineer a comeback in this week's presidential debate, President Obama needs to recognize two things. First, when it comes to politics, Mitt Romney treats himself as a product, not a person. Second, Republicans cannot defend their...
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Conservative Catholics complain that too many liberal Catholics instinctively greet every statement from the Vatican with suspicion, skepticism, or derision. It’s a fair point. The motives and judgment of those who appear unthinkingly hostile to all...
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When President Barack Obama brought his pitch for stronger financial regulation to New York City’s Cooper Union in April, he had the wind at his back.
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It's good that conservatives are finally taking seriously the problems of inequality and declining upward mobility. It's unfortunate that they often evade the ways in which structural changes in the economy, combined with conservative policies, have...
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In 2007 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, a guide for American Catholics seeking to discern their political responsibilities in view of the upcoming 2008 national elections.
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The Obama-Clinton alliance, formalized with Bill Clinton's blockbuster speech at the Democratic convention, confirms what has often been played down: President Obama has chosen to build on Clinton's legacy rather than abandon it.
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Here's where we have arrived as a country: We are so polarized that even compromise has become a partisan issue.
As the 2012 campaign closes, bipartisanship and "working together" are more in vogue than ever because the few voters still up for grabs...
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It was unthinkable, only three short months ago, that Washington’s long-estranged lawmakers would suddenly find themselves entranced by feel-good bipartisanship, especially on an issue as divisive as immigration.
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War is war and murder is murder. The law draws the distinction. The American armed drone is a weapons system of war, not of policemen.
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If a president finds himself in the role of a political scientist, he has a problem -- even when his political science lesson is 100 percent accurate.
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Nobody claimed it was the best of times. Either it was the worst of times, as the Republicans insisted in Tampa, or it could have been even worse, as the Democrats replied in Charlotte. Each nominating convention competed to present the more...
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By insisting Tuesday evening that "it's time to turn the page," President Barack Obama was talking about more than the Iraq War, and doing much more than reviving one of his most effective slogans from the 2008 campaign.
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President Obama got roughed up by the pundit class last week. The question is what lessons he draws from the going-over.
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Call it the Party-of-Government Paradox: If the nation’s capital looks dysfunctional, it will come back to hurt President Barack Obama and the Democrats, even if the Republicans are primarily responsible for the dysfunction.
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Has your credit-card company ever overcharged you? Maybe you notice your credit card’s interest rate is higher than your state allows. Or perhaps your credit-card company is miscalculating your daily balance. It might not be a big error, but every...
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The wounded are especially dangerous fighters. President Barack Obama now occupies the high ground in the debt-ceiling debate, having called the Republicans' bluff on the debt. He showed that deficit reduction is not now, and never has been, the GOP...
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The United States is once again an isolated nation. While the U.S. government was a hapless bystander, revolutions swept from one end of the Muslim world to the other—Shiites defied beleaguered Sunni monarchs, Israel helped itself to more of...
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The deficit that should concern us most right now has to do with time, not money. Money can be recouped. Time just disappears.
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The October online posting by WikiLeaks of nearly a thousand classified Pentagon documents (the “Iraq War Logs”) shed new light on the vexed issue of Iraqi deaths during and after the 2003 invasion.
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Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate for the American presidency confirms that this campaign is going to be mainly about domestic issues -- barring a not-impossible Israeli attack on Iran between here and there. It is likely to...
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Churches that preach the immorality of contraception are excused from federally imposed obligations to promote the practice. But federal law will soon require that the employees of hospitals and other charitable institutions run by such churches—...
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A weird malaise is haunting the Democratic Party. That's a risky word to use, I know. It's freighted with bad history and carries unfortunate implications. So let's be clear: President Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter, not even close.
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The Deepwater Horizon disaster will probably be remembered as the most severe environmental catastrophe of the early twenty-first century—an accident that would have been as easy to prevent as it is now difficult to clean up.
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The titans of the private sector say President Barack Obama is antibusiness. Many progressives say he coddles business. How does the administration manage to pull that off?
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In a piece written for the Web site Public Discourse, Professor Helen Alvaré of George Mason University has responded to my article “Episcopal Oversight,” which appeared in the June 4 issue of Commonweal.
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The Republican Party is running a three-level campaign this year that gives its candidates a wealth of advantages—in flexibility, deniability, and determination.
At the first level are the party's candidates, who can be as reasonable or as angry, as...
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The central question in our politics is whether we can break out of formulaic discussions that always end up in the same place. Here's one major test: Can progressives change their way of thinking about business?
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There has been no end to the confusion marking the Obama administration's reaction to the Egypt crisis. It has (inevitably, given Washington's worldview) identified the crisis as one more development in America's Great War Against Violent Extremism.
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Don't expect to see a lot of newspapers and Web sites with this headline: "Big Government Bailout Worked." But it would be entirely accurate. The actual headlines make the point.
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In the aftermath of the 2007–08 financial collapse and the federal government’s subsequent rescue of banks deemed “too big to fail,” a significant majority of Americans supported stricter federal regulation of the financial industry.
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Of George W. Bush’s many obtuse utterances, few were more revealing than one he made to Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes in January 2007. Asked about the precarious security of postinvasion Iraq, the president complained that Americans felt slighted.
