02 Tuesday Jul 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
What is striking this Fourth of July week is something rather unstriking – the presence of large numbers of American flags all across the landscape. In years past, Independence Day was indeed the time for festooning the country with red, white and blue. But usually by the fifth at the latest, the bunting had come down and the flags restored to the cupboard drawers.
25 Tuesday Jun 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The twists and turns of the Bush administration’s Middle East diplomacy are the product of the interaction of two basic truths: Everybody knows what the final status looks like, and nobody has the foggiest idea of how to get from here to there.
24 Monday Jun 2002
Posted in Weekly Standard
The smart politics behind Bush’s new cabinet agency proposal.
View this article at The Weekly Standard
WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T have more than one good reason to do something? Of course, the proposition that disparate federal agencies with homeland security responsibilities should be combined into one massive cabinet department ought first to be judged on the contribution such consolidation will make to security. But if it also happens to be smart politics — a way for a wartime president to get some control over a domestic agenda that was badly adrift — well, what’s wrong with that?
Democrats have been warning since shortly after September 11 that George W. Bush would risk the bipartisan support he enjoys in the war against terror if he tried to leverage his high job-approval ratings to advance a conservative domestic agenda. Meanwhile, Democratic strategists looking at upcoming congressional elections were urging their clients to concede the war to the president and open up differences on domestic policy in areas of traditional Democratic strength. Here again, if Bush opposed Democratic initiatives or propounded conservative policies of his own, he might be vulnerable to the charge that he was trying to exploit the war.
18 Tuesday Jun 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Here’s a question that’s not especially pleasant to think about: Where should the new Department of Homeland Security be located? And no, I’m not asking whether it should be off Independence Avenue or off Constitution Avenue, but rather, whether it should be in Washington at all.
11 Tuesday Jun 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Last week in this space, I wrote about President Bush’s remarkable June 2 speech at West Point, in which he laid out, in effect, a liberty doctrine according to which the United States will no longer be satisfied to stand as a symbol of freedom and the success that flows from it, but instead will seek to protect and promote liberty in all parts of the world as the “single . . . model of human progress.”
04 Tuesday Jun 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
In a speech at West Point in June, President Bush gave his richest account yet of what we are fighting for. He in effect proclaimed what my Hoover Institution colleague Michael McFaul has called a liberty doctrine, wherein American power has been harnessed, not just for the purpose of the protection of the United States but also for the protection and spread of liberty across the globe.
04 Tuesday Jun 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
At West Point on Saturday, President Bush gave his richest account yet of what we are fighting for. He in effect proclaimed what my Hoover Institution colleague Michael McFaul has called a liberty doctrine, wherein American power has been harnessed not just for the purpose of the protection of the United States, but also to the protection and spread of liberty across the globe.
28 Tuesday May 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Dear Department of Motor Vehicles Adjudication Services: It was so nice to hear from you after all this time. We had about given up. After all, it was Feb. 12 when we wrote in response to the “Notice of Infraction” we received from your friends at Automated Traffic Enforcement about going 36 miles an hour in a 25 mile-an-hour zone.
21 Tuesday May 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Israeli military action in the West Bank, so it was widely said as events unfolded, led to huge upswings in the popularity both of Ariel Sharon among Israelis and of Yasser Arafat among Palestinians. In making their respective judgments, the two populations had spoken, vindicating the contending hard-line approaches favored by each of the two leaders. Or so it was said.
14 Tuesday May 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Many American commentators, myself included, have praised George W. Bush for the “moral clarity” of his vision of the long-term struggle against terrorism. More recently, however, analysis of the administration has focused on the ways in which reality first impinges and then imposes itself, obliterating along the way the reassurance the false and artificial “moral clarity” was providing.
Tod Lindberg 