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(01/14/11 12:00am)
Party politics is a funny, and often frustrating, phenomenon. It's a perennial tug-of-war, really, a back-and-forth struggle for ideological supremacy, often at the cost of sound policy. Sometimes it seems that the Republicans and the Democrats are destined to go at it forever.But every once in a while on Capitol Hill, you see a bill come along that is ostensibly above reproach, progressively post-partisan, universally appealing - a bill so undeniably sweeping in its scope, so unyielding in its reform, that one expects sheer force of reason to, for once, crack the monolithic gridlock of partisan bickering. Or so I thought.
(02/05/10 12:00am)
It is, perhaps, a telling reflection on our society that there was more buzz surrounding Steve Jobs' State of the Union than of President Barack Obama's. But while the Apple CEO's unveiling of the long-awaited iPad was, in a word, underwhelming, the President's address embodied a paradigm shift in his presidency that may prove to be the catalyst he so desperately needs.To say the last few months haven't exactly been smooth sailing for Obama would be a tremendous understatement. Job growth remains anemic at best, with millions of Americans reeling from their pink slips and imagining months of hardship and toil; the health care bill, muddled and mutilated by special interests and backroom deals, contains "reform" that is but a shadow of what the president once envisioned. And just last week, the once-imposing Democratic Senate supermajority crumbled under the flight of independent voters to Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.
(10/23/09 12:00am)
on Oct. 9, the five veritable guardians of world peace set off a bomb that continues to reverberate in every corner of the world. (Irony, it seems, is not lost on the Norwegians.)The magnitude of the surprise - nay, shock - surrounding President Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is perhaps only comparable to the aftermath of Chicago's recent Olympic faux pas. But as the rubble cleared, and the cries of "Does he deserve it?" began to flood the airways, it quickly became apparent that this time around, things would get a lot uglier. Indeed, before day's end, President Obama, unwittingly caught in the crossfire, and his resume were ripped apart by Talking Head and Average Joe alike.
(10/09/09 12:00am)
If the social and economic upheavals of the last 12 months could be summarized with the rhetorical flourishes of the average American teenager, it'd probably go something like this: "Capitalism is sooo 2007." Bruised by the bank bailouts and battered by the bursting of the financial bubble, marred by the Wall Street meltdown and crushed under the collapse of the auto industry, the 18th-century brainchild of Adam Smith has fallen, quite simply, out of vogue. Profit-driven executives, once respected and revered, are now subject to public vilification; formerly beloved corporations are widely seen as inherently soulless and destructive. Indeed, the very notion of profit-seeking, once the pinnacle of American ideology, has become to domestic policy what Crocs are to casual footwear - taboo.
