The Constitutional versus the Administrative State

Trump and the Limits of Presidential Power, Newsday, May 6, 2017. "Last week, President Donald Trump blamed the Constitution for making his life hard. As he put it, “It’s an archaic system. . . . It’s really a bad thing for the country.” He’s not the first president with that complaint, and, sadly, he won’t be the last."

A Big, Bad Idea

Closing Chapter of a Not So Special Relationship?, Yorkshire Post, January 16, 2015. "The White House announced Prime Minister David Cameron’s two-day visit to Washington in a statement issued last Saturday. It was a tellingly low-key announcement for an Anglo-American relationship that has mostly drifted in the past five years. The alliance, though, does have one big idea up its sleeve. Unfortunately, it’s a bad one."

On Obama and Blair

Quest for Legacy Leads Obama to Castro’s Door, Yorkshire Post, January 6, 2015. "In time, Obama will get the ridiculous mausoleum of a presidential library. But that’s not enough. He’s in trouble now, and by using the power of the Oval Office to extend the hand of friendship to yet another tyranny – this time in Cuba – he’s just doing what got him elected: blaming his predecessors and believing his own magic will make things right."

Obama's Four Fatal Flaws

Reality Has Shown Up Obama’s Failings, Yorkshire Post, December 15, 2014, "The conservative triumphs in 2010 and 2014 have not irrevocably set America’s destiny: there are no permanent victories in politics. But there was a fundamental contradiction between the apolitical fantasy that Obama embodied, and the real-world desire of the American people to support liberal policies, especially when incompetently administered."

Winston's Back!

Bust of Winston Churchill Dedicated in U.S. Capitol, Heritage Foundation Foundry, November 1, 2013. "Congress dedicated a bust of Winston Churchill, one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century and an honorary American citizen, in a ceremony this week in the magnificent Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol. The event was a powerful tribute to Churchill’s leadership and to his great legacy in the United States and around the world."

In Politics, Pragmatism Only Goes So Far

Obama’s Lesson for Cameron on the Pitfalls of Pragmatism, Yorkshire Post (UK), February 15, 2013. "The longer Barack Obama is in the White House, the more closely he comes to resemble Tony Blair. Blair’s greatest strength was his ability to masquerade as a man without ideology, a pragmatist interested simply in doing what works. By defining himself as the rational center, he automatically stigmatized his opponents as irrational extremists."

Instant Response to the 2013 SOTU

Foreign Policy in Retreat, Heritage Foundation Foundry, February 12, 2013. "What was striking about Obama’s remarks was how strongly his foreign policy vision contrasted with his domestic policy prescriptions. At home, it seems that very little does not qualify as an “investment”: by his way of thinking, the government exists to start programs, spend money, tax the rich, and do things. But abroad, the government exists mostly to stop doing things."

The New Nixon

"Nixon and Obama . . . Two Presidents, Two Eras and the American Path They Share," Yorkshire Post (UK), not available online, January 9, 2013. "With the exception of George Washington’s on February 22 – now shamefully amalgamated into Presidents Day – Americans have never paid much attention to presidential birthdays. So Richard Milhous Nixon’s one hundredth anniversary on January 9 will occasion no parades. But Nixon is relevant nonetheless. President Obama’s admirers like to compare him to Franklin Roosevelt, to John F. Kennedy, or – most commonly – to Abraham Lincoln, an allusion that Obama echoed by opening his campaign in 2007 in Springfield, Illinois. The comparison to Kennedy – an iconic figure with an exaggerated reputation – is not bad. It’s certainly better than Newsweek Editor Evan Thomas’s celebrated 2009 declaration that Obama is “sort of God.” But best of all is the comparison to Nixon, America’s disgraced president."

No Responsibility Here!

Out of Touch and Out of Favor . . . U.S. Voters Turn Their Backs on Obama’s World in Washington, Yorkshire Post, June 8, 2012. "Washington inherently likes nothing better than spending other people’s money. That’s why it’s so regularly out of touch. The President has spent four years cheerleading big government. He’s not the only one suffering from that, but whether he likes it or not, he personifies Washington. And in November, Washington’s irresponsibility could end up being a very big story indeed."

Two Terrible Speeches

Why Writes This Stuff?, Contentions, March 15, 2012. "Look – writing welcoming remarks must be a tedious job, and I wouldn’t like to do it for anything. But would it be too much to ask that his speechwriters avoid obvious solecisms? If you’re going to use the tired ‘the British burned the White House’ joke, don’t follow it up, two paragraphs later, with the claim that “through the grand sweep of history, through all its twists and turns, there is one constant – the rock-solid alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.” So, except for the whole burning thing, it’s a constant?"

