Roundup: Media's Take

John B. Judis: American capitalism will be fundamentally different after Obama gets through

[John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.] My colleagues Frank Foer and Noam Scheiber have written a compelling account of the Obama administration's approach to economic policy. And although I don't pretend to know the president's mind, I might agree with their summary statement that "Obama has no intention of changing the nature of capitalism." Still, I want to make what may seem to be

Gordon Gibson: 'Winning' in Afghanistan sounds a lot like 'winning' in Vietnam

[Gordon Gibson is senior fellow in Canadian studies at The Fraser Institute and a regular columnist for The Globe and Mail.] The escalated American war in Afghanistan is shaping up as another Vietnam, which brought a generation of grief to the United States. The parallels are uncanny. Both wars concern far-off lands with difficult supply lines and people with centuries-old resistance to foreign control. In each case, the other side is fuelled not just by nationalism but also

Karl Rove: The President's Apology Tour

[Karl Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.] President Barack Obama has finished the second leg of his international confession tour. In less than 100 days, he has apologized on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors. Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has

Norman Solomon: Obama ... Beyond Savior or Trickster

[Norman Solomon is co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign and the author of many books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” which has been adapted into a documentary film. For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com] As President Obama enters his fourth month in office, two tendencies among progressive-minded Americans seem most hazardous to the political health of the country. Th

Jeff Biggers: 10 Environmental Disasters to Remember

[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).] Ten tragic lessons in our nation's environmental history that should never be forgotten. And one climate destabilization tragedy in the making that needs our urgent help. * Extinction: Three Species Per HourAccording to a United Nations report released in 2007,

Alvaro Vargas Llosa: What to make of the book that Chavez gave Obama?

Hugo Chavez's gift to President Obama at the recent Summit of the Americas--a copy of Eduardo Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America"--has many people wondering what the fuss is about. A decade ago, I and the other two co-authors of the "Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot" devoted a chapter to refuting the historical and ideological fallacies contained in Galeano's tract, which we called the "idiot's bible." Everything that has happened in th

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Demonizing Harry Truman may not play well with voters

[Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.] The president of the United States has completed another outing abroad in his now standard form: as the un-Bush. At one stop after another -- the latest in Latin America, where Hugo Chávez expressed wishes to be his friend -- Barack Obama fulfilled his campaign vows to show the nations of the world that a new American leadership stood ready to atone for the transgressions of the old.... Now, on t

Andrew Kohut: Will Obama Ride Reagan’s Ratings Roller Coaster?

[Andrew Kohut is the president of the Pew Research Center.] Despite a long, hard-fought election campaign, the public rallies to a new chief executive who has come to office riding a tide of national discontent and strong disapproval of his predecessor. His approval ratings remain high even as he proposes a dramatic new approach to the role of government that has many doubters. Surveys find that Americans think the president’s plan to rescue the nation’s troubled economy will work,

Simon Jenkins: Cheney and the apologists of torture distrust democracy

[Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes for the Guardian and the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC.] The trouble with torture is that sometimes it works; and when it does, the devil sings. Scarpia may have ended with Tosca's knife in his chest, but his torturers got what they needed from Cavaradossi. When Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, said this week that his favoured interrogation methods had saved America from another 9/11, who could gainsa

Joe Conason: Reagan Talked to Dictators, Too

[Joe Conason has written his political column for The New York Observer since 1992.] Few aspects of American politics are as ridiculous and dangerous as the right-wing urge to substitute macho posturing for foreign policy. That irrepressible habit surfaces constantly now that President Obama is in the Oval Office, most recently when he shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the Summit of the Americas, a smiling moment that provoked calls for impeachment among the most

Gilberto López y Rivas: An Open Letter to Obama ... Learn Your History, Sir!

