RealClearPolitics Articles

Good morning, it’s Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. Presidents are often accused of employing “empty rhetoric,” a charge directed at Republican presidents as well as Democrats, including the current occupant of the Oval Office. This is neither a new phenomenon nor a new criticism, however. And it’s not always because the presidents in question are empty-headed. Sometimes, practical politics requires a requisite reservoir of abstract ambiguity. The ancillary alliteration in the previous sentences (and this one, too) was done deliberately, as I’m thinking this morning of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — An array of progressive and pro-White House groups plans to spend nearly $100 million to promote President Joe Biden’s agenda over the next month to pressure Congress while lawmakers are on their August recess. The push being announced Monday, coupled with a wave of travel by the president’s top surrogates, is meant to promote and secure passage of Biden’s two-track infrastructure plan: a bipartisan package focused on highways, transit and broadband, and a Democrats-only budget reconciliation bill for child care and what the White...

One day last week I made a startling discovery as I was walking through my neighborhood in Kalispell, Mont. For some reason, an extraordinary number of houses were flying the U.S. flag on their front porches. This was several weeks after the Fourth of July and more than two months after Flag Day, but let’s face it: Even in heartland Montana, flying the flag is an increasing rarity, holiday or not. Yet, as I walked a two- or three-block radius from my home, I kept noticing the Stars and Stripes saluting me. Coincidentally, I was just putting the final touches on my new book, “What...

Ahead of and after the 2020 presidential election, a number of my friends who also are Republican women engaged in what came to be known as "The Conversation." As special House Committee hearings on the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks have begun, there's a new conversation in the air. In 2016, many Republican women I know -- men, too -- told each other they didn't vote for Donald Trump because they didn't like the way he talked and tweeted. But also, they weren't sure Trump would govern from the right. Some voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson. Others wrote in the names of whomever they'd prefer as the...

The timing was a coincidence. The contrast, unmistakable. Reporters had gathered in the East Room Thursday afternoon for an update on the next steps the administration is planning in the coronavirus fight, and President Biden was running late. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans were in open revolt. Just minutes before Biden was slated to start talking, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas (pictured) was objecting in the House. “If we're going to arrest our staff, I make a motion to adjourn,” he said. The clerk started calling the roll, but Roy didn’t wait for his motion to fail, as it...

For 25 years, I traded U.S. Treasury debt for financial institutions on Wall Street. For the last 20 years, since 9/11, America has borrowed a staggering amount of money. First to finance the War on Terror, then to bail out the housing sector, and most recently to fund enormous COVID pandemic expenses. Like a lot of bond market pros, I always wondered when America would hit the break point, when the borrowing binge would finally become painful. Well, that time is now. Since the election of Joe Biden, we’re seeing a spike in inflation like we have not seen in decades. Our country...

Good morning, it’s Friday, July 30, 2021, the day of the week when I reprise quotations intended to be uplifting or educational. Today’s, which is only a slight variation on a famous poem, is a sad one: It references the sordid business side of professional baseball. Our nation’s capital city was the home of a major league team for seven decades beginning in 1901. Historically, the Washington Senators weren’t very good, a record of futility captured in a puckish riff off the old eulogy of George Washington: “Washington: first in war, first in peace, and last in...

The most recent term of the Supreme Court left plenty of liberals lamenting how conservative that tribunal had become. And while the court conversely left plenty of conservatives happy, there has been some grumbling in right-leaning circles over whatever part of the glass appears to be empty. Those critics do not point to any constitutional apostasy, but complain because of the occasional praiseworthy judgment that did not carry more sweeping pronouncements of law. Lost in such criticism is a sense of historical perspective about a term that included no rulings on a major constitutional...

Britney Spears has gained attention in her conservatorship case because she is a pop star, but usually it is an elderly grandma or grandpa who suffers from abuse in the system. This attention, fortunately, is bringing needed scrutiny to the crisis, which will hopefully bring relief to the elderly caught in the conservatorship trap as well.   As people learn more about this issue, it is important to understand the utter and total power that guardians, who oversee a ward’s health and welfare, and conservators, who oversee all of the ward’s financial assets, have over their...

The U.S. government's inconsistent public messaging on the coronavirus came to a crescendo this week as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly reversed course on the use of masks by vaccinated people. The sudden backtracking follows a pattern of misleading and incoherent government health guidance that has led to a general erosion of trust in the CDC. Trust is, of course, paramount in a free country when trying to help the public make decisions about health matters. Our government does not seem to understand this simple concept. Faced with a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic...

