Political Commentary

February 3, 2015

What Killed the 'American Sniper'? By Froma Harrop

The second-most jarring scene in "American Sniper" takes place not in the urban maze of wartime Iraq but in the domestic tranquility of Chris Kyle's home in Texas. Disoriented after his fourth tour in the cauldron of Iraq, the heralded Navy SEAL is shown stalking his wife from room to room with a pistol. For a moment, we worry that he has flipped out and is going to shoot her. Turns out this was his playful way of initiating sex.

Foreplay, with a handgun.

The genius of "American Sniper" is its portrayal of a culture obsessed with guns. One expects heavy weaponry in war, but here there are guns all over the placid homefront, too. Guns are not just owned but waved. Guns as personal statements.

January 30, 2015

My Mistakes About 2016 Presidential Race by Michael Barone

Some columnists write New Year's columns chronicling the mistakes over the last year. I don't, but as this January has rolled on, it's become clear I've made many about the 2016 presidential race.

January 29, 2015

The Internet of Every Damn Thing By Froma Harrop

Federal Trade Commission head Edith Ramirez put the matter plainly: "If I'm wearing a fitness band that tracks how many calories I consume, I wouldn't want to share that data with an insurance company."

January 29, 2015

For Republicans, a 2016 Tie Is a Win By Kyle Kondik

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, elected to a third term earlier this month, often notes that the presidential cycle is harder for his party than midterms because the electorate is more diverse and Democratic. “For us to win a presidential election, we have to be just about perfect, and the Democrats have to be good,” he told Kyle Cheney of Politico.

January 28, 2015

Owning Ideas by John Stossel

For most of history, people suffered in miserable poverty.

Then, in a few hundred years, some new ideas made life hugely better for billions of us -- things like running water, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, the Internet.

We want people to keep coming up with new and better ideas. But there's a problem: Why would you bother to spend years inventing something if other people can just steal your idea? Who will devote years and millions of dollars to making a big movie? Or a dozen years and billions of dollars to bringing a new drug to market? Almost no one.

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January 27, 2015

Free Tuition at Community College Should Just Be the Start By Froma Harrop

It's good that many Republicans have joined Democrats in declaring the growth of economic inequality a problem. And some are even looking to solutions beyond making the rich richer through tax cuts. As we've seen, rising stock prices do not necessarily lead to jobs -- for Americans, that is.

January 27, 2015

Are Today's Millennials a New Victorian Generation? by Michael Barone

Public policymakers and political pundits tend to focus on problems -- understandably, because if things are going right they aren't thought to need attention. Yet positive developments can teach us things as well, when, for reasons not necessarily clear, great masses of people start to behave more constructively.

January 23, 2015

Obama's Attempt to Turn the Page Undermined By Policy Failures by Michael Barone

It's not in the printed text, but the most revealing words in President Obama's seventh State of the Union address came near the end. After the scripted line, "I have no more campaigns to run," elicited Republican applause, Obama ad libbed, "I know, because I won both of them."

January 22, 2015

Google Glass Joins the Failure Hall of Fame by Froma Harrop

Google Glass has entered the annals of spectacular product failures. Many bright ideas have foundered on the shoals of consumer rejection. The Product Failure Hall of Fame is too small