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After the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a well-financed campaign against the Freedom of Choice Act, a legislative initiative allegedly at the top of Obama’s to-do list. As the...
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It was to be expected that in the course of his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama would mention the killing of Osama bin Laden, whose death represented the culmination of the battle against terrorism that began on September 11, 2001...
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The generation of the Founding Fathers was much attached to religion. They doubtless knew the biblical commandment, “Justice, Justice, shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). The Preamble to the new Constitution consequently expressed a purpose to “...
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Politicized culture wars are debilitating because they almost always require partisans to denigrate the moral legitimacy of their opponents, and sometimes to deny their very humanity. It's often not enough to defeat a foe. Satisfaction only comes...
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If the election were held right now, President Obama would likely win by about the same margin that propelled him into office in 2008. But how fragile are his current advantages?
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The path to the White House passes through the blue-collar communities in Ohio where President Obama campaigned last week -- and the middle-class suburbs of Colorado where he did well four years ago.
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
On July 25 Mitt Romney took his presidential campaign abroad, as candidate Obama did in 2008. Such tours, whose ostensible purpose is to demonstrate knowledge of the world beyond America’s shores, are often scored on how foreigners respond to...
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Finally, Mitt Romney shook the Etch A Sketch.
Having given conservatives everything they had asked for -- from switching his positions on abortion and immigration to picking their favorite as his running mate -- Romney turned Thursday night to his...
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The most incisive reaction to Mitt Romney's disparaging comments about 47 percent of us came from a conservative friend who emailed: "If I were you, I'd wonder why Romney hates America so much."
A bit strong, perhaps. But the more you think about...
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If we elected the president by popular vote, we would have heard some different spin going into the debates. With the presidential election looking closer in the national polls than it does in the swing states, the pressure on Mitt Romney from his...
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If anyone can testify to the problem of giving really rich people a chance to tilt the political playing field, it's Sen. Sherrod Brown.
A proud labor-populist, Brown seems to invite the hostility of wealthy conservatives and deep-pocketed interest...
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Everywhere you turn, President Obama is accused of not offering a clear second-term agenda. It's not surprising that Republicans say it, but you also hear it from quarters sympathetic to the president.
But how true is the charge?
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President Obama's re-election was at once a deeply personal triumph and a victory for the younger, highly diverse and broadly progressive America that
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What is the point of Barack Obama's second term?
A president who has been pondering that question for a while might find the best answers by consulting what just went on in the campaign.
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“The domestic arms race has been escalating,” Commonweal’s editors wrote in April 1989. That January, a shooter wielding a semi-automatic assault rifle had opened fire on schoolchildren and teachers in Stockton, California.
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To understand how Barack Obama sees himself and his presidency, don't look to Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Obama's role model is Ronald Reagan -- and that is just what Obama told us before he was first elected.
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PARIS -- I watched some of the Washington Sunday political talk shows this week on international television. The participants' main foreign preoccupation seemed to be the potential threat to America of al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb and the other...
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A not-so-small miracle is unfolding before our eyes. After nearly two decades in which established opinion insisted that it would never again be possible to pass sensible regulations of firearms, the unthinkable is on the verge of happening.
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At the end of a busy week—one that included both Ash Wednesday and the pope’s surprise resignation—New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan took the time to write a blog post about gun control.
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There are, believe it or not, grounds for hoping that the sequester, stupid as it is, might open the way to ending our nation's budget stalemate.
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The months leading up to the 2012 election saw a wave of attempts by Republican state legislators to suppress turnout among likely Democratic voters.
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Not long after a Senate subcommittee found that JPMorgan had misled and bullied federal regulators in an effort to conceal massive trading losses, the House of Representatives began to consider bills that would actually make it harder for Washington...
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Polls show that the vast majority of Americans do not want armed drones circling their own neighborhoods. Who could blame us for not wanting to be taken out by a killing machine operated by someone hunkered down thousands of miles away? Then again,...
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The policy mystery of our time is why politicians in the United States and across much of the democratic world are so obsessed with deficits when their primary mission ought to be bringing down high and debilitating rates of unemployment.
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On the evening of April 15—the day two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding more than two hundred eighty—President Barack Obama vowed that those responsible “will feel the full weight of justi
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Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
The United States cannot win the war in Afghanistan. Are we willing to lose it? Evidently not quite yet.
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The results of the midterm elections were both emphatic and ambiguous: a strong message was sent, but no one is entirely sure what it is.
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On April 12 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty released a statement, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” calling on Catholics and others to resist what the bishops characterize as unprecedented
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Politics tends to wring all seriousness out of speech. Sometimes this is a demonstration of unforgivable ignorance. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan thinks that "now is the time to lock in the success that is within reach" in...
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Paul Ryan is known for his devotion to a fitness regime called P90X, which involves "working out 6-7 days per week, with each workout lasting about 1-1½ hours," according to WebMD.
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Imagine that your neighbors started getting letters describing all sorts of horrific deeds you had allegedly performed. Wouldn't you feel you had the right to know who was spreading this sleaze—especially if the charges were untrue?
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Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court may make possible something that has yet to happen: an honest and complete discussion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
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Rather than shout, I'll just ask the question in a civil way: Dear Republicans, do you really want to endanger your party's greatest political legacy by turning the Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution into an excuse for election-year ugliness?
