Roundup: Media's Take

Jeff Biggers: Dear Mr. President ... Declare August 3rd as Armistice Day in the Appalachian Coalfields

[Jeff Biggers is the author of The United States of Appalachia, and the forthcoming memoir, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (The Nation/Basic Books).] On the upcoming anniversary of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, President Barack Obama has the opportunity to declare an armistice in the polarized Appalachian coalfields, mend a 30-year mining policy of betrayal, and call an end to the most divisive and egregious human rights and en

Steven Plaut: Spain's War Against Terror and Double Standards

[Steven Plaut is a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa and is a columnist for the Jewish Press. A collection of his commentaries on the current events in Israel can be found on his "blog" at http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.] Spain has been fighting against Basque separatist terrorism for decades and especially against the "ETA" organization, which seeks se

Bill Frezza: Ominous Parallels ... Is Obama the Next Bush?

[Bill Frezza is a partner at Adams Capital Management, an early-stage venture capital firm.] For the span of the next 800 words, can you step back from your tribal affiliations and look at the world not through the eyes of a rabid Republican or Democrat but with due awareness of the unintended consequences that often bedevil massive Federal initiatives? Consider, then, the worrying similarities between our current and past president as well as what happened when our last president o

William McGurn: Obama and the Clinton Legacy

[William McGurn is a Vice President at News Corporation who writes speeches for CEO Rupert Murdoch. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush.] Inside the Fourth Estate, the received wisdom holds that the White House is now home to the anti-Bush. And on issues from taxes and stem cells to union elections and Guantanamo, Barack Obama is indeed taking America in a direction different from that of his predecessor. Still, there's a persuasive c

Jonathan Cohn: Why industry is joining Obama at White House to discuss healthcare reform

Guess who's coming to the White House. On Monday morning, representatives for the nation's major health care industry groups--doctors, hospitals, drugmakers, device makers, and insurers--will pay a personal visit to President Obama. But instead of pitching a fit about health care reform, as they have so many times in history, they will offer their assistance. They will pledge their support for Obama's goals and they'll offer to do their part--by taking steps that would reduce the gr

Stephen M. Walt: Richard or Jimmy or Bill? (Oh my!)

Which president does Barack Obama resemble? Many people’s favorite comparison is to Franklin Roosevelt, because FDR faced challenges of a similar magnitude early in his own presidency. Plus, Obama seems to provoke the same sort of frothing-at-the-mouth paranoia among conservatives that Roosevelt did, and their rantings seem to have about as much effect. FDR aside, I’m struck by comparisons to three rather different Presidents: Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. And I k

Michael Gerson: Religion and Our Civic Behavior

[Mr. Gerson was George W. Bush's chief speechwriter.] There is a book that everyone will be talking about -- when it appears over a year from now. "American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives," being written by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, is already creating a buzz. Putnam, the author of "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community," is the pre-eminent academic expert on American civic life. Campbell is his risi

Daniel A. Bell: The Confucian Party

[Bell is the author of China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society.] ... Part of the political debate [in China today] is the effort to revive Confucianism. Should liberals be worried? In one important sense, no. Confucian scholars — many of whom are party members — favor a more open ideological atmosphere where new ideas for political and educational reform can be debated and criticized. They point out that China’s most fertile intellectu

Max Hastings: The allies fight the 'wrong' war in Afghanistan

[The writer is an FT contributing editor.] It is frustrating for the US government to be making strategy for a battlefield while knowing that the strategic outcome will be decided on another one. The current redeployments in Afghanistan are taking place in the knowledge that Pakistan matters much more. The most important change in the thinking of Washington and its allies over the past year derives from recognition they are fighting the wrong war, or at least running a sideshow.

