The conference has assembled about 20 top Democratic and Republican political strategists and operatives and has asked us to assess how we might take the poison out of partisanship (which is, admittedly, rather like asking a convention of foxes how to advance the interests of chickens). In the process, we have been asked to consider how the next presidential campaign is shaping up. It's a little early, you might think, but in fact, in less than 18 months, both...]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Not so long ago, there was a furious fight among different tribes in the White House, CIA and State and Defense departments over the correct war-fighting strategy. The coin of the realm back then was intelligence. Intelligence that pointed in the right policy direction was cherry-picked and shown to the public; covert players connected to undesirable conclusions were outed or disparaged. This fight for the hearts and minds of Washington opinion shapers was fought out on the battlefields of The Washington Post and The New York Times -- and from them to the networks and news outlets across the country and around the world.

These descriptions may remind you of Valerie Plame -- a CIA...]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 A growing percentage of those Americans who oppose President Barack Obama believe the president is testing the envelope of acceptable domestic, constitutional and foreign policies. Staggering deficits measured in the trillions, unemployment measured almost in double digits and a weakening dollar measured in ever fewer ounces of gold are creating an economic crisis that is testing America's historic optimism and faith in a brighter future.

Public opinion rarely has been so volatile. Barack Obama went from political oblivion (a state senator) to being a vastly popular president of the United States in four years -- with the highest Inauguration Day Gallup approval numbers (68...]]> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 On three fronts -- South Korean trade, Ukrainian/Russian diplomacy and Afghan war fighting -- the Obama administration is being increasingly pressured by unfolding events to shed ideology and rationalizations and come quickly to a realistic analysis of world events and their consequences. In each of these cases, in the absence of very prompt United States policy decisions and actions, we shall incur long-term irreversible economic, geopolitical or national security harm. I will discuss the Afghan war decision in a future column.

In the case of South Korea, last week the European Union completed a bilateral trade deal (requiring approval by the European Parliament) with South...]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Want to hear a real laugher? Despite the current disharmony in politics, there's one policy on which all of Washington agrees. Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, president and Congress all agree that after last fall's financial crisis, the federal government has to regulate the financial industry more closely to protect our economy from risk of systemic financial collapse.

Here's the joke. As boom- and bust-prone as high finance always has been and remains, the greatest systemic risk to our economy is not Wall Street. It's the growing federal debt (and weakening dollar) being enacted by those Washington politicians -- the ones who want to protect us from Wall...]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Want to hear a real laugher? Despite the current disharmony in politics, there's one policy on which all of Washington agrees. Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, president and Congress all agree that after last fall's financial crisis, the federal government has to regulate the financial industry more closely to protect our economy from risk of systemic financial collapse.

Here's the joke. As boom- and bust-prone as high finance always has been and remains, the greatest systemic risk to our economy is not Wall Street. It's the growing federal debt (and weakening dollar) being enacted by those Washington politicians -- the ones who want to protect us from Wall...]]> Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Al-Qaida is becoming the weapons of mass destruction of the Obama administration's war in Afghanistan. Or, to be more precise, it is a reverse WMD. For the George W. Bush administration, the likely presence of WMD in Iraq was a major justification for going to war. For Vice President Joe Biden and some senior Obama White House staff members (we do not know the position of the president yet), the alleged weakness and ineffectiveness of al-Qaida is sufficient justification for ending our major ground troop presence in Afghanistan.

Moreover, just like the discussion of WMD in 2002 and 2003, the current discussion of al-Qaida's capacities in Afghanistan is being carried out with...]]> Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The gist of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's analysis that presumably will be presented to President Barack Obama is: If 1) you and Congress fully resource the effort (troops, materiel and civilian aid) and 2) if we get much better at coordinating all our assets -- Defense and State departments, the U.S. Agency for International Development, intelligence, contractors, NATO and others -- then 3) there is a better than even chance of success in Afghanistan, which will take 4) between five and seven more years. Note that the president is not likely to be told that the Pentagon can "predict" success -- only that it would be more likely than not to succeed.

Thus, the president will have to...]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 As the town hall meetings on health care started in early August, the Democratic Party's talking points accused the attending citizens of being "demonstrators hired by K Street lobbyists." Then they started calling them a "mob." Getting into the spirit of his party, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called those who oppose Obamacare "evil." Then House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called the dissenters "un-American." For good measure, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused them of being Nazis.

Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter followed with the assertion that "racism" motivates President Barack Obama's health care opponents. The culmination -- so...]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 With one-sixth of the Obama administration's term of office complete, last week it revealed its profound commitment to an unprecedented policy of eschewing the exercise of great-power diplomacy -- and indeed of being willing to consciously accept humiliation -- in the hope of gaining future advantage from talking with hostile but weaker nations.

Following up on his campaign commitment to unconditional diplomatic talks, the president -- in dealings last week with Iran and North Korea through his government -- yielded previously asserted conditions for negotiations as a price his administration is willing to pay for talks with those nations.