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently took to the Sunday morning political talk shows to dodge accusations that he
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It was not supposed to end this way. Although President Barack Obama deserves credit for bringing an end to the war in Iraq that he inherited, if he had had his wishes, thousands of U.S.
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The Obama administration has rejected appeals to exempt religious-affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from the mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services requiring all health-insurance policies to include...
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There has recently been much talk about whether Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget is faithful to the principles of Catholic social thought—or is instead a libertarian rejection of the church’s commitment to the poor. In response to the Ryan budget, the chairs...
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President Obama is a freer man than he has been at any point in his presidency.
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Here are the two great campaign mysteries at midsummer: Why does Mitt Romney appear to be getting so much traction from ripping a few of President Obama's words out of context? And why aren't Romney and other Republicans moving to the political...
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The "No Labels" group that held its inaugural meeting this week in the name of the political center fills me with passionate ambivalence. My attitude is moderately supportive and moderately critical--accented by a moderate touch of cynicism.
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E. M. Forster once wrote the book Two Cheers for Democracy.
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Has George W. Bush been the worst president ever? Or, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has suggested (October 2), was that James Buchanan?* Hint: Buchanan’s policies set the stage for the American Civil War.
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The Obama administration is clearly determined to reverse Afghanistan's slide into chaos. Since January 2009 we have seen a new military commander and ambassador in Afghanistan, a re-examination of strategy, and the beginnings of a “surge” in...
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As we go to press, the fate of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform legislation remains unclear. So do the prospects for his presidency and for the nation’s politics and future.
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The European Union doesn’t know where it stands at the moment. NATO thinks it knows and is gambling.
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Gen. Stanley McChrystal put President Barack Obama in an impossible position. That is why he had to go. A general's tasks involve executing policies made by the commander-in-chief, plotting strategy and winning wars—not playing politics in the...
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Good for the NAACP. We need an honest conversation about the role of race and racism in the Tea Party. Thanks to a resolution passed this week at the venerable organization's national convention, we'll get it.
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Who could have imagined that the bailout of the auto industry, one of the single most unpopular moves by the Obama administration, would become one of its best talking points?
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Watching the great civil rights march on television in August 1963, I couldn't help but notice that hundreds carried signs with a strange legend at the top: "UAW Says." UAW was saying "Segregation Disunites the United States," and many other things...
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
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Charles Camosy was in the audience when President Barack Obama called for “open hearts, open minds, and fair-minded words” in the abortion debate during his May 2009 commencement speech at Notre Dame. Camosy took the call seriously and began plans...
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It was just four years ago that the Democratic Party began its comeback in what now seems like another country. The economic collapse was not in anyone's imagination, but the nation's political mood was sour. A substantial majority was fed up...
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Can we govern ourselves in the next two years? Do Republicans have any interest in accomplishments that might even indirectly benefit President Barack Obama? Those questions hang over this week's meeting between the president and congressional...
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In October, two extraordinary incidents of moral—and political—significance occurred. The first received considerable publicity: a Tennessee fire brigade refused to save a burning house when its members learned that the owner had neglected to pay a...
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American decline is the specter haunting our politics. This could be President Barack Obama's undoing—or it could provide him with the opportunity to revive his presidency.
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President Barack Obama's call for "a more civil and honest public discourse" will get its first test much sooner than we expected.
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President Barack Obama faces a choice in this tomorrow's State of the Union message: Does he spend the next two years consolidating the gains he has made, or does he go into retreat?
My prediction: He will go for consolidation that conservatives...
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A cynic might be justified in seeing a call for a sweeping reorganization of the federal government as the last refuge of a politician who doesn't want to ruffle any ideological feathers.
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The democratic uprising in Egypt has brought into relief a gradual and little-noticed transformation in American politics. Over the past decade, ideological divisions over the role of democracy and human rights in American foreign policy have been...
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Welcome to the war over E2I2. The great budget battle of Bill Clinton's presidency was waged around a slightly different set of initials, also inspired by the Star Wars character R2D2. Clinton's lieutenants jauntily encapsulated his fight...
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So far, our nation's budget debate has been a desultory affair focused on whether a small slice of the federal government's outlays should be cut by $33 billion or $61 billion, or whatever.
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One image perfectly captured the absurd, irrational, and wholly unnecessary confrontation over whether to shut down the federal government on the basis of differences over a small part of the budget.
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In Feburary, the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, posted a drab two-column chart on its Web site, pairing programs under the knife in the House Republicans’ budget proposal with tax cuts of similar size.
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President Barack Obama has finally decided to take his own side in the philosophical struggle that is the true engine of this nation's budget debate.
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“Justice has been done,” President Barack Obama told the world in announcing that U.S.
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
When Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi is finally deposed, the world may agree that “all’s well that ends well.” But first, some questions: Why did France and Britain lead the way? Why did the United States join the effort? How humanitarian is this...
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Here are the key questions about Jon Huntsman's presidential candidacy: Is he the American version of David Cameron? And is the Republican Party ready for a Cameron moment?
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Here's why getting to a deal on the debt ceiling is so complicated. President Barack Obama's main goal is to get through this fight with the government still running and his support from the political center intact, even if this means...
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The House Republican strategy to link a normally routine increase in the nation's debt limit with a crusade to slash spending has already had a high cost, threatening the nation's credit rating and making the United States look dysfunctional and...
