In his first foreign policy speech as president, delivered at the State Department on February 4, 2021, Joe Biden laid out his vision of America’s engagement with the world. In its conventional combination of the stick of military power and the carrot of diplomacy, Biden’s address...
US President Joe Biden’s got a problem — and so do I. And so, in fact, do we. At 76 years old, you’d think I’d experienced it all when it comes to this country and its presidencies. Or most of it, anyway. I’ve been around since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Born on July 20, 1944,...
Thirteen years ago, in summer 2007, I wrote a memo for the future president of the United States. The one who would take office in 2020. At the time, I had no idea who would win the 2008 presidential election, much less an election in the distant future. In summer 2007, Hillary Clinton was the...
Although the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, Mary Elizabeth Taylor, was not a high-profile member of the Trump administration, her resignation last week gathered the attention of the media due to the reasons she cited. It was all about what one of the rare black remaining...
In 2017, US President Donald Trump’s new administration found itself in a quandary. Should it continue providing weapons for use in Saudi Arabia’s murderous war in Yemen that had been raging for two years? In June 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unexpectedly declared neighboring...
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) reacted last week to the news that a corruption investigation into Mexico’s nationalized petroleum industry, Pemex, had moved on to target his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto. Though aware of the attorney general’s investigation into...
Most political observers sensed that former US President Barack Obama was keeping a close eye on the Democratic primaries with a view to engineering events leading up to this year’s convention. Months ago they had heard rumblings about his determination to prevent Senator Bernie Sanders from...
Amy Walter, writing for the Cook Political Report, has asked an important question in the title of her article: “Will Coronavirus Shake Up the Political Stasis?” She looks specifically at what the idea of stasis or change means for US President Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders Is Connecting...
Writing for MSN News, journalist Dave Goldiner can’t contain his enthusiasm for what he calls former US President Barack Obama’s “rare advice to the crowded field of 2020 Democrats.“ Goldiner focuses on this oracular pronouncement of the twice-elected former president: “Even as...
It is surely no secret that a significant portion of the American electorate hopes that the national nightmare of the Trump administration will begin to end in November 2020. Beyond hoping, many have been moved to activism and active resistance. Not enough, but many. While there is not yet a...
