<![CDATA[Carl Cannon - Articles - RealClearPolitics]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/rss/archive/22378.xmlAuthor <![CDATA[The Problem With Susan Rice]]> Fri, 23 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0600 This time it was President Obama who blew the dog whistle.

It happened during his Nov. 14 post-reelection press conference at the White House. Instead of merely reveling in his victory and extending a gracious hand to the vanquished Republicans, the president chose to escalate his growing rift with John McCain and Lindsey Graham over the future of Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The backstory was the anticipated departure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the White House’s floating of Rice’s name as a possible successor. If this was a trial balloon, it didn’t get far off the ground: McCain and Graham -- two of the more cooperative Republicans...]]> <![CDATA[Romney and the 6 Percent Solution]]> Tue, 29 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500 Mitt Romney promised last week, and not for the first time, that the U.S. job market would improve significantly if he is elected president. In interviews with FOX News and Time magazine, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee went further than usual in providing a precise figure: If he is elected president he’ll bring the nation's unemployment rate down to 6 percent by the end of his first term in the White House.

If Romney were to be elected -- and managed to deliver on such a promise -- he’d more than likely be rewarded with a second term. But his pledge, offered with few specifics, raises significant questions, three in particular:

First, is the unemployment...]]> <![CDATA[Can Huntsman Pull a Santorum in NH?]]> Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600 By Carl M. Cannon and Caitlin Huey-Burns - January 3, 2012

DOVER, N.H. -- A year ago, while his fellow GOP presidential candidates were raising money and making phone calls to Republican activists in early primary states, Jon Huntsman was still serving as the U.S. ambassador to China. That seems fitting: In the Chinese astrological calendar, 2011 was the year of the rabbit -- and this campaign has often resembled a race between the tortoises and the hares.

Plodding contenders such as Huntsman, Rick Santorum and the steady-but-unexciting Mitt Romney have been content to trudge slowly along the campaign trail, while more frenetic rivals Michele Bachmann,...]]> <![CDATA[Libya, Iraq and the Obama Doctrine]]> Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Thursday’s grisly reckoning in Libya did more than free an oppressed people from a tyrant’s grip. It also brought into sharper focus the contours of what has been the amorphous concept of the “Obama Doctrine.”

To flesh it out even more, President Obama personally came into the White House briefing room on Friday to announce that American combat troops in Iraq will be home by the end of the year: “The tide of war is receding,” he said simply.

In the press security briefing that followed, Antony Blinken, national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, declined to venture a view on whether the long war in Iraq had been worth it -- “history is going to have...]]> <![CDATA[Our Moment of Unity and Civility Was Toppled Too]]> Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Early this year, in a memorial for the victims of the Tucson shooting rampage that left six people dead and Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords grievously injured, President Obama called for a more gracious political discourse in this country. We must recapture, the president said, our ability to converse “in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

In mid-year, Jon Huntsman launched a presidential campaign with the same exclamation point. Huntsman said he wouldn’t...]]> <![CDATA[Obama, Boehner & Reid: Debt Limit Follies]]> Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Eight days before a much-dreaded reckoning that will come if they cannot agree on how to deal with the federal government's burgeoning debt, three principal players in Washington's latest drama produced a day of dueling speeches, press conferences, and budget blueprints. When the performances were concluded, an agreement seemed only slightly more likely than before -- and the nation's fiscal future as clear as mud.
First out of the chute on this frenetic Monday was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. His plan is to raise the debt limit and offset that vote with a series of proposed spending curbs that seemed abstract at best. Even while supporting it last night, President Obama...]]> <![CDATA[The Last Space Shuttle & the Limits of Obama's Vision]]> Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Successful U.S. presidents have always intuited the connection between the American character and a national willingness to explore new frontiers. For the sake of our nation (not to mention the Democratic Party's 2012 election fortunes), it would be instructive to know if Barack Obama does, too.

This week, as the 135th and final mission of the space shuttle program neared its conclusion, Christopher Ferguson, commander of the Atlantis, told his fellow Americans to take a good long last look at the airship "because you're never going to see anything like this again."

In Thursday's pre-dawn darkness, as Ferguson guided the Atlantis to its final landing at Kennedy Space Center,...]]> <![CDATA[GOP Debate a Remarkably Friendly Affair]]> Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Now that was more like it. Seven Republican presidential candidates showed up Monday night to debate one another at New Hampshire's Saint Anselm where they looked -- if not entirely presidential -- then at least poised, collegial, and in command of their talking points. 

All seven managed to express their differences on public policy without being uncivil to one another, or even disagreeing directly with their fellow candidates. This was made easier by the their shared antipathy for the Obama administration - and because their differences are pretty nuanced: In case there was any remaining doubt, Monday's session underscored just how...]]> <![CDATA[Energy: Abundant, Not Scarce - But Highly Politicized]]> Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500 By Carl Cannon - June 13, 2011

In 1972, three MIT scientists peered into the future at the behest of a new international think tank called the Club of Rome, and produced an alarming report called "Limits to Growth"; it was published as a book, translated into 30 languages, and so heavily promoted it eventually sold 10 million copies.

