A Post-Election Review

"Don’t Criticise Romney, Just Blame A World That’s Changing," Yorkshire Post, November 13, 2012, not available online. "Republicans are taking Mitt Romney’s defeat at the polls hard – especially because he seemed to have a chance of victory. That proved to be an illusion. In politics, defeat produces nothing as reliably as blame, and the usual place to put the blame is on the candidate and his campaign."

A View of the Election from Ohio

Message From the Heartland Tells Obama That The Battle Isn’t Over Yet, Yorkshire Post, November 6, 2012. "As it happens, I’m from Ohio. I don’t claim any great insight into the state, as I moved away when I went to college, over 20 years ago. But I happened to visit last weekend and was struck by what I saw."

Live Blogging the Final Presidential Debate for the BBC

Obama and Romney in Final Push, BBC News, October 23, 2012. A heavily edited set of responses to the final presidential debate, matched with opposing responses from P.J. Crowley.

Live Blogging the Final Presidential Debate

Heritage Experts Live Blog the Final Presidential Debate, Heritage Foundation Foundry, October 22, 2012. "The discussion of the U.S.’s place in the world in tonight’s debate was unsatisfactory. To the extent that it focused directly on that subject, both Obama and Romney sought to reduce it to a question of defense spending, which the President was eager to cut. That is the wrong approach; much better is to assess what the U.S. needs to carry out its responsibilities and budget accordingly. But both men largely fought shy of presenting any larger vision of the U.S.’s role in the world, and sought to focus their remarks on domestic policy."

Pre-Debate Post on US Role in the World

Debate Prep: The U.S. Role in the World, Heritage Foundation Foundry, October 22, 2012. "At the Heritage Foundation, we agree on the centrality of American leadership. But leadership is just a word: anyone can say that they believe in it. To be real and effective, leadership needs to be backed up by priorities, by policies, by budgets, and by the strength of the nation. And that is a good place to start."

Rapid Debate Responses

LIVE BLOG: Biden, Ryan Square Off in Vice Presidential Debate, Heritage Foundation Foundry, October 11, 2012. Instant reaction on various subjects, including Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, and the economy, raised in the debate.

U.S. Campaign All Tied Up WIth Somewhere To Go

"Even Money and Media Can't Bring This Election to Life," Yorkshire Post, August 31, 2012, not available online. "The U.S. campaign seems to be a race that no one can win. But it isn’t for lack of trying. The British media report obsessively on the U.S. campaign, but they can’t convey its curious lack of momentum. President Obama has a lead of a single point over Mitt Romney in the latest poll of polls, but both candidates are trapped in a narrow range."

In the American Campaign, The Delicate Balance Against Freedom

"The Fight for Freedom Cannot Be Outsourced," Yorkshire Post, July 27, 2012. Not available online. "What we need in the U.S. is not an anti-business agenda. Nor is it a pro-business agenda. Backing business is not the same as supporting the free market, and top-down decisions by a few are no more efficient, and less moral, than decisions by the many. Outsourcing, giving back, and infrastructure are all distractions: what we need are voices across the political spectrum speaking up for freedom."

Obama's No Shoo-In

"Obama Must Not Celebrate Yet As US Voters Look For More Than Likeability in White House Race," Yorkshire Post, May 4, 2012. Not available online. "When I was in London last month, everyone agreed on two things: David Cameron is doing badly, and Barack Obama is doing well. So well, in fact, that Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, has no chance at all to win in November. The only question in the British mind appears to be about Obama’s margin of victory."

American Conservatives and the Constitutional Order

Limitless Liberalism, Centre for Policy Studies, May 2, 2012. "One of the subjects I found the least understanding about in Britain – though not, I hasten to add, in the Centre – is the connection that American conservatives draw between constitutional and limited government, American exceptionalism, and their discomfort with both the American Progressivism and the Obama administration. A common motif in press comment in Britain (and in the U.S.) is that Republicans or conservatives – the mash-up of the two is revealing, if incorrect – are simply unreasonable, petulant, and extreme. That charge is false, but it is a very old one, and it reveals something about the nature of the fundamental conflict in the U.S. political system."

Are Ron Paul's Supporters 'Right-Wingers'?

Democrats, Republicans, and Ron Paul, Centre for Policy Studies, March 2, 2012. "What is just as interesting is that the less well-off, less-educated, the less-religious, the young, and the unmarried, most of whom normally lean Democratic, are this time out going disproportionately (though not in large numbers) for Paul. It is an open question whether that trend is best described as reshaping the Republican Party by bringing new voters in, reshaping the Democratic Party by leading traditional voters out, or as the action of voters fundamentally unaffiliated with either party – and, absent Paul, likely to back neither.