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Media reports are touting the Senate's Gang of Six and its new budget outline. But the news that explains why the nation is caught in this debt-ceiling fiasco is the gang warfare inside the Republican Party. We are witnessing the disintegration of...
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
When candidate Barack Obama emerged as a competitive presidential candidate early in 2008, he elicited two contrasting emotions—elation and apprehension. Both arose from the same perception: Obama was a lefty. The elated saw a candidate ready to...
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You have to ask: If unemployment were now at 6 percent, would President Barack Obama be getting pummeled for not having us back to full employment already?
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In what is sadly a rare show of national solidarity, former President George W. Bush will join President Barack Obama at “Ground Zero” in lower Manhattan on September 11 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United...
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American politics reached a pivot point this week. A new story line will now define how voters and the media see what's going on. Since Election Day 2010, the prevailing narrative has been about a resurgent conservatism, a president on the...
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The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
There were howls of protest when the Onion, our nation’s preeminent satirical newspaper, ran a story titled
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Should the president of the United States be able to authorize the assassination of a U.S. citizen anywhere in the world without telling the public why—or even acknowledging that he has done so?
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Any time the Obama administration touches issues related to the Roman Catholic Church, it seems to get itself caught in a rhetorical and moral crossfire that leaves all involved wounded and angry.
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President Barack Obama has decided that he is more likely to win if the election is about big things rather than small ones.
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I love watching Republicans engage in class warfare. They condemn it as a sin when Democrats come within a hundred miles of even mentioning the sharp and growing class inequalities in the United States.
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The Afghan government's order a week ago to the United States to close its prison at Bagram Air Base near Kabul, where it holds unidentified prisoners, came as a shock to Washington, although President Hamid Karzai has before invited the United...
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Conservatives may denounce class warfare, yet by shrewdly combining the politics of class with the politics of culture, Newt Gingrich won his first election in fourteen years, humbled Mitt Romney, and upended the Republican
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One of Barack Obama's great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of...
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What do Rick Santorum and Clint Eastwood have in common? Sorry Rick, you haven't made it yet as an Eastwood-style make-my-day cultural icon. But in different ways, Santorum and Eastwood have demonstrated the limits of both an entirely negative...
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
The full force of money, permitted by Citizens United and other U.S. Supreme Court decisions, has become clear in the Republican 2012 presidential primaries.
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On March 12, as required by the Affordable Care Act, the federal government released regulations that will determine how state health-insurance exchanges will work.
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We expect some hypocrisy in politics, but it was still jaw-dropping to behold Republicans accusing President Barack Obama of politicizing the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
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He had just been through the roughest patch of President Obama’s re-election struggle and yet senior adviser David Axelrod seemed, if not quite serene, then at least amiably stoic.
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Private equity firms typically play their cards close to the vest and resist public scrutiny, but with the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney, Bain Capital has become a matter of public discussion.
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While the Supreme Court's upholding of the health care law was last week's most important event in historical terms, it will not be the decisive event of the 2012 election. In the long run, polling in swing states suggesting that Mitt Romney's...
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You don’t have to be a Republican to consider Barack Obama a less-than-ideal president. Indeed, disappointment with the president is rife among progressives.
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There is the idea of having Paul Ryan on the Republican ticket, and then there is the reality.
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The principal problem with Mitt Romney's foreign policy statements is not that his position swings widely, or that he often reverses himself, according to the audience and the daily news. This is no surprise in American presidential campaigning. But...
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It is a profound but nearly universal mistake among Americans (and others) to think that the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2013 or 2014 will end the American war with the Muslim world that began on September 11 in 2001.
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With a narrow edge in the popular vote and a decisive victory in the Electoral College, President Barack Obama has secured a second term.
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The cheering supporters at his victory rally may still be hoarse, and his inauguration is three frosty months away. But Barack Obama has already secured the most important achievement of his second term: Winning it.
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It is said after every election that the victors should put politics aside and work for the good of the country.
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Human nature and politics being what they are, Republicans will underestimate the trouble they're in, and Democrats will be eager to overestimate the strength of their post-2012 position.
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For nearly a decade I have had the privilege of teaching veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, though they have taught me more.
Most of them were Army captains and majors who had done three or four tours of duty. And here's the most remarkable...
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Since the beginning of December, military gas (sarin, a nerve agent) has claimed a major place in discussion of the civil war in Syria. The Syrian government has admitted to holding major stocks of (unidentified military) gas in or near the areas of...
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I try to be hopeful about things. I long for a time when people on the left and the right might exchange opinions without assuming the very worst of each other. I don't view conservatism as a form of psychosis, and would like conservatives to harbor...
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The human capacity to put passion and intense feeling over cool rationality does not surprise us when it comes to love, sex, family, friendship, certain kinds of religious commitment and even devotion to sports teams.
But emotional approaches can be...
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We should mourn, but we should be angry.
The horror in Newtown, Conn., should shake us out of the cowardice, the fear, the evasion and the opportunism that prevent our political system from acting to curb gun violence.
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Beware of any entitlement reform described by its advocates as “win-win.” Such proposals are almost always too good to be true. Presented as nothing more or less than common sense, they often owe their whole appeal to common misconceptions.
