A few weeks ago Matthew Waxman and I ended our critical essay on President Obama’s war powers legacy by noting that “Obama’s legacy will look quite different if, after the midterm elections, he seeks and receives congressional authorization for the use of force against IS, especially if he also works with Congress on a framework statute that updates the 2001 AUMF to deal with the many emerging threats around the world in a principled, transparent manner with prudent limits.”
On this, Veterans Day and the centenary of the first year of the conflict that prompted the holiday observance (one that too many Americans confuse with the other observance in May), consider this sobering chart:
Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Harvey Silvergate describes a recent panel discussion hosted by Smith College President Kathleen McCartney for Smith College alumni. The panel was titled: “Challenging the Ideological Echo Chamber: Free Speech, Civil Discourse and the Liberal Arts.”
Once again, the American public has gotten it right; the results of the midterm elections were a protest against a lack of leadership. Americans expect to improve steadily their standard of living at home and to preserve our influence abroad. At home, eight years of sluggish growth and stagnant wages have irritated and concerned the public. Abroad, America is losing influence.
Research Fellow Peter Robinson discusses how he became President Reagan’s speechwriter at 26, what inspired Reagan’s famous line at the Brandenburg Gate, and the behind-the-scenes controversy over those four words on Real Clear Radio Hour.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the United States has created a “vacuum” being filled with terrorism and other overseas issues and that Americans might want a more modest foreign policy — but they also don’t like the consequences of a United States that isn’t deeply engaged.
The financial crisis of 2008 devastated the American economy and caused U.S. policymakers to rethink their approaches to major financial crises. More than five years have passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, but questions still persist about the best ways to avoid and respond to future financial crises.
When Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in 1963 after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his top priority was the large-scale program of domestic-policy reform that he would call the Great Society. As his term progressed, however, he found his attention and that of his advisers increasingly commanded by the war in Vietnam.
The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was on Sunday, an event largely understood to mark the beginning of the end of the Cold War. But the wall's fall also marks another extraordinary event in world history — the rapid spread of democracy throughout the world.
The Obama administration on Monday ordered states to devise plans to get stronger teachers into high-poverty classrooms, correcting a national imbalance in which students who need the most help are often taught by the weakest educators.