[Gilberto López y Rivas is a Mexican columnist.] On April 21, just days after you will have left our country, comes the anniversary of the attack and occupation of the port of Veracruz in 1914, which was carried out by the U.S. Marines, an expeditionary force with a long tradition of intervention. The Marines anthem alludes to the aggressive war of conquest carried out by your country between 1846 and 1848, in which Mexico lost half of its territory ("From the Halls of Montezum

Alan Abramowitz: Independent Voters and the President ... Myths and Realities

[Dr. Alan Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and the author of Voice of the People: Elections and Voting Behavior in the United States (2004, McGraw-Hill). He can be contacted via email at polsaa@emory.edu.] The importance of partisanship in contemporary American politics is widely recognized. Among the public as well as political leaders, party divisions run deep and it is increasingly clear

Michael Lind: Obama is a better foreign-policy president than domestic-policy president. Unfortunately, so was Jimmy Carter. Time to be bold.

Two presidents for the price of one? That was the joke when Bill and Hillary Clinton made their respective presidential bids. In the case of Barack Obama's victorious quest for the presidency, the joke became reality. There are two Obamas. One is the foreign policy president whom America needs at this moment in history. The other is a domestic policy president who has yet to find his way. In foreign policy, Obama is just the president the U.S. required after eight disastrous years o

Thomas Mann, Norman Ornstein, and Molly Reynolds: Are Democrats making an egregious power grab by sidestepping the filibuster? Hardly.

[Tom Mann is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Insitution, where Molly Reynolds is Senior Research Coordinator. Norman Ornstein is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] ... What is the precedent for using reconciliation to enact major policy changes? Much more extensive than the architects of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 had in mind-or than Senate Republicans are willing to admit these days. Reconciliation was

John Feffer: Why Terrorists and Pirates Are Not About to Team Up Any Time Soon

[John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His writings can be found at his website, and you can subscribe to his weekly e-newsletter World Beat here.] In the comic books, bad guys often team up to fight the forces of good. The Masters of Evil battle the Avengers superhero team. The Joker and Scarecrow ally against

Fred Kaplan: What Obama's grip and grin with Hugo Chávez says about his foreign policy

... One Republican senator gasped that it was "irresponsible" for the president to be "laughing and joking" with "one of the most anti-American leaders in the entire world." Former Vice President Dick Cheney grumbled on Fox News that the handshake "was not helpful" and could lead America's foes to "think they're dealing with a weak president." NBC's Andrea Mitchell likened the cordial greeting to John F. Kennedy's Vienna summit with Nikita Khrush

Jeffrey Lord: How to Handle a Bully ... Nixon vs. Khrushchev

[Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa@aol.com.] Fifty years ago it was the picture heard around the world. The young Vice President of the United States standing up to the bullying Russian tyrant, his right index finger literally poking Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the chest. For the rest of his political career, the photograph -- and the inci

Harvey Wasserstrom: How Chernobyl could happen here

A catastrophe like Chernobyl could happen here. It's the radioactive core of the second biggest lie in US industrial history. The atomic pushers say such a disaster is “impossible” at a US reactor. But Chernobyl's explosion spewed radiation all over the world. And Sunday’s tragic 23rd anniversary reminds us that any reactor on this planet can kill innumerable people anywhere, at any time, by terror, error and more. It further clarifies why yet another grab at billions

Paul W. Lovinger: Obama and the Torturers

[Paul W. Lovinger, of San Francisco, has been a journalist, author, and activist. He may be reached at paulwlo@hotmail.com.] President Obama has presented a gift of amnesty to those in the CIA and other U.S. agencies who committed torture. The rationale is that it is not right to prosecute people who acted in good faith under the guidance they were provided. That is not what the laws say. Any officials, high or low, who participated in torture violated U.S. treatie

Ruth Wedgwood: Zionism and Racism, Again ... Durban II

[Ruth Wedgwood teaches international law at Johns Hopkins University and is a member of the Hoover Institution’s task force on law and national security.] It took the Obama administration some time to get the full picture. But in the end it has apparently realized that U.S. participation in the United Nation’s Durban Review Conference on Racism, set for April 2009, otherwise known as Durban II, would be a fool’s errand. The first Durban confab held in South Africa, just before the e