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During his first term, President Barack Obama steered a middle course that displeased people on both extremes of the political spectrum. His health-care law eschewed the public option in favor of a private mandate. His stimulus package proved his...
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Rebranding is trendy in the Republican Party.
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A Gallup poll issued this month says that 99 percent of the American public now has become convinced that Iran's civilian nuclear program will threaten "the vital interests of the United States in the next ten years." Eighty-three percent say this...
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Many of the groups challenging the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act on religious-liberty grounds hang their hopes on one Supreme Court case: Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal.
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Compromise is not a dirty word in democratic politics, nor is the balancing of conflicting goods foreign to the church’s tradition of casuistic moral reasoning. So why do so many American bishops appear to spurn both in their prolife advocacy? Do...
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Conservatives are not accustomed to being on the defensive. They have long experience with attacking the evils of the left and the abuses of activist judges. They love to assail "tax-and-spend liberals" without ever discussing who should be...
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The political response to the Boston Marathon bombings suggests that we live in an age of shrink-wrapped, prepackaged opinions.
When something new comes along, we hasten to squeeze it into whatever frameworks we were carrying around with us a day, a...
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Photo: cometstarmoon
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President Barack Obama has been in office for less than two years, and he has already been given the opportunity to fill two Supreme Court vacancies. As this issue of Commonweal goes to press, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Obama’s current nominee...
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Gordius, King of Phrygia (in modern Turkey), once tied an intricate knot, named for him ever since. An oracle told Alexander the Great that whoever could untie it would master Asia. Alexander drew his sword and slashed the knot. He then conquered...
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President Obama went big in offering a remarkably comprehensive plan to curb gun violence, and good for him.
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In 1964, George Romney, then the governor of Michigan, walked out of the Republican National Convention during Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech. He was protesting his party's sharp turn rightward and its weak platform plank on civil rights.
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History deals rudely with the pretensions of those who presume to determine its course. In an American context, this describes the fate of those falling prey to the Wilsonian Conceit. Yet the damage done by that conceit outlives its perpetrators.
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The Obama Democrats who gather in Charlotte this week have a big advantage over Tampa's Romney Republicans: Last week's GOP convention gave President Obama a peek at Mitt Romney's playbook. Combining the lessons of this highly public briefing with...
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Do conservatives still believe in American greatness?
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The gracious tone of Sen. John McCain’s election-night concession speech was both impressive and reassuring, especially his call for Americans to bridge abiding differences and forge the “necessary compromises” the nation requires. Unfortunately,...
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"Lead from behind" may be a sound bite the Obama administration regrets, but debating from behind is clearly something President Obama is very good at. He got the first debate's wakeup call while Mitt Romney let the encounter in Denver mislead him...
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On May 20, 2010, the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement supporting H.R. 5111, sponsored by Congressmen Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.). H.R.
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The smearing of Shirley Sherrod ought to be a turning point in American politics. This is not, as the now trivialized phrase has it, a "teachable moment." It is a time for action.
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For thirty years, conservative ideologues have played moderate deficit hawks for suckers.
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Maybe Rick Santorum is helping Mitt Romney after all: Santorum's wacky statements about college and snobbery, along with his upset stomach over a fifty-two-year-old
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
The 2010 midterms will go down as one of the most fiercely fought elections in our political history. Nasty campaigns from Connecticut and Wisconsin to California, Alaska, and back to Nevada wiped out the Democratic majority in the House...
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Was 2010 American liberalism's Waterloo? How are we to square the achievement of so many goals that have long been on progressive wish lists with the resounding defeat suffered by supporters of these measures in November?
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This year’s presidential election is surely one of the most important in recent history. After more than seven years of the most incompetent administration in American history, it is time for a change. The question is, What kind of change?
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This nation faces daunting challenges both at home and abroad. In electing Sen. Barack Obama as president, the American people have turned to a man who, even his opponents readily acknowledge, possesses both a first-class intelligence and a first-...
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“There are some ideas and some causes that a Catholic college campus cannot treat pleasantly,” wrote the outraged editors. “Doesn’t deliberate opposition to Catholic social doctrine come close to being anti-Catholic?”
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“Apologies for the short notice,” began the e-mail I received late in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 30. It was from the assistant press secretary for foreign affairs at the National Security Council, asking if I could meet with President Barack...
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On May 29, three days before General Motors filed for bankruptcy, Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic warned that the Obama administration was “rewriting the rules of capitalism to fashion a deal to its liking.” He was not referring to the...
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Is the tea party one of the most successful scams in American political history?
Before you dismiss the question, note that word successful. Judge the tea party purely on the grounds of effectiveness and you have to admire how a very small group has...
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Visit dotCommonweal to discuss the election results.
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The genius of American conservatives over the past thirty years has been their understanding that the most effective way to change the country is to change the terms of our political debate. On issue after issue, they have done just that. ...
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"Where are our plans for a New Deal or a Great Society?" asked Edward W. Brooke, the legendary Massachusetts Republican.
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I have taught ethics in the religion departments of several very different colleges and universities for quite a few years, and there are moments when I wish that I had instead specialized in something quite different—perhaps texts and artifacts...
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The war to overthrow the Taliban's government in Afghanistan seemed over almost before it began in late 2001, but the war to push the Taliban out of the country—and keep it out—has been going on ever since, with no end in sight.
