Political History

Ted Sorensen, who died early last week, was legendary among all of us in the speechwriting fraternity for the extraordinary body of work he crafted with President John F. Kennedy. Even the Republicans pilfered from him, and inside the Clinton White House, he represented a gold standard that we constantly strove to reach, with imperfect results (it’s harder than it looks).

The House ethics charges facing Maxine Waters for aiding a bank on whose board her husband sat have been met with a shrug here in California, and why not? Waters’ alleged misdeeds are only the latest scandal produced by the state’s members of Congress, authors of a decade-long list of embarrassment so lengthy that it begs the question:

Does California have the worst congressional delegation in the country?

Washington has fallen in love with "comprehensive reform" -- legislation aimed at solving all aspects of a big problem in one dramatic and history-making move.

We saw it with health care. Now comprehensive financial regulatory reform has passed in the House, with a Senate vote expected soon. Up next may come energy legislation, following President Obama's Oval Office speech last month proclaiming a new "national mission" to wean America off fossil fuels.

I know this is supposed to be Barack Obama’s summer of discontent. The oil spill is still gushing; the economy is still floundering; the Afghan war is deteriorating; Americans don’t find him so charming anymore. But have you noticed that when it comes to actual policy, he keeps racking up the wins? This week it was financial-regulatory reform.

Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 304 pp., $25.00.

Have American progressives rejected the belief in natural rights that inspired the American Founding, in order to worship History with a capital "H" while putting as many of their fellow citizens as possible on the dole? That's the claim of the small group of followers of the late philosopher Leo Strauss who have become Glenn Beck's historians.

This year’s “Super Tuesday” of primary elections across the country featured plenty of women to watch: Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln fought off a tough challenge from fellow Democrat Bill Halter; Nikki Haley, the Indian-American conservative battling allegations of "inappropriate sexual contact" will face a runoff for governor in South Carolina; and in California, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina emerged victorious after expensive, blistering primary campaigns.

For the Republican Party, Tuesday's primaries contain good news and bad news. The good news: Republicans are angry—angry at Barack Obama, angry at the national debt, even angry at some of the leaders of their own party. Anger is a good motivator, and in midterm elections, where turnout is small, a little motivation goes a long way. The bad news: Republicans are not hungry. They're not willing to submerge their anger for the sake of winning elections. They either don't think they need to compromise their ideological purity to beat Democrats this fall or they don't care.

Liberals want to turn America into Europe! This recurrent theme of conservative propaganda is now being promoted by the new president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Arthur C. Brooks. Founded in the 1940s as a small-government libertarian think tank, AEI became associated with neoconservatism in the 1970s and was the home of many proponents of the Iraq war, including David Frum, who was recently forced out for being too critical of the Republican right.

Poor Flag Day. It has to be the single most ignored national holiday in an otherwise patriotic country that loves its holidays — and no, it's not just because we don't get the day off. Nor is it because Flag Day gets lost between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. The real reason that most Americans ignore the June 14 holiday is that it's utterly redundant. In the United States, every day is Flag Day.