Archive
Reuters blog archive
from The Great Debate:
The price of defying your base
Defying your base is always risky. It can either bring you down -- or it can make you look stronger.
Right now, politicians in both parties are trying to pull it off. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) – a likely contender for the 2016 Republican nomination – is preparing to challenge conservatives on immigration reform. President Barack Obama is defying liberals on entitlement reform. What are they thinking?
Your base is people who are with you when you're wrong. Sooner or later, every politician gets in trouble. He needs people to stick up for him -- people who say, “He was there for us and we'll be there for him.” President Ronald Reagan's base, for example, stuck with him during the Iran-contra scandal. So did President Bill Clinton's base during impeachment.
President George H. W. Bush lost his base when he abandoned his “No new taxes” pledge in 1990. President George W. Bush tried, and failed, to bring conservatives along on immigration reform in 2007. Clinton defied liberals on the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and on welfare reform in 1996 – and got away with it. Clinton, of course, had a special talent for political high-wire acts.
from The Great Debate:
Can GOP blame Obama for the sequester?
More than 25 years ago, Representative Jack Kemp told me, “In the past, the left had a thesis: spending, redistribution of wealth and deficits. Republicans were the antithesis: spending is bad.”
He went on to explain, “Ronald Reagan represented a breakthrough for our party. We could talk about lower taxes and more growth. We didn't have to spend all our time preaching austerity and spending cuts. The question now is: Do we take our thesis and move it further, or do we revert to an anti-spending party?”
from The Great Debate:
Obama must surprise in State of the Union
President Barack Obama stirred with an unexpectedly powerful inaugural address – a second effort that far surpassed his first. He summoned great themes of American history to argue cogently for his second-term agenda. Now he has a chance to deliver a State of the Union address that improves on those of his first term, too.
The key to success? Presidents still have the power of surprise. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “I am like a cat. I make a quick stroke, and then I relax.” As in his inaugural, Obama should surprise us – this time with new policies and sharp specificity. On the budget, democracy reform and immigration, the president stands well positioned.
from The Great Debate:
For Obama’s second Inaugural, skip the poetry
President Barack Obama should hope that old adage, “You only get one chance to make a first impression,” isn’t true. In his second Inaugural Address Monday, he has a chance to sharpen his arguments and move the nation in a way that eluded him the first time around.
Instead of a soggy sermon about political maturity, Obama should offer a ripping defense of his vision of government and its role in the economy. He has nothing to fear but controversy itself.
from The Great Debate:
How Obama seized the narrative
Barack Obama may finally be defining himself as president. The question is: What took him so long to seize the narrative and find his character as “leader.”
Obama now has strong public support in the fiscal crisis faceoff. Even as the House Republicans scramble to find a way into the argument, the president has a tight grip on the storyline.
from The Great Debate:
GOP: Blame message not the messenger
Here's what's supposed to be happening: After losing two presidential elections, Republicans are supposed to be re-evaluating what their party stands for. Are they out of line with mainstream America? Does the party need to change?
The answer is yes. So the party moves to the center and searches for candidates with broader appeal. Republicans don't need another spectacle like the 2012 primaries, where the contenders ran the gamut from a panderer to the right (Mitt Romney) to the far right (former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum) to the extreme right (Representative Michele Bachmann, Texas Governor Rick Perry) to the lunatic fringe (Herman Cain, Representative Ron Paul).
from The Great Debate:
McGovern: Forging a modern political party
George McGovern’s death Sunday marked the departure of a remarkably influential figure in American national politics. Though remembered largely for his landslide defeat to Richard M. Nixon in the 1972 presidential race, McGovern succeeded in reshaping the U.S. political landscape for the next 40 years.
His losing campaign forged the modern political party. Just as Barry M. Goldwater’s crushing defeat in 1964 mobilized a generation of conservative activists and transformed the GOP, McGovern’s insurgency led to the modern Democratic Party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. For the South Dakotan senator bequeathed to his party a reconstituted style of politics, a cadre of activists and an new path to electoral victory.
from The Great Debate:
Biden changes 2016 race as well as 2012
Whoever wins on November 6, and however the president is thought to have done in the remaining debates, the only sure winner of the debate season is Joe Biden.
He has moved from the nearly man to the coming man, from also-ran to man-to-watch. Why so? Biden attracted a great deal of criticism from conservatives for his grimacing in the veep debate in Danville, Kentucky, for laughing in the face of GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, for shamelessly grabbing all the attention so that even when Ryan was speaking, everyone was watching Biden’s scoffing antics on the split screen. The Democratic base loved every second.
from Tales from the Trail:
Obama and Romney wrangle over welfare policy
The Obama administration’s July change to a 1996 bipartisan welfare-to-work law has devolved into a mudslinging contest on the campaign trail.
In a 30-second television advertisement released on Monday, Mitt Romney’s campaign asserted that President Obama “has a long history of opposing work for welfare.” Romney initially launched the welfare attack in Obama’s home state of Illinois last week in a coordinated stump speech and television ad accusing the president of loosening work requirements built into the law, which proponents say moved millions off of welfare.
from Tales from the Trail:
Washington Extra – Obama’s China cloud
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign event in Chantilly, Virginia earlier this week on May 2, 2012. REUTERS/Benjamin Myers
A bright spot of Barack Obama's presidency - foreign policy - all of a sudden was taking some hits as the White House struggled to deal with a crisis involving a Chinese dissident.