When several hundred extremists mobbed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, they engaged in a deplorably un-American act of criminality. It was an embarrassing day for the nation, and a dangerous one for the many innocent people and officials engulfed in the mayhem. Here's what Jan. 6 wasn't: It wasn't the "worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War." Nor did it veer anywhere near the vicinity of being as dangerous as 9/11. Nor was it a "coup" or an "insurrection" -- not in any way we commonly understand those words. It wasn't a "putsch." Nor did it, as the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, Rep....

Why do I feel that I have seen this movie before? I would like to think that learning is cumulative. But I'm beginning to think that every generation or two, people need to learn all over again the lessons that have unaccountably been forgotten or tossed aside. The elderly among us can see this, even as young people are inclined to insist that they are experiencing things never before experienced by humans and that this time will be different. Let's take it issue by issue: INFLATION The consumer price index for June rose on an annual basis before seasonal adjustment by 5.4%. That's higher...

In his final state of the nation speech Monday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte defended his refusal to confront China over Beijing's seizure and fortification of his country's islets in the South China Sea. "It will be a massacre if I go and fight a war now," said Duterte. "We are not yet a competent and able enemy of the other side." Duterte is a realist. He will not challenge China to retrieve his lost territories, as his country would be crushed. But Duterte has a hole card: a U.S. guarantee to fight China, should he stumble into war with China. Consider. Earlier this month,...

This is the first time I can remember an Olympic Games with so little media conversation around it. With the exception of the Simone Biles incident, people seem less inclined to pay attention. Advertisers are fretting as well that attention has declined and viewership is down. One of the natures of a monopoly is there is very little incentive to provide a great product at a low price. It is a reason government-run entities tend to come in overbudget with a worse product than private sector entities. With no competition, there is no reason to innovate, improve or seek efficiencies. Much of the...

I wish I could be a Cheney fan. I really do. Rep. Liz Cheney has conducted herself honorably for the past nine months. Her courage in telling the truth about the election and the insurrection of Jan. 6 has been punished by the Republican conference, which booted her from leadership and replaced her with the lying, scheming Trumpist, Rep. Elise Stefanik. Former President Donald Trump is apparently working feverishly to unseat Cheney from Congress altogether, and his lickspittle lieutenants are joining the effort. The invertebrate minority leader, Kevin McCarthy -- who, let's recall, declared...

This is becoming another summer that didn't quite happen. It follows the bum summer of 2020, which was canceled by COVID-19. In the West this year, summer is literally going up in smoke. Wildfires from Southern California to Washington state are burning out of control and clouding skies as far away as New England. The West Coast is seeing extreme drought, extreme flooding and extreme heat. But isn't that everywhere, to some extent? The carefree days of frolicking outside have been revoked throughout the country's midsection as horrid heat descends from the Northern Rockies through the Deep...

It is a long-standing tradition to air the national anthem prior to kickoff at football games. Now, the NFL has decided to follow this tradition by playing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which is known traditionally to many Black Americans as the Black national anthem.  The song was originally written as a poem in 1900 by author and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. The NAACP coined it "the Negro national anthem" in 1919 because of the poem's powerful affirmation for Black Americans who suffered a violent and tragic history as they struggled for liberation. The song is powerful...

It was Madison Cawthorn’s turn to pay for lunch, and because the freshman congressman bought the barbeque Wednesday, he got to make a short speech behind closed doors. The North Carolina lawmaker told his more senior colleagues that “our people” only want to “swing for the fences” while Democrats, at least in his limited experience, were happy to move their plans forward “inch by inch.” And then, Cawthorn wrapped his remarks by urging the Republican Study Committee to “be more willing to accept a limited victory.” Sen. Ted Cruz sat nearby...

Good morning, it’s Thursday, July 29, 2021. Seventy-six years ago today, the USS Indianapolis, a 610-foot-long heavy cruiser, was leaving the Marianas on a course for Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. Affectionately known by her crew as the “Indy Maru,” the vessel had been President Franklin Roosevelt’s favorite U.S. Navy warship. He knew it well: Before the outbreak of World War II, FDR had spent most of his month-long goodwill tour of South America aboard the Indy. She had been a lucky ship, too. The Indianapolis was away from Hawaii on routine exercises when the...