Roundup: Media's Take

Maureen Dowd: 'Blindsided': A President’s Story

[Maureen Dowd is a columnist for the NYT.] ...In his deftly crafted and utterly selective new memoir, W. is the president we all wished him to be: compassionate, bipartisan, funny, charming, instinctive, independent, able to admit and learn from mistakes — and a good dad, who sang his twin girls the Yale fight song as a lullaby.... The book lacks the vindictive or vaporous tone of many political autobiographies. It’s peppered with endearing personal stories, like the ti

Norman Ornstein: The Lame-Duck Session

[Norman Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] ...Congress is back, and one thing is obvious: There is no way they can complete the amount of work they have left before the November election. They still need to pass most of the spending bills for a fiscal year that starts in less than three weeks. On top of that, they must deal with energy; the small business tax-incentive plan; the new Obama “don’t call it a stimulus” stimulus package, which includes

Shmuel Rosner: Forgetting Rabin

[Shmuel Rosner is a Tel Aviv-based columnist.] A year ago, I was invited to speak at a Tel Aviv gathering commemorating the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The prime minister was murdered on Nov. 4, 1995,* by a Jewish radical who opposed the Rabin government's policy of negotiating with the Palestinians. The murder shook Israeli society to the core.... Attendance at the event was pretty unimpressive. Marking the anniversary had been an annual tradition at this synagogue

Fareed Zakaria: The Republican Revolution: Real This Time?

[Fareed Zakaria is Editor at Large for Time magazine.] We are watching the third Republican revolution unfold — the third time the Republican Party has come to power promising to fundamentally alter the relationship of the U.S. government to society. If the past is any guide, the Republicans are going to have a tough time fulfilling their pledge. If they do not deliver yet again, the American people, at some point, will surely conclude that they are hypocrites. The firs

David Brooks: Midwest at Dusk

[David Brooks is a columnist for the NYT.] If Balzac were alive today, he would plant himself in that region of America that starts in central New York and Pennsylvania and then stretches out through Ohio and Indiana before spreading out to include Wisconsin and Arkansas. He’d plant himself in the working-class families in this area.... Many people in these neighborhoods distrust government but still look to it for help. They disdain Wall Street but admire capitalism. T

Sidney Blumenthal: Republicans Still Carry the Scars of 1994

[Sidney Blumenthal is a former Clinton aide and the author of "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime".] Despite the superficial similarities, the Republican party after its midterm election victories is not in the same position of prestige and strength it was after those of 1994. Then it was held in favour by 67% of the voters, according to the Pew poll, while the CNN exit poll conducted on election day 2010 found its favourability rating at 41%, below that of the

Thomas de Waal: The Lightness of History in the Caucasus

[Thomas de Waal is a Senior Associate for the Caucasus at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.] The south Caucasus is one of those places where people like to say that the “weight of history” lies heavily. Increasingly, I raise a dissenting voice. True, history lies all round you in this region, not least in its regular invocation by modern politicians. To name but one example: after his inauguration as president in January 2004, Mikheil Saakashvili chose to

Michael Barone: Voters Reject Obama’s Big-Government Ambitions

Uncharted territory. Historic upheaval. The tallies are not all in as this is written. But it seems that the 2010 elections have produced results that are unprecedented in the lifetimes of most readers.... American politics has had no such sharp shifts to one party and then the other for more than half a century — not since the elections of 1946 and 1948, immediately after World War II. And then, as now, very fundamental issues about the size and scope of government were at stake.

Joe Conason: Obama Should Push Back -- Like Bill Clinton

[Joe Conason blogs in Salon several times a week and writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His latest book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush."] Long before the dismal results of Tuesday’s election were complete, one especially dog-eared bit of guidance for President Obama was getting wide circulation in the mainstream: He must now emulate Bill Clinton, who "shifted to the center" after the electoral debacle of November 199

David Makovsky: Why I Still Miss Yitzhak Rabin

[David Makovsky is the Ziegler distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he directs the Project on the Middle East Peace Process.] As a journalist, I covered Yitzhak Rabin for the better part of eight years, from 1987 to 1995. During that period, I interviewed him when he was defense minister and in the political opposition, and I covered him when he was prime minister of Israel, during the zenith of the peace process. Fifteen years ag

Doyle McManus: It's not 1994 again

[Doyle McManus is Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times.] It's common these days — and, to some Democrats, comforting — to summon hazy memories of 1994, when, as happened again on Tuesday, their party lost the House of Representatives to the Republicans. That wasn't so bad, was it? After all, it led to a period of productive bipartisan deal-making — and then, two years later, Bill Clinton won reelection by a comfortable margin. But that is a prettied-up version

Jacob Weisberg: Obama can learn from Clinton, but will he?