James Surowiecki: How banks got big

... The desire to bring back the boring, small banking industry of the nineteen-fifties is understandable. Unfortunately, the only way to do that would be to bring back the economy of the fifties, too. Banking was boring then because the economy was boring. The financial sector’s most important job is channelling money from investors to businesses that need capital for worthwhile investment. But in the postwar era there wasn’t much need for this. The economy, while remarkably strong, was dominat

Dorothy Samuels: The Deadly Myth of Gun Control in Electoral Politics

... The notion that gun control was responsible for the Democrats’ debacle 15 years ago was floated by Richard Gephardt, the former Democratic House leader, and other pols and commentators after the ’94 election. But it was Bill Clinton who gave it current credence. “The N.R.A. could rightly claim to have made Gingrich the House speaker,” Mr. Clinton wrote in his 2004 autobiography, pumping up the gun lobby and, not incidentally, himself by attributing the body blow to his party to his principle

Stephen L. Carter: Let the Nominee Stay Home

[Stephen L. Carter is a professor of law at Yale and the author of the forthcoming novel “Jericho’s Fall.”] ... Confirmation hearings for potential justices have become so intricately woven into our political tapestry that Americans might be excused for thinking that they were part of the original design. They were not. The modern tradition of requiring every nominee to sit before the Senate Judiciary Committee as its members ask about judicial philosophy and views on various cases

Editorial in the Washington Times: Obama's Vietnam? ... The ghost of Diem lurks in Pakistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visited President Obama this week to discuss ideas for confronting Islamic extremism in South Asia. No big thoughts sprouted, but the danger of U.S. escalation in Pakistan increased. The trilateral summit did not produce any new solutions or significant policy initiatives for the ongoing conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban. Thus far, there is little discernible difference between the Obama and George W. Bush

Richard Haass: The Return of American Realism

[Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.] There are many recurring debates in American foreign policy – for example, isolationism versus internationalism, and unilateralism versus multilateralism. But no debate is more persistent than that between those who believe that American foreign policy’s principal purpose should be to influence the external behavior of other states and those wh

Brian Beutler and Eric Kleefeld: Sessions Subordinate: I Thought I'd Be Fired If I Objected To Being Called 'Boy'

When it became clear that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was poised to become ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, we recalled this 2002 article by Sarah Wildman which addresses some of the controversies that kept Sessions from being confirmed in 1986 as a U.S. District Court judge in Alabama. Wildman writes in particular that the testimonies of two witnesses--a Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, and a black Sessions subordinate named Thomas Figures--helped

Joe Klein: Is This Health Care's Moment?

[ Journalist and columnist, current affairs contributor at Time.] Economic crises come and go, but entitlements are forever. The Great Depression eventually dissipated, but Franklin Roosevelt's crown jewel — the Social Security system — is still with us. And so it will be with the Obama Administration. The early headlines have been all about the President's efforts to repair the financial system and jump-start the economy. If he succeeds, he probably will be re-elected. But Barack O

Thomas Sowell: A Dying Constitution

[Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.] While Pres. Barack Obama has, in one sense, tipped his hand by saying that he wants judges with “empathy” for certain groups, he has in a more fundamental sense concealed the real goal — getting judges who will ratify an ever-expanding scope of federal-government power and an ever-declining restraint by the Constitution of the United States. This is consistent with everything else that Obama has done in offic

David Kampf: Not So Fast ... Rethinking America's Decline

[David Kampf is a writer and analyst based in Washington. Recently, he directed communications for the United States Agency for International Development and President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Rwanda. He writes for the Foreign Policy Association's blog, Rising Powers.] Have we really reached the end of American hegemony? For those who think so, the signs of America's decline and the rise of emerging powers are everywhere. According to this line of argument, the world's so

Debra Burlingame: Obama and the 9/11 Families

[Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.] In February I was among a group of USS Cole and 9/11 victims' families who met with the president at the White House to discuss his policies regarding Guantanamo detainees. Although many of us strongly opposed Barack Obama's dec

Jonah Goldberg: Obama's remarks on Churchill are history badly misread

President Obama recently offered a nice little sermonette on “shortcuts.” Asked about his decision to release the “torture memos” and ban waterboarding, Obama said: “I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, ‘We don’t torture,’ when … all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. … C