Roundup: Media's Take

Ben Macintyre: Britain, France to Bury the Hatchet at Last

[Ben Macintyre is a columnist for the Times (UK)] MORE than a millennium of mutual mistrust, nationalistic hostility and thoroughly enjoyable reciprocal stereotyping is under threat as Britain and France outline plans for unprecedented military collaboration. British and French soldiers will train together under a new treaty announced last night. They may even, in future, fight shoulder to shoulder in a single brigade. British soldiers will learn French, and French sold

Michael Lind: Why Center-Left Parties are Collapsing

[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."] The setbacks Democrats are poised to suffer in the midterm election have to be viewed in a trans-Atlantic context. The backlash against Barack Obama and the contemporary Democratic Party is part of a global wave of popular disapproval of social democratic parties that abandone

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Why Obama Is No Roosevelt

[Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.] Whatever the outcome of today's election, this much is clear: It will be a long time before Americans ever again decide that the leadership of the nation should go to a legislator of negligible experience—with a voting record, as state and U.S. senator, consisting largely of "present," and an election platform based on glowing promises of transcendence. A platform vowing, unforgettably, to restore us—a country

J.T. Young: The End of Blaming Bush

[J.T. Young served in the Department of Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a Congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.] Today's election is more about America's Left and Right, than Democrats and Republicans. And the Left's worst blow from it will be its inability to blame Bush for it. This time, nothing stands between the left and the public's verdict. Tomorrow that verdict will be clear. And with it will go the tiresome posture in which s

John R. Guardiano: Kennedy-Sorensen Dems Wouldn't Recognize Obama-Reid-Pelosi

[John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst who focuses on political, military, and public-policy issues. He resides in Arlington, Virginia, and blogs at www.ResoluteCon.com (www.twitter.com/JohnRGuardiano).] The legendary speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, passed away Sunday at the ripe old age of eight-two. The Democratic left, of course, will celebrate Sorensen as the man who gave literary life

Aaron David Miller: Obama Must Resist Foreign Policy Temptation

[Aaron David Miller is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His forthcoming book is Can America Have Another Great President?] When U.S. presidents suffer galactic losses in midterm elections -- as it looks like Barack Obama is about to do on Tuesday -- they are often tempted to turn outward to foreign policy. Here, freed from endless haggling with an oppositional Congress, they have traditionally had greater flexibility and latitude to ma

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Why Obama Is No Roosevelt

[Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.] Whatever the outcome of today's election, this much is clear: It will be a long time before Americans ever again decide that the leadership of the nation should go to a legislator of negligible experience—with a voting record, as state and U.S. senator, consisting largely of "present," and an election platform based on glowing promises of transcendence. A platform vowing, unforgettably, to restore us—a country

Gideon Rachman: Obama may just be an interlude

[Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs commentator at the Financial Times.] “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for you?” jeered Sarah Palin earlier this year – in a dig at the soaring rhetoric that helped Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008. As the Democrats brace themselves for big losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Ms Palin’s mockery will sting. But her gibe applies just as acutely to President Obama’s fans outside the US, as to his supporters insi

Jay Cost: Will Obama Follow Truman's Example?

[Jay Cost is a staff writer for the Weekly Standard.] All signs are that the Republican party will retake the House of Representatives on November 2. If that happens, the president will find himself at a fork in the road, the first of his presidency. How he responds to a new Republican majority will set the tone for the rest of his term and could determine whether he will win reelection in 2012. History offers guidance on this point. Since World War II, two Democratic p

John Yemma: Vote the Way You Did That First Time

[John Yemma is an editor with the CS Monitor.] Do you remember the first time you voted? For me, it was 1972, the year Richard Nixon faced George McGovern. I won’t tell you who got my vote or whether I eventually felt justified or embarrassed. And, no, it isn’t obvious, even if you harbor suspicions about a person who later made a career in the media. Like many adults, I’ve gotten blasé about voting since that first time, although when I see the excitement of voters new

