The Washington Times

Just about a year ago at the United Nations, leaders at the world summit embraced a principle that amounts to a revolution in moral consciousness, the “responsibility to protect.” Briefly, the doctrine holds that states have a responsibility to protect the persons living on their territory. In the event they are unable to fulfill this obligation, or in the event they themselves choose to violate it through such practices as genocide or ethnic cleansing, then the responsibility to protect devolves to the international community as a whole, which may take appropriate action, up to and including the use of military force, to protect the at-risk population.   

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The Washington Times

We are all Americans, “Nous sommestous Americains,” was the headline in France’s Le Monde five years ago today, as the world began to take stock of the shocking attack the day before. The sense of solidarity, with scores of thousands of people turning up at U.S. embassies around the world to express sympathy, was undeniably a comfort in a time of great distress.  It was also short-lived and in fact fully dissipated by the halfway point between then and now, over Iraq. Some have suggested that the solidarity expressed then was something the United States could have sustained over the long haul and therefore should have worked overtime to achieve, for the benefit of an international environment more trusting of U.S. actions and motives.    

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The Washington Times

Suppose, five years after September 11, 2001, you had to assign yourself a single adjective to describe how you feel and what you think in relation to the events of that day. I think I would pick “astonished.”

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The Washington Times

Do you need to know who a party’s presidential nominee will be before you can say anything about who its nominee for vice president will be? Yes and no. That’s because far from being an expression of personal choice on the part of the nominee, the considerations involved in selecting a veep tend not to change over time.

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The Washington Times

Some of the key considerations in selecting a vice presidential running mate, as followers of our summer seminar in this space know, are part unity, ticket balancing, electoral advantage and plausibility as an eventual successor to the Oval Office. Most all of those tapped for veep meet one or more of these criteria.     

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The Washington Times

Nobody, as we discussed here last week, ever decreased his chance of getting elected president by running for vice president. (Well, maybe Dan Quayle, whom George H.W. Bush did the huge disservice of selecting for the veep slot before Mr. Quayle was ready for the spotlight.) But what kind of criteria should a presidential nominee and those in his inner circle of advisors adopt in picking a veep? It seems to me that there are four main considerations (which can overlap, of course).

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The Washington Times

There are two kinds of presidential candidates: those who actually aspire to the nation’s highest office and those who are running to elevate their profile or push an ideological agenda. As examples of the latter on the Republican side, we have televangelist Pat Robertson in 1988 and America-first conservative commentator Pat Buchanan in 1992 (when he demonstrated incumbent president George H.W. Bush’s vulnerability with a surprisingly strong showing in New Hampshire before fading). On the Democratic side, for example, there was civil rights activist Al Sharpton in 2004.     

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The Washington Times

The 2008 presidential election is a wide-open contest, and Democrats, as we saw here last week, have responded with a broad field. What could have been an early consensus in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton is so far anything but, as Democrats fight over how they want to position themselves. The Republican field, by contrast, seems surprisingly underpopulated, again given the givens.     

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The Washington Times

The 2008 presidential election will be a wide-open contest. Democrats are responding to this fact with gusto, as a gaggle of serious candidates has already come forward. The Republican field seems, by contrast, thin — or at least thinner than one would expect. How come? Actually, the reasons are straightforward in both cases. On the Democratic side, Hillary Rodham Clinton has long been front-runner. But a funny thing happened on the way to her coronation in 2008: Democrats have decided that they are not in the mood to declare a consensus candidate early.     

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The Washington Times

Apparently, Israel didn’t get the memo about the inefficacy of military force as revealed by the difficulties of the United States in Iraq. With luck, the military campaign Israel is waging to expunge the threat of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon will serve as a counter-reminder: In dealing with a determined enemy which aspires to pose an existential threat to your country, power is a good thing to have, and the judicious application of military force is sometimes the only way — and at other times, simply the preferable way — to achieve your security objectives.

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