Earlier in the year, the president...]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 As the politicians who support the president's health care plans escape back into Washington from America -- and as the politicians who oppose the president's health care plans leave their safe redoubt in the heartland and go once more behind the lines into the hostile territory of the Federal Triangle -- only one thing is certain: We don't know the end of this story.

If we had a plebiscite on it today, polls show the president's plan would lose. But we are governed by representative government, not plebiscite. And our representatives represent many things. They represent their own convictions, their contributors' interests, their political parties' interests, their own career...]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 "President George W. Bush kept us safe from further terrorist attacks." Few presidential claims have been less persuasive to the public than that. Yet after Sept. 11, most Americans thought, "It's not a question of whether, but when." We would have been grateful if we had known at the time that there would be no further attacks while Bush was president.

However, as time passed, fewer and fewer believed that Bush's specific judgments and actions were keeping us safe. Most probably assumed our deliverance from a second attack on our soil was attributable to some combination of blind luck and the vigilant work of thousands of our security workers. And, of course, without both of...]]> Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 On May 27, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson had telephone conversations about Vietnam with McGeorge Bundy, his national security adviser, and Sen. Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. First, to Bundy, he said: "It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there. ... I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere. ... I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out. It's just the biggest damn mess I ever saw. ... What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? ... What is it worth to this country?"

In a second, 20-minute conversation that day with his friend Sen....]]> Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Those of us who are self-appointed advocates -- who expend our efforts trying to persuade a few more people to our political point of view -- must sit back in slack-jawed wonder when the great American public makes one of its great roars, as we all have been hearing in town hall meetings across the country.

In the animal kingdom, it is the lion that has the loudest roar. Scientists say it is made as a warning to advertise the animal's presence. Are you listening, Washington? The current American public's roar certainly is being heard around the world. Consider the following lead from Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper a few days ago:

"It was a scene of breathtaking...]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 I have talked with soldiers from Afghanistan -- both American and British, both in the ranks and field-grade officers -- in an effort at making sense of what we are doing there. The White House and Pentagon publicly say they are reassessing policy in Afghanistan. It is well that they should. So far, both means and goals are confused.

The initial phase of the war, which started Oct. 7, 2001, had a clear and necessary purpose: to destroy the Taliban regime that gave succor to those who attacked us Sept. 11. That promptly was accomplished in a shrewdly designed operation that combined a light American presence with a maximum effort at working with local and regional forces hostile to...]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The president's health care initiative is vulnerable to defeat (and the high esteem in which the public generally has held him is in jeopardy) because of unforced errors on his part deriving from the emerging legislation's failing to carry out his stated policy and because of his political and policy responses to that problem.

His policy has been that:

--We have an obligation to provide health care for virtually all American citizens without increasing the deficit.

--To gain economic recovery, we must, this year, pass health legislation that eventually would bring down health care costs.

--Voters with incomes of less than $250,000 will not have their taxes...]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whatever her other capacities, demonstrated last week that she is a master at the poetic art of haiku -- the Japanese poem form that encapsulates in three or fewer lines of 17 or fewer syllables a larger thought or image.

Regarding the Democratic health care bill, she crafted the following haiku to assure the Blue Dog Democrats that they can tell their voters:

"(It) will mean a cap on your costs,

"but no cap on your benefits."

In just two lines of fewer than 17 syllables, the speaker has encapsulated the illogic inherent in the Democratic health care bills. It is a compound proposition that is always untrue for all possible...]]> Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 I was listening to National Public Radio's morning "news" Monday on the way to work, during which the newsperson read the apparently "factual" statement that the United States is the only developed country that does not provide "comprehensive" health care coverage.

Perhaps only those of us who are highly trained ideological vigilantes would leap to attention on the use of the word comprehensive. To most people, the word comprehensive sounds good. Of course, those who opposed "comprehensive immigration reform" a few seasons ago might have started twitching on hearing the word applied to health care reform.

Comprehensive, as the dictionary defines it, means "including all or...]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 As I cruise around the Greek Isles for a few weeks, I want to recommend a truly remarkable book for your summer reading, "Freeing Tibet: 50 Years of Struggle, Resilience, and Hope," by my great friend John Roberts and his wife, Elizabeth Roberts. (While I am blessed to have many friends who write good books, my regular readers know that I am not in the habit of reviewing them. But this book is so distinctively fascinating that it deserves to be reviewed -- and widely read.)

I confess to not having been particularly fascinated by Tibet, the Dalai Lama or even Buddhism when I picked up the book. And yet I couldn't put the book down. I suspect that the unique fascination of this book...]]> Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Professional politicians and political journalists don't waste energy on political corpses. They reserve their energy -- positive or negative -- for viable politicians.

Thus, an intriguing part of the Sarah Palin phenomenon is the intensity of response to her every word and move -- from both Republican Party and Democratic Party professionals and from the conventional media. The negative but sustained passion being expressed by the professional Washington political class against her tends to belie its almost unanimous assertion that she is washed-up.

