Nearly four months later, Obama continues to spend most of his waking hours attempting to pass a health care bill. No legislation has so engulfed Washington in decades.

What's intriguing today is the thunderclap unheard. It's the greatest jobs crisis in three-quarters of a century. All political hands are on deck for health care....]]> Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500 Reformers might want to keep the sausage recipe quiet.

Barack Obama promised to do so much. He also pledged to change how things are done.

The two ambitions were always at odds. Obama sought to be a liberal reformer like no president since Lyndon Johnson. But Obama quickly realized the rub. There is a tension between idealized strategy and idealized tactics.

It's a reformer's paradox: cooking the big change and opening up the kitchen. Effective governance can be the price of good governance. And this is one key reason, among a handful of key reasons, that Obama has proven no Johnson.

Now the long slog to health care reform might soon end. We'll see. Democrats...]]> Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600 "America is in trouble," Tim Pawlenty warned Saturday. "Tyranny" is possible. In fact, it's "creeping." And, in case you thought otherwise, the nation is "worth fighting for."

The (once) mild-mannered Minnesota governor was speaking before about 600 Republicans in Dallas. It was Pawlenty's latest audition for the part of presidential candidate. The "Sam's Club Republican" has long been the GOP's sedate populist. But what Pawlenty lacks in charisma he increasingly compensates for with rhetoric.

Last month in Washington, Pawlenty invoked Tiger Woods' wife and said, "We should take a page out of her playbook, and take a nine-iron and smash the window out of big...]]> Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600 Pick your applicable New York cliché. Its politicians fall faster than a New York minute. Bad apples spoil the Big Apple. It's called Babylon for a reason.

The phrase "scandal fatigue" is now floating around New York. What's that about a governor who might resign? Done that. What's that about the corrupted Harlem political kingpin? Old news. Sex scandal! Which one?

New Yorkers pride themselves on having seen it all before. But even they were taken aback by the past week in state politics.

Gov. David Paterson was forced to give up his reelection bid and still potentially his job. We learned Paterson tried to cover-up an aide's domestic abuse (and free Yankees...]]> Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600 What do these three Republican rising stars have in common: Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels and Bobby Jindal? You can imagine all at a Star Trek convention.

For Republicans, the nerd might not be the new jock. But the GOP jocks are increasingly letting the nerds in on the party.

Rick Snyder's "One Tough Nerd" ad tells the story. The former chief of Gateway computers hopes to be the next Michigan governor.

The ad, which ran during the Super Bowl, begins with a voiceover: "We've tried career politicians. We've tried happy talk. And we're 50th out of 50 – dead last."

Cut to Snyder: "It's time for a nerd."

Soon we see Snyder pictured as a precocious boy...]]> Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600 Tufts University psychologists showed people headshots of white Democrats and Republicans. Participants guessed the political affiliation significantly above chance, about 55 to 60 percent. That's better than the house advantage in blackjack. The key difference? The study, published this January, found that Democrats projected "warmth" and Republicans projected "power."

This contrast between "warmth" and "power" characterizes our politics. The health care debate appears mired in innumerable details. But it has always concerned a far deeper debate over two competing ideas of government – to nurture or to safeguard. The dynamic is so intimately familiar to us because it is...]]> Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600 Draining swamps is not so popular today. It's bad ecology.

We could understand Nancy Pelosi's defense of Charlie Rangel this way. It's an issue of conservation. I've heard those San Francisco liberals love the environment. Forget promises to "drain the swamp" during the 2006 campaign. She wants to conserve her ally's job.

Don't get Pelosi wrong. Surely, if a powerful House member "has proven himself to be ethically unfit" we know "the burden" indeed "falls upon" his party to oust him. In such a case, party leaders would obviously ask: "Do they want to remove the ethical cloud that hangs over the Capitol?"

So Pelosi explained in October 2004. The subject was Tom...]]> Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600 The majority party was pushing the largest entitlement expansion since the Great Society. The minority attempted byzantine legislative maneuvers to obstruct the vote. The majority never relented, even taking unprecedented action to ram the bill through Congress.

This was not 2009 but 2003. Republicans controlled the White House and Congress. And with that power they passed the $400 billion Medicare prescription drug bill.