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Ever heard the one about the guy who hated government until a deregulated Wall Street crashed, an oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, a coal mine collapsed, and some good police work stopped a terrorist attack? Rarely has the news of the...
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Brace yourself for several months of occasionally biting but essentially meaningless political theater over the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
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This year's elections may exacerbate the difference between our two political parties, but not in the way most people are talking about.
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Almost all the shibboleths of Washington conventional wisdom took a hit in Tuesday's elections. Yet advocates of a single national political narrative clung to the difficulties of two incumbent Democratic senators to keep spinning the same old tale...
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It should become the philosophical shot heard 'round the country. In a remarkable speech that received far too little attention, former Supreme Court Justice David Souter took direct aim at the conservatives' favorite theory of judging. Souter'...
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The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has created a double bind for the Obama administration. How it deals with a challenge even more complicated than it looks will determine the kind of summer the president has and the kind of election the Democrats...
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Will politics slow our economic recovery? Will world leaders who pulled us back from the brink of a new Great Depression throw in the towel before the global economy gets the unemployed back to work?
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Barack Obama's campaign promise of change did not include a pledge to transform American conservatism.
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In Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, there are indications that things are coming apart. In Afghanistan, Gen.
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This week's hearings over Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court will mark a sea change in the way liberals argue about the judiciary. Democratic senators are planning to put the right of citizens to challenge corporate power at the...
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The increasingly dangerous Afghanistan situation is worth analysis at two levels: that of the war itself—the ultimately doomed attempt by the United States to conquer the Taliban insurrection and impose a pro-American government—and that of the...
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President Barack Obama’s strategy for “breaking the momentum” of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan has come under increasing scrutiny after General Stanley McChrystal’s replacement by General David Petraeus and the unauthorized release by...
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Liberals may lament the administration’s failure to make progress on immigration and climate-change legislation in this congressional session, but it may be time to shift energies to protecting what has already been passed.
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The first decision made by General David Petraeus as successor to General Stanley McChrystal as commander of international forces in Afghanistan has been to abandon the policy he himself drafted in order to win the war and rebuild Afghan stability...
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General David Petraeus, the man who replaced General Stanley McChrystal when McChrystal was sacked last month for insubordinate criticism of his civilian superiors, denies that President Barack Obama has given him the assignment to “to seek a...
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In an election, a solid "no" usually beats an uneasy "yes, but." That's the heart of the problem Democrats and President Barack Obama face this fall.
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Republicans are in the midst of an insurrection. Democrats are not.
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President Barack Obama's address to the nation on Iraq this week underscores the agony of his presidency, and its core political problem. Seen from the inside, the administration is an astonishing success. Obama has kept his principal promises...
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President Barack Obama decided this week to raise the stakes in this fall's election by making the choice about something instead of nothing but anger.
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In any athletic contest, winning teams play their own game and force the other side to play that game too. The same being true in elections, it's remarkable how timidity leads Democrats to fight this year's campaign on Republican terms.
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The Democratic Party is likely to receive a harsh rebuke in November’s midterm elections. Republicans will probably take control of the House of Representatives, while a loss of seven or eight Democratic Senate seats may bring even greater gridlock...
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Rep. Tom Perriello is this election's test case of whether casting tough votes is better than ducking them, and whether a progressive who fashions an intelligent populism can survive in deeply conservative territory.
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The 2010 election is turning into a class war. The wealthy and the powerful started it. This is a strange development. President Barack Obama, after all, has been working overtime to save capitalism. Wall Street is doing just fine and the rich...
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Let us contemplate the joys of being in the political opposition when unemployment in your state tops 10 percent. Kevin DeWine, the affable chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio, has a transparent board behind his desk at state headquarters...
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Imagine an election in a Third World nation where a small number of millionaires and billionaires spent massive sums to push the outcome in their preferred direction. Wouldn't many people here condescendingly tut-tut such a country's "poorly...
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calmly assessing the political cyclone that routed her Democratic majority and will, at least temporarily, force her to vacate one of the best offices in the city, with its inspirational view of the Washington Monument...
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The lame-duck session of Congress that kicks off this week will test whether Democrats have spines made of Play-Doh, and whether President Barack Obama has decided to pretend that capitulation is conciliation.
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Democrats on the national stage are routinely compared to Jimmy Carter, a juxtaposition that’s long been shorthand for “Here comes another sweater-wearing weakling doomed to fail, ha!” Unlike a lot of Americans, however, I’m satisfied with the job...
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From Ohio, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy describes "the worry, the anguish and sometimes despair" among her constituents and urges President Barack Obama to spend more time with people who don't make "six-figure incomes."
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What does President Barack Obama think of those who fought and bled to pass his bills in Congress (in some cases losing in this year's election for their pains) while also defending him against wild charges from the right wing? Are they among the...
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Welcome to the Republicans who take over the House of Representatives this week. Since it is a new year, let us be optimistic about what this development means for our nation.
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Edmund Burke, one of history's greatest conservatives, warned that abstractions are the enemy of responsible government.
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Be ready for the paradoxical phase of Barack Obama's presidency. Many things will not be exactly as they appear.
Paradox No. 1: Because over the next two years he can't get sweeping, progressive legislation through the Republican-led House, Obama...
