Weekly Standard

Following Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts, speculation in Washington has quickly turned from the possibility that Democrats will lose the House in November to the impossibility that they won’t. It will be interesting to see what happens if congressional Democrats actually internalize the proposition that their majority is doomed. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

If Hogwarts were a school for politicians, there would be a required class on “Defense Against the Dark Arts of Demagoguery.” President Obama considers his health reform effort a target of this dark art–indeed, he seems to view it as the main reason reform has faltered on Capitol Hill.

Here is the defense he mounted in his big speech to Congress this week:

“Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.” Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

Perhaps President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize will spur a sudden global outpouring of love and affection for the United States, but the American Political Science Association (APSA) thinks our image problem runs deeper: Its 20-member blue chip task force (minus two dissenters) has concluded that U.S. standing in the world is in trouble. Chaired by Jeffrey Legro of the University of Virginia, the task force issued a report last month that traces broad declines in the willingness of people around the globe to express positive views of the United States, the willingness of governments to side with the United States, and the degree of satisfaction among Americans themselves with the U.S. position in the world. The report’s findings will be depressing to anyone who would like the United States to be well-thought-of. What to do about that problem, however, is a question on which the report is not especially illuminating. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

Since there is so little of it, let’s start with the good news about the release from prison and triumphant return to Libya of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the terrorist who was supposedly serving a life sentence in a Scottish prison for his role in blowing Pan Am 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people.

The good news is that many Scots, including members of parliament, were genuinely outraged by the decision of Scotland’s cabinet secretary for justice, Kenny MacAskill, to grant “compassionate release” to Megrahi, who has cancer. The same is true of Brits in general. The local press in Edinburgh and London has been chock-full of denunciation of the move and speculation about who knew and said what and when, as well as what the real motive might have been. It looks like there’s an excellent chance MacAskill’s political career is over, and if Gordon Brown needed another nail in the coffin of his effort to remain Britain’s prime minister past next June, this was one. Two cheers for righteous indignation. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

Warsaw

The Obama administration has hit more than a few reset buttons since taking office. In the case of the Islamic world, resetting has meant respectful outreach exemplified in Obama’s Cairo speech. With China, resetting means minimizing the American hectoring on human rights and conspicuous displays of antagonism toward Beijing such as a meeting for the Dalai Lama with the American president. The effort to reset Israel-Palestine, now itself reset, entailed early pressure on Israel to halt all settlement construction in the West Bank. In Iran, the reset was an offer of carrots–up to normalization of relations in exchange for an end to Iran’s ambition to acquire a nuclear weapon. And, of course, the biggest reset of all has been with Russia, where the administration has sought to de-ideologize relations for the sake of arms-control agreements and future help with Iran. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

Historians looking back on these tumultuous times will no doubt argue over the precise date on which the Age of Palin began. Her speech at the Republican National Convention on September 3 certainly catapulted her to national renown. But there is a good case to be made for her introductory appearance in Dayton, Ohio, five days before.

It’s all there: You have the same poise and panache Palin exhibited at the convention. You have the self-assurance of a champion high-school athlete who went on to bigger and better things (unlike in the gloomy Democratic, Bruce Springsteen version of life, in which it’s all downhill after your Glory Days). There’s the ability to deliver a barb with a smile. And above all, that day inaugurated arguably the most incoherent and blubbering partisan response to a candidate in the history of American politics–against which the charms of the candidate stood out even more clearly. Continue reading →