I happened to be on CNN Friday just as the story was breaking of Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska, and for the next...]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 This week, American troops start leaving Iraqi cities in compliance with both former President George W. Bush's negotiated start date for withdrawal and President Barack Obama's campaign pledge. Given Bush's profound commitment to succeed in Iraq, if he were still in office and if he judged such a scheduled removal of troops to be dangerous, he doubtlessly would have postponed the action -- just as he changed his strategy and ordered the surge against the advice of most of his government and most of Washington in 2007.

Yet it was that surge and the changed strategy designed and led by Gen. David Petraeus that left Iraq at noon Jan. 20 largely peaceful and on a steady march to a...]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Last week, both David Broder, The Washington Post's venerable and authoritative political voice, and Chuck Todd, NBC's new important political voice, declared President Barack Obama's honeymoon over.

Although almost every new American presidency is launched with renewed hope and optimism for both the president and the nation (Abraham Lincoln's being a conspicuous exception in 1861), a time comes when the public and the president's party begin to assess whether they made the right choice.

Are the public's expectations of the new president being met? Are the many promises that every candidate for president makes -- and his apparent personal attributes -- hanging together and...]]> Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 To borrow Niall Ferguson's metaphor, if finance is an evolutionary process, then regulation is its intelligent design -- which, I would add, is a cognate of faith, not science.

Or, to take the observation of former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin, if "the financial system (is) the brain of the economy," then, I would suggest, heavy regulation is its lobotomy; while it removes the emotional highs and lows, it also dulls the perception, facility and adroitness. (Disclosure: In keeping with my long-held public view, I give professional advice to financial institutions seeking low regulation and taxation.)

A century ago, medical science had faith in lobotomies. Today,...]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Last weekend's European Parliament and British local county council elections were not only a victory for the center-right over the center-left but also, more significantly, an indication of the growing rejection of the past 60 years of denationalized and consolidating European history. They were, particularly, a sharp assertion by many indigenous Europeans that they will not put up with losing their culture to overly assertive Muslims or other immigrants.

The latter point was made most emphatically by the voters of the Netherlands, Hungary, Finland, Britain, Austria, Denmark and Italy.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' anti-Islamist, libertarian Freedom Party received 17...]]> Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The Roman historian Livy famously described the terminal plight of the late Roman Republic: "Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus" ("We can bear neither our shortcomings nor the remedies for them"). As I reread this phrase in Christian Meier's biography of Julius Caesar this past weekend, I couldn't help thinking of America's current fiscal profligacy -- which has been growing for years at an ever-accelerating rate.

Of course, since last fall's financial/economic crisis, the rate of profligacy has become supercharged. Like the Roman Republic's lament, we think we can't survive without deficit spending -- but we soon won't be able to survive with deficit spending,...]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 In 1845, the French economist Frederic Bastiat published a satirical petition from the "Manufacturers of Candles" to the French Chamber of Deputies, which ridiculed the arguments made on behalf of inefficient industries to protect them from more efficient producers:

"We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This...]]> Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Upon hearing of the death of a Turkish ambassador, the serpentine French diplomat Talleyrand was reputed to have responded, "I wonder what he meant by that." With that level of skepticism in mind, all shrewd diplomats and observers of diplomacy look beneath the surface language and actions of diplomacy to the underlying realities that will shape negotiations, because, as professor Angelo Codevilla explains, effective diplomacy is, at its core, a "verbal representation of a persuasive reality... Indubitable reality itself convinces -- sometimes even without verbal expression, or through nonverbal expression." As we enter this new round of U.S.-Israeli-Arab negotiations, one needs to keep...]]> Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Last Sunday, the British newspaper The Times published an interview with Jordan's King Abdullah II, in which the maturing king demonstrated a deft touch in putting pressure both on the new prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and on President Barack Obama.

The king's comments -- coming about two weeks after his Washington visit with our president, one day after his visit with the pope, and about one week before Prime Minster Netanyahu's Washington visit with Obama -- put heavy geopolitical pressure on Israel while simultaneously maximizing President Obama's personal stakes in the success or failure of this newest Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative:

"(President...]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Does anyone take serious words seriously anymore here in Washington?

News item No. 1 concerns the testimony of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 22. She said deteriorating security in nuclear-armed Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world."

News item No. 2 is this headline on the front page of the May 4 edition of The Washington Post: "U.S. Options in Pakistan Limited."

News item No. 3 is a quote in Jackson Diehl's May 4 column in The Washington Post from a senior Obama administration official: "It's not good when your national security interests are dependent on a...]]> Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Several events in recent months bring back to the forefront the perennial assertion that, on grounds of both efficacy and ethics, the public's "right to know" is the best guide to good government and good institutions. Indeed, the Obama administration prominently displays on the White House's Web site a presidential memorandum: "MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

"SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will...]]> Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500