[The writer is chairman of the Slate Group.] Early on Wednesday morning, the White House released a photograph of President Barack Obama phoning his congratulations to John Boehner, the presumptive Republican Speaker of the House. It captures Mr Obama working late, with his necktie loosened and his shirtsleeves rolled up. His expression is relaxed, confident as ever, gently smiling at the setback. It is not the image of a man in turmoil. Perhaps the biggest danger he f

Robert Reich: Why Obama Should Learn the Lesson of 1936, Not 1996

[Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores.] Which lesson will the president learn from the midterm election -- that of Clinton in 1996, or FDR in 1936? The choice will determine his strategy over the next two years. Hopefully, he'll find 1936 more relevant. Obama shouldn't be fooled into thinking Bill Clinton was reelected in 1996 because he moved to the center. I was there. Clinton was reelected because by then

Chris Good: The Democratic Majority: A Brief History

[Chris Good is a staff editor at TheAtlantic.com, where he writes for the Politics channel. He has previously reported and blogged for The Hill newspaper.] After Republicans disgracefully bowed out of power at the tail end of President Bush's White House tenure, the new members gathered for the first time in January 2007 to coronate Nancy Pelosi as the first female House speaker in the history of the country. This was two years, of course, before the U.S. elected its first black pre

Hendrik Hertzberg: Recession Election

[Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker, where he frequently writes the Comment, in The Talk of the Town.] Franklin Roosevelt was a lucky man and, in 1932, a lucky candidate. Start with the name—or, as today’s political marketers would say, the brand. F.D.R.’s name paired that of the twinkly, kindly philosopher of the American Revolution—the Uncle of His Country—with that of his own distant cousin, the most popular and dynamic President of the still-

John B. Judis: A Lost Generation

[John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.] Asked on Monday to assess the significance of the coming Democratic defeat, Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, tried to portray this election as fairly typical. “Since Teddy Roosevelt,” Kaine told Gwen Ifill of the PBS NewsHour, “the average midterm is, you lose 28 House seats and lose four Senate seats if you’re the party in the

Pat Buchanan: Does Obama Need a War?

[Pat Buchanan has been a senior adviser to three presidents, twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.] Though Obama “may lose control of Congress,” says columnist David Broder, he “can still storm back to win a second term in 2012.” How does Broder suggest Obama go about it? “Look back at FDR and the Great Depression. What finally resolved that economic crisis? World War II.”

Andrew Romano: Why Dems and GOP Are Nostalgic for George W. Bush

[Andrew Romano was named Senior Writer in December 2008.] Nostalgia is a powerful force in American politics. Consider this year’s midterm elections. Democrats wanted to return to the Clinton years, when budgets were balanced and the economy was booming. Glenn Beck and his Tea Party followers yearned for a time before Woodrow Wilson. And while the rest of the Republican Party didn’t pledge to take the country back quite as far—the 1950s, for example, would do just fine—it still pled

Ari Fleischer: Lessons From the Last Republican House

[Mr. Fleischer, a former press secretary for President George W. Bush, is president of Ari Fleischer Communications.] Now that Republicans have taken the House, a check and balance has been restored to Washington. President Obama and House Republicans will need to figure out who's going to make the first move. Having served as the majority spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee after Republicans took the House in 1994, I've seen the promise and the peril of di

Gérard Errera: A pact to end Europe’s Thousand Years’ War

[The writer was France’s ambassador to the UK and is now special adviser to the Blackstone Group.] Rejoice, rejoice. The occasions to celebrate are scarce these days. So let’s not be parsimonious with the good news: at their summit on Tuesday France and Britain embarked on a sweeping co-operation on defence in all fields, from joint expeditionary forces to unmanned air systems, from cybersecurity to aircraft carriers. Why such a miracle? Even if budgetary constraints have played a