A Case Study of Media Error (Or Bias)

Politifact’s Pants on Fire, Contentions, January 20, 2012. "I’ve worked with PolitiFact before, and while I’ve not agreed with previous pieces, they were at least defensible. What it comes down to is that Romney’s claim is factually correct, but assessing the context would require a book-length analysis that would be subject to a wide amount of legitimate dispute over many factors, some of them fundamentally unknowable. Even if applied earnestly and knowledgeably, fact-checking is terrible at assessing this kind of context, precisely because the facts are not known: it’s why Churchill described strategic leadership as an art, not a science. Fact-checkers would have a better sense of their potential contributions and limits if they bore Churchill’s wisdom in mind, and recognized that checking facts is not the same thing as criticizing art."

State-Based Factors in the 2012 Elections, Part 2

The Varying Fortunes of Red and Blue States, Part 2, Centre for Policy Studies, December 22, 2011. "When Henry Ford put the buggy whip manufacturers out of business, that was a good thing. But you’d never know this by listening to the President. All the evidence goes to show that he and his followers believe what they are saying. And that in turn goes some distance to explaining why America’s red states are growing, and why the President’s path to re-election in 2012 is narrow. In other words, if the fundamental advantage of the left in America is the rise of administrative and bureaucratic government, the fundamental advantage of the right is, as Lady Thatcher put it, that sooner or later socialism runs out of other people’s money."

Whatever It Is, It's Not Strategy

Biden on the Taliban: They Call It ‘Strategery', Contentions, December 21, 2011. "The problem is not that Obama and Biden are uninterested in the evidence of our failed efforts to engage the Taliban. The problem is that – as Max notes in another context – they want to get out of Afghanistan, and they believe that they can facilitate this in the American political context by depicting the Taliban as irrelevant to our security interests. And sadly, the evidence of the steadily-declining popular support for the war over the past year suggests that, politically, this calculation is correct."

State-Based Factors in the 2012 Election

The Varying Fortunes of Red and Blue States, Centre for Policy Studies, December 19, 2011. "What is striking is the number of firmly Democratic states that are delivering – and in many cases have delivered for decades – mediocre economic performances, frequently with huge pension bills impending to boot. Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that they’re losing population."

Demography Is Not (Political) Destiny

Can There Be An Enduring Systematic Advantage in American Politics?, Centre for Policy Studies, December 12, 2011. "The quest for an enduring systematic, demographic advantage in American politics is doomed to failure. The evidence of the past 200 years is that, while one party or another can enjoy a temporary advantage, the nation is too large, too diverse and too mobile for either side to win in an enduring way. In other words, in American politics, there are permanent battles, but no permanent victories through demography. If one side does have an enduring advantage, it lies not in demography, but in the steady expansion of the bureaucratic and administrative state, which inherently favors the left and which threatens to make the normal governing activity of Congress steadily more irrelevant."

American Geographic and Electoral Mobility

Americans Move, But Will the Result Change?, Centre for Policy Studies, December 8, 2011. "The political effects of this shift are equally stark: in 2012, the Republicans will gain a net total of six electoral votes, if the states vote as they did in 2008. Of course it is unlikely that the state votes will remain unchanged, but the fact remains that President Obama will have to run harder in 2012 just to stay in place. The long-run trends of American geographical mobility are telling, slowly, against him."

Deficit Hawks and Deficit Chickens

Obama Plays the Card of Financial Responsibility, Yorkshire Post, December 2, 2011. "Playing the responsible spender card is shrewd from another point of view. Americans naturally look on Congress with a degree of disdain, while according the President the respect that goes with his office. Right now, the American people have no particular affection for Obama, but their opinion of Congress could hardly be worse. By positioning himself as the adult in the room, Obama plays to the American tendency to view Congress as a collection of squabbling children."

Why Obama's Coalition Is Collapsing

Obama Goes Back to Base As Support Ebbs Away, Yorkshire Post, October 27, 2011. "It’s a good thing for the President that he has the power of incumbency, because he doesn’t have much else going for him. The coalition that won him the 2008 election has fragmented, and it cannot be pulled back together again. Many of the individuals in it will undoubtedly support Obama in 2012, but the broader sense of purpose is gone."

Nation-Building in 2012

Major Foreign Policy Addresses in the U.S. Campaign, Centre for Policy Studies, October 13, 2011. "Until Friday, as I noted last month, foreign policy played a mostly indirect role in the 2012 election campaign. In a way, that is no surprise: U.S. elections are rarely won or lost on foreign policy. But considered another way, it is a surprise. There is less daylight than one might think between conservatives on domestic issues: no creditable Republican candidate campaigns for bigger government, more regulation, and higher taxes. Foreign policy offers all the candidates an opportunity to stake out distinctive ground in an area that belongs particularly to the Oval Office."