Fast forward to February 2010. Here is Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond railing against Barack Obama: "While pretending to get serious about our spiraling deficit there is nothing in the budget to tackle the greatest threat – runaway entitlement...]]> Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600 One week after keynoting the Tea Party convention in Nashville, Sarah Palin attended NASCAR's premiere race – the Daytona 500. "It's an all-Americana event," she said in a brief speech. "We love you, Sarah!" fans shouted on her way out. The next day she visited the local Chamber of Commerce and signed copies of her bestselling book, "Going Rogue."

This is how presidential hopefuls test waters. Daytona Beach falls at the eastern edge of Florida's I-4 corridor. It's the swing region in this key swing state. Palin has already acknowledged she's considering a run. And no less than the dean of the Washington press corps, David Broder, wrote last week "Palin is by all odds a...]]> Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600 Jack Murtha was the virtue and vice of Congress. He was an old-school pol, the archetypal and often derided backroom Washington dealmaker. But here was also the disappearing representative many long for: the lawmaker who crossed party lines and got his work done; the politician not easily classified as left or right; the everyman who fiercely served his country in war and in office.

In this era of paper-thin politicians, this was a substantial and complicated character. Murtha was a political grunt in an age of flyboys. He was known for the ugly and the good. And it's why his death, Monday at age 77, tells a story of not only his life but also a fading era of American...]]> Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600 I logged onto Facebook to read Sarah Palin's latest posts. Thursday morning she had 1,260,892 fans. Facebook randomly features six fans or friends on someone's page. One of the six fans featured that morning was, by chance, my 7th grade girlfriend.

Palin has gotten some heat for headlining the National Tea Party Convention, underway this weekend in Nashville. The convention costs $549 to attend or $349 for only the lobster-and-steak banquet. Palin will give the keynote address at the banquet. Her speaking fee: $100,000. Critics, including some conservatives, saw the costs as unbefitting a people's movement.

Palin wrote that the "compensation for my appearance will go right...]]> Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600 Election Day 1988 was only days away. Ronald Reagan was headlining a rally in Nevada. He said the options were the same as "when I stood before you." Reagan framed the Democratic "choice" as one for "liberal policies of tax and spend, economic stagnation, international weakness, accommodation, and always, always blame America first."

Reagan-era framing is regaining its relevance. Fair or not, liberalism's worst stereotypes have returned from the dead to haunt Democrats. "Tax and spend liberal," it's back with the charge of being soft on security threats – a claim that dogged Democrats from debates over crime to the Soviets to terrorism.

Democrats branding deteriorated...]]> Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600 Populism has become a pejorative. It's said to be dangerous or dismissed with palpable condescension. But Americans indictment is not only spirited; it is also merited. And that indictment has awaited an executive who will take up the people's case.

Populism has rare moments of resonance in American life. Hard-left economic populism has proved unable to win the presidency. It is surely no way to govern. But there are times when an elite games the system. There are times when most people have gotten a raw deal. And it's these times that call for a reasonable populism.

Many today view "reasonable populism" as an oxymoron. Populism is forever ascribed to its most extreme...]]> Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600 Barack Obama's first State of the Union address is Wednesday. The political media is already in typical form. The speech is framed as the next seismic event. It's not – not if the speech's objective is shaping the American mind.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush's annual addresses combined, on average, changed their Gallup approval rating one point. The last five presidents combined averaged no change (polling was too infrequent to measure before Jimmy Carter).

The influence of modern State addresses is limited to the political class. The machinery of government listens for lessons learned and future goals. The oration is rated. But it is primarily political theater....]]> Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600 In a painful conclusion for many progressives, top Democratic strategists said in interviews Thursday evening that their party must now give up on comprehensive health care reform and press for a limited bill that can be quickly passed.

"I don't think that the comprehensive health care reform that passed the House and Senate can be signed into law this year," said Tad Devine, who has advised congressional and presidential campaigns. "The sooner we recognize the reality that a super majority was necessary to achieve this, the sooner we'll be able to win back voters."

"We can all dream but the reality is that they couldn't do it when we had 60 votes and we are not going to do...]]>