"Limits to Growth" benefited from the kind of good timing that authors dream of: It came out just before the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and the formation of the OPEC cartel. But what really made the wonkish book such an unlikely hit -- it was hyped on the front page of The New York Times -- was that it predicted, supposedly...]]> <![CDATA[Anthrax Attacks and America's Rush to Judgment]]> Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Nearly a decade ago, as Americans were reeling from the shock of September 11, the nation was besieged by a crafty and concealed killer who murdered five people, sickened 17 others, shut down the U.S. Capitol, and helped coalesce the Bush administration's focus on invading Iraq, which it suspected of being responsible for dispatching anthrax through the U.S. mail.

The killer masqueraded as an Islamic terrorist. "We have this anthrax," proclaimed the notes containing the lethal spores sent to numerous offices, including those of Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy (pictured with FBI Director Robert Mueller). All of the mailed letters contained the date "09/11/01" and the...]]> <![CDATA[In Jim DeMint, Conservatives See... the Gipper?]]> Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500 In a season of tornadoes, the Jim DeMint-for-president talk that arose again last week was just a small gust of wind, but it was that latest in a series of conservative-driven microbursts that has kicked dust in many people's eyes. Fairy dust, perhaps?

Approached by conservative activists described as "frustrated," Sen. DeMint was said to be reconsidering whether he ought to join the large and unruly 2012 GOP presidential field. Two separate "draft DeMint" organizations have formed, and the South Carolina Republican told The Hill newspaper that "out of respect for the people who have asked us to think about this," he intended to pray over the matter and discuss it with his...]]> <![CDATA[Barry O'Bama and American Exceptionalism]]> Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 -0500 On the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's historic visit to Ireland, Washington journalist James R. Carroll penned a detailed account of that trip in a delightful book, "One of Ourselves."

JFK's 1963 trip to his ancestral homeland affirmed for the Irish that after centuries of struggling to forge a separate political identity, Ireland had truly emerged on the world stage. One of its grandsons had become president of the United States of America, and now walked easily among them.

"We came to regard the president as one of ourselves, though always aware that he was head of the greatest nation in the world today," Irish President Eamon de Valera would say later. "We were...]]> <![CDATA[CEO for President? Trump Doesn't Make This List]]> Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Notwithstanding the horror show that corporate capitalism became in too many boardrooms and banks in recent years, the American electorate has long been intrigued by the concept of a business executive as president of the United States. It's not Donald Trump's television show that offers him possible cachet into the 2012 presidential field; it's his perceived financial acumen.

It's not much of a secret in the business community, however, that Trump is not considered in the first tier of business thinkers and doers. In his crowd, the problem isn't The Donald's much-discussed hairdo, the three wives, the outsized ego, or even the newly discovered -- and seemingly convenient --...]]> <![CDATA[Dems & Taxes: Trapped by Talking Points]]> Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500 In the aftermath of President Obama's big budget speech this week, liberals cheered while conservatives hissed. And Americans who are not partisan ideologues experienced an unhappy sense of déjà vu over the president's indignation over "tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires."

As if our problems were really that easy.

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The mathematics of the enduring federal deficits? Yes, that part is so simple a fourth grader could master it: The U.S. Treasury will receive something just north of $2 trillion in taxes and other revenues this year, while the government is projected to spend nearly about $3.5 trillion. The estimated $1.4 trillion...]]> <![CDATA[Gaddafi Must Go -- But Where?]]> Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500 One day after speaking to the American people about the U.S. military intervention in Libya, President Obama said in a television interview that Muammar Gaddafi and those in his inner circle "know their days are numbered."

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But one question raised by Obama's remarks is whether they will help Gaddafi step away from the world stage -- or whether such bravado will rouse the Libyan leader and his loyalists to fight until the bitter end, thereby increasing the carnage in that beleaguered North African nation.

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The past is prologue, goes the saying, but as always, it depends whose history we are talking about....]]> <![CDATA[Historically Challenged GOP Hopefuls]]> Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500 "What we need in our nominee," Michele Bachmann was saying in New Hampshire the other day, "is someone who understands and comprehends the seriousness of the times we live in."

The darling of the tea party set will get no argument on that score from her fellow Republicans eyeing a 2012 presidential bid - or from Democrats. It's just that Bachmann's point would carry more weight had she not prefaced it by placing the battles of Lexington and Concord that started the Revolutionary War in New Hampshire.

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As every American schoolchild should know, Massachusetts and not New Hampshire is where "once the embattled farmers stood and fired the...]]>