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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“Justice has been done,” President Barack Obama told the world in announcing that U.S.
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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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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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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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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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"Where are our plans for a New Deal or a Great Society?" asked Edward W. Brooke, the legendary Massachusetts Republican.
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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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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 European Union doesn’t know where it stands at the moment. NATO thinks it knows and is gambling.
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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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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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Barack Obama's campaign promise of change did not include a pledge to transform American conservatism.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Edmund Burke, one of history's greatest conservatives, warned that abstractions are the enemy of responsible government.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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 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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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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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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Visit dotCommonweal to discuss the election results.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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For thirty years, conservative ideologues have played moderate deficit hawks for suckers.
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Photo: cometstarmoon
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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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E. M. Forster once wrote the book Two Cheers for Democracy.
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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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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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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.