What the Summit Should Have Done

At Obama-Cameron Summit, U.S. and Britain Should Take Action to Rebuild Alliance, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #3533, March 8, 2012. "The U.S. and Britain face a number of serious issues at home and abroad. But the most important need is for the U.S. to demonstrate that Europe matters, that the institutions of the EU are no substitute for—and are in fact inferior to—the legitimacy of democratic and sovereign European nations, and that, instead of seeking to reset relations with autocracies like Russia, it will give the highest consideration to the concerns of its allies. The U.S. and Britain are close enough and important enough to each other to disagree on occasion, as they have in the past. But if Britain decides to continue the downgrading of its security role or the U.S. continues to care less about transatlantic security and political cooperation, the problem will not be an Anglo-American disagreement. It will be the slow disappearance of the Special Relationship."

Syria Shows Obama Doctrine (In)action

Syria: A Perfect Illustration of the Obama Doctrine’s Failure, Centre for Policy Studies, February 9, 2012. "Obama has little to gain by putting foreign policy on the front pages and, it would appear, little desire to put them front and center either. He needs only to do just enough -- in the form of speeches, symbolic actions, gestures to the left, and not very covert military operations -- to neutralize the charge that he’s not interested in American leadership. Syria testifies to the fact that the dreams of his early administration have comprehensively failed, and that he’s now relying on ad hoc approaches. True, all foreign policy is to an extent improvisation, but great improvisers work off the melody. Right now, the Obama Doctrine is a discordant mess."

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."

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."

Barack O'Cameron

Meet Barack O'Cameron, Contentions, April 11, 2011. "David Cameron has taken a leaf from the Book of Obama and launched a worldwide apology tour. On his recent visit to Pakistan, he rightly declined to get involved in Kashmir but for the wrong reasons. He said he does not 'want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.' Figuring out where Cameron stands on international affairs is a full-time job."

America the Exceptional

The Exceptional Battleground: A Controversy, The City, Spring 2011 edition, a publication of Houston Baptist University. "The United States is an exceptional nation. Most Americans would not regard that as a controversial statement. And there is a good reason for that: it is true."

Obama Uses Another Bad Historical Analogy

Oh, Man, Not Another Sputnik Moment . . ., Contentions, January 26, 2011. "I keep a list of historical analogies — derived from years of grading papers — that tell me that the individual using them is (to be polite) more interested in rhetorical impact than historical accuracy. Before last night, the list began with “we need a Marshall Plan for X,” where X usually equals Africa or the Middle East, and ended with “the United States is a young country.” Both are fallacies: the Marshall Plan was a pump-priming program, not an effort to rebuild the infrastructure and remake the culture of half a continent; and while European settlement of North America is fairly recent, the U.S.’s political institutions have a longer continuous existence than those of any other country except, arguably, the United Kingdom. Now, thanks to President Obama, I’ve got a third analogy to add to the list: 'Sputnik moment.'"

The Fiftieth Anniversary of Kennedy's Inaugural

Kennedy’s Myth May Not Be Reality, But It Shows Us What Obama Lacks, Yorkshire Post, January 19, 2011. "FIFTY years after his inauguration on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy remains America's most popular president in the last half-century. A recent survey by Gallup finds that 85 per cent of Americans retrospectively approve of Kennedy. The next highest ranking president, Ronald Reagan, scores only 74 per cent. Kennedy not only leads: he laps the field."

What Brings Nuclear Disarmament?

Democracy, Not the U.N., Brings Nuclear Disarmament, Heritage Foundation Foundry, September 23, 2010. "If the President wants to move towards reducing the undoubted dangers that nuclear weapons pose to the security of the U.S. and its allies, the place to start is not the United States, or Britain or France or Israel—it is with understanding where, and why, nonproliferation has worked in the past."

Obama's Decline and the Elite

Obama's Political Elite Leaves the Voters Behind, Yorkshire Post, September 1, 2010. "The graph of President Barack Obama’s popularity is stark. In January 2009, 70 per cent of the American people approved of the job he was doing. Only 20 per cent disapproved. Now, 50 per cent disapprove. Only 45 per cent approve. That is not just what conservative pollsters find. It is what they all find."