Doug Bandow: The Incredible Shrinking Militaries of Europe

[Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon Press).] Great Britain ceased to be a great power when it emerged from World War II militarily victorious but financially ruined. Nevertheless, it still tried to play the part, punching “above its weight in the world,” as Prime Minister David Cameron put it. As such, it has be

Gregory D. Johnsen: Ignoring Yemen at Our Peril

[Gregory D. Johnsen, a former Fulbright fellow in Yemen, is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.] Seven years ago this month, al Qaeda in Yemen was on its last legs, worn down by years of U.S. and Yemeni strikes. The group's original leader, Abu Ali al-Harithi, was dead, the target of a November 2002 strike by an unmanned CIA drone. His replacement, an amputee named Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, fared little better. One year after the

Philip Klein: Obama’s Plight

[Philip Klein is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent.] Whether you prefer to believe expert predictions that it will be a "maelstrom," a "bloodbath," or merely a "blowout," Republicans are poised to make substantial gains in Congress next Tuesday and deliver a severe blow to the Obama presidency in the process.... That said, the two most recent examples of presidential comebacks following defeats in the midterm elections are B

NY Sun Editorial: What Would Lincoln Do With Wikileaks?

At some point people are going to start wondering, if they haven’t already, what leaders like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower would have done in respect of Wikileaks. We mention those names because they were presidents who led an army — or the whole nation — in a time of war. It’s hard to think of an attack on any of our nation’s war efforts quite like that which is being made by Wikileaks under the cover of a claim to be a publica

Steve Kornacki: Watch Reagan and the GOP Get Crushed in a Midterm

[Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor.] I've written an awful lot this year about the parallels between 2010 and the midterm election of 1982, when Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party suffered a drubbing not unlike the one Barack Obama and the Democrats are likely to face next week. I've done this because so much of today's political analysis focuses on Barack Obama's supposed strategic, tactical and communication flaws -- the idea that he wouldn't be stuck with a 44 percent app

Jürgen Habermas: Leadership and Leitkultur

[Jürgen Habermas, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt, is the author, most recently, of “Europe: The Faltering Project.” This essay was translated by Ciaran Cronin from the German.] SINCE the end of August Germany has been roiled by waves of political turmoil over integration, multiculturalism and the role of the “Leitkultur,” or guiding national culture. This discourse is in turn reinforcing trends toward increasing xenophobia among the broader popu

Stéphanie Giry: Cambodia’s Perfect War Criminal

[Stéphanie Giry is editor-at-large at Foreign Affairs.] The July conviction of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch—the gaunt-faced, fever-eyed 68-year-old head of the Khmer Rouge’s leading torture center—by a special UN–Cambodian criminal court has been seen as a breakthrough in international justice. Years in the making, the trial was the first international criminal case brought against an official of the Pol Pot regime since a Vietnamese show trial in 1979. And despite mixed leg

Mark Weisbrot: Néstor Kirchner: Argentina's Independence Hero

[Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, DC. He is also co-writer of Oliver Stone's documentary South of the Border.] The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner is a great loss, not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina's economy is comparable to that of Franklin D R

Dominique Moisi: The French Reactionary Revolution

[Dominique Moisi, a founder and senior advisor at the Ilfri (the French Institute for International Relations), is currently a professor at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw. His work for Cif is copyright Project Syndicate.] ...[The] "French exception" is the product of an encounter between a peculiar political and intellectual history and the rejection of the elites currently in power. In front of a bemused global public, the French are once again demonstrating the

Dylan Loewe: Another 1994? Or Another 1946?

[Dylan Loewe is a Democratic speechwriter and strategist with the firm West Wing Writers.] The Republican Party spent much of the 1930s and '40s struggling for relevance. FDR's landslide victory in 1932 created massive Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, majorities that would stay inconceivably large through his full 12 years in office. It wasn't until 1946, with President Truman's approval ratings hovering around 30 percent, that the once-marginalized G