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Leaders do not operate in a vacuum. When they make strategic adjustments, their opponents do too. President Barack Obama has prompted just such a pivot by Republicans.
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The battle for the Midwest is transforming American politics. Issues of class inequality and union influence, long dormant, have come back to life. And a part of the country that was integral to the Republican surge of 2010 is shifting away from the...
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Handicapping an election nineteen months away seems relevant only to political junkies except for this: Expectations, as shrewd investors know, affect actions.
The Republican presidential field might be more formidable if President Barack Obama were...
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Barack Obama is not the man many Americans thought he was. This sudden realization has transformed American politics. The sheer audacity of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden has forced Obama's friends and foes alike to reassess...
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Barack Obama’s election to the presidency seemed to confirm an old theory of American politics proposed by the elder Arthur Schlesin-ger—that the economic/political consensus tends to swing between liberal and conservative cycles in roughly twenty-...
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Among Dana Carvey's most brilliant sketches on Saturday Night Live were his dead-perfect impersonations of President George H. W. Bush, which made a permanent contribution to America's political language. "Not gonna do it!" Carvey-as-Bush would say...
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What the country yearns for is moderation. What we hear about is the political center. But centrism has become the enemy of moderation.
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President Barack Obama’s June 22 speech announcing his plans for eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan has prompted debate about troop numbers and timetables. But beyond those specific judgments, there was in the speech an implicit challenge to the...
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Our political system is not accustomed to the kind of battle that is going on now. President Barack Obama has been slow to adjust to it. The voters are understandably mystified and frustrated by it.
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With apologies to Winston Churchill: The talk in the political class is that this is the beginning of the end of the Obama administration, while the talk in the Obama administration is that this is the end of the beginning. Which will it be?
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Four years ago this week, a young and inspirational senator who promised to turn history's page swept the Iowa caucuses and began his irresistible rise to the White House.
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Thanks to Mitt Romney and such well-known socialist intellectuals as Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, the United States is about to have the big debate on the nature of modern capitalism that should have started back in 2008.
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On January 20, the day before the South Carolina primary, the Washington Post published a long story about how political polarization in that state was reflected in—and sharpened by—South Carolinians’ choices of news providers.
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They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn't, he's a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he's a Nazi, but on most others he's merely a socialist.
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The nation's Roman Catholic bishops will make an important decision this week: Do they want to defend the church's legitimate interest in religious autonomy, or do they want to wage an election-year war against President Barack Obama? And do...
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In a March 14 statement (“United for Religious Freedom”), the Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly reaffirmed its opposition to the contraception mandate in the Affordable C
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Right before our eyes, American conservatism is becoming something very different from what it once was. Yet this transformation is happening by stealth because moderates are too afraid to acknowledge what all their senses tell them.
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Rick Santorum's departure from the presidential race could not come soon enough for Mitt Romney.
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Those of us who write about elections tend to treat each new one as path-breaking. Finally, we tell ourselves, this time there will be an explicit choice between two different understandings of American purpose. Then the election happens, politics...
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In this election, we're not having an argument that pits capitalism against socialism. We are trying to decide what kind of capitalism we want. It is a debate as American as Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay -- which is to say that...
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Justice Antonin Scalia needs to resign from the Supreme Court.
He'd have a lot of things to do. He's a fine public speaker and teacher. He'd be a heck of a columnist and blogger. But he really seems to aspire to being a politician -- and that's the...
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The Supreme Court's decision upholding the health care law is not only a huge victory for President Obama, but also a moment of leadership for Chief Justice John Roberts. The court's mixed verdict could create problems, notably in its weakening of...
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More illegal immigrants have been deported under President Barack Obama’s administration than during any other three-year period in the nation’s history. Obama has also devoted more resources to “securing the border” than any of his predecessors.
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With Chief Justice John Roberts authoring the opinion, one in which he joined with the Supreme Court’s four “liberal” justices for the first time, the Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
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Talk about power: The gun lobby barely had to say a word before the media sent advocates of saner gun regulation shuffling off in defeat.
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As the American presidential election approaches, the dominant conviction expressed by members of both parties is that the country is gravely in decline. If the wrong man is elected, the nation's spin out of control will accelerate and disasters...
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Writing about foreign policy in the 2012 election means traveling second class, or even in steerage. To assess the diminution of foreign policy as an issue in U.S.
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Here's a chance for all who think Obamacare is a socialist Big Government scheme to put their money where their ideology is: If you truly hate the Affordable Care Act, you must send back any of those rebate checks you receive from your insurance...
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Deficit hawks are worried that the Medicare debate in the presidential campaign will make it impossible to reach a post-election deal to balance the budget. At the same time, much of the punditry focuses on how mean and nasty this campaign is.
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Last New Year’s Eve, President Obama signed into law the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.” Intended to reinforce the 2001 law that empowered the president to respond to the crimes of 9/11, the new statute grants him powers...
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Elizabeth Warren is the kind of person Massachusetts has always liked to send to the U.S. Senate.
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Both presidential campaigns are calling this election a choice between two starkly different visions of America. At least on that score both are right. The crucial question has to do with the role and scope of government, especially in the economy.
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For campaign operatives and cable-news anchors, it is a job requirement to insist earnestly, if overconfidently, that each upcoming election is historic, realigning, and game-changing. Most, thank God, are not.
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[This is an updated version of an earlier post.]
Bill Clinton is typically described as the empathetic, feel-your-pain guy. But his greatest political skill may be as a formulator of arguments -- the explainer in chief.
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Normally, a president presiding over 8 percent unemployment and a country that sees itself on the wrong track wouldn't stand a chance. But then a candidate with Mitt Romney's shortcomings, including his failure to ignite much enthusiasm within his...
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In 2008, Barack Obama received only 43 percent of the white vote; without the support of minority voters, he would have lost the election. African Americans, in particular, turned out in record numbers for a chance to elect the country’s first black...
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When the Washington Post reported in May that as a teenager Mitt Romney had bullied a fellow student in his high school, it struck me once again how much political jou
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The most important issue in the 2012 campaign barely gets discussed: How will we govern ourselves after the election is over?
Elections are supposed to decide things. The voters render a verdict on what direction they want the country to take and...
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The interview given the New York Times by the new president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, on the eve of his trip to New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting, was notable for its moderation, but more than th
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In this week's debate, Mitt Romney has too much to do. President Obama has a great deal to lose. Romney's is the most difficult position. Obama's is the most dangerous.
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Does our presidential campaign lack a moral core?
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A complicated truth is often less useful to a politician than a simple half-truth delivered with confidence. It helps if the politician delivering the half-truth appears wholly convinced of it himself.
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
“I’m not the president of black America. I’m the president of the United States of America.” That was Barack Obama’s rejoinder to criticisms that he hadn’t done enough for African Americans. More than an answer to blacks though, it sounded an...
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What a difference a week makes. In the first presidential debate, President Obama let Mitt Romney's attacks on him stand, and seemed disengaged. Vice President Joe Biden stayed in Rep. Paul Ryan's face for the entirety of Thursday's vice...
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The third American presidential debate was of negligible interest as a test of the qualities of the candidates, whatever it did or did not do to the presidential horserace odds -- probably not much.
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The right wing has lost the election of 2012.
The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year's best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to...
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KALAMAZOO, Mich.-- When Mayor Bobby J. Hopewell talks about the importance of manufacturing to this friendly Michigan town with a name that lends itself to song, he doesn't reel off the usual list of heavy industries typically associated with the...
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The 2012 campaign began on Aug. 2, 2011, when President Obama signed the deal ending the debt-ceiling fiasco. At that moment, the president relinquished his last illusions that the current, radical version of the Republican Party could be dealt with...
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To say that the Belle Harbor neighborhood on New York City's Rockaway Peninsula was slammed by Hurricane Sandy understates the case. Like many other parts of the region, it has suffered the kind of devastation we usually associate with wars.
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Here's the first lesson from the early skirmishing over ways to avoid the fiscal cliff: Democrats and liberals have to stop elevating Grover Norquist, the anti-government crusader who wields his no-tax pledge as a nuclear weapon, into the role of a...
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An entirely new political narrative is taking shape before our eyes, yet many here are still stuck in the old one.
President Obama's victory blew up the framework created by the 2010 elections, which forced him to play defense. Now, he finally has...
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Over the long run, the most important impact of an election is not on the winning party but on the loser. Winners feel confirmed in staying the course they're on. Losing parties -- or, at least, the ones intent on winning again someday -- are moved...
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What exactly is it that Israel intends to do with the Palestinians now in the territories that it has just opened for home construction for Jewish settlers, thereby extending its policy of occupying and annexing what are legally Palestinian lands?
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To be deemed a serious analyst at the moment seems to require a lot of hand-wringing and sneering over how awful Congress looked over the last few days as it rushed a
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Should our politicians dedicate themselves to solving the problems we face now? Or should they spend their time constructing largely theoretical deficit solutions for years far in the future to satisfy certain ideological and aesthetic urges?
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The first and most important victory for advocates of sensible gun laws would, on almost any other matter, seem trivial. But when it comes to firearms, it's huge: Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, attention to the issue has not...
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We are about to have a major foreign policy debate in the guise of a confirmation battle over Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defe
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Barack Hussein Obama can begin his second term liberated by the confidence that he is already a landmark figure in American history.
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If you care about deficits, you should want our economy to grow faster. If you care about lifting up the poor and reducing unemployment, you should want our economy to grow faster. And if you are a committed capitalist and hope to make more money,...
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Think back to the battle over health care reform. Can you imagine Republicans, upon hearing that President Obama was about to offer his own proposals, would want to rush ahead of him to put their own marker down -- and take positions close to his?
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America's Big Religious War ended on Friday. Or at least it ought to.
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We interrupt this highly partisan and ideological moment with some contrarian news: President Obama is not the only politician who thinks that expanding access to pre-Kindergarten is a good investment.
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This has to stop.
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Just when our politics seemed destined to freeze into a brain-dead brand of partisanship, party lines started cracking up.
It is common in politics to assume that whatever has been happening will keep happening. But a series of events last week...
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The administration has set expectations for President Obama's trip to Israel so low you'd think he was making another visit to Ohio.
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The National Rifle Association is facing attacks from Gun Owners of America for being too soft on gun control. This is like a double cheeseburger coming under severe criticism for lacking enough cholesterol.
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The heroic and inspiring role played by the families of the Sandy Hook massacre's victims should not be used to create what would be a dangerously misleading narrative about how they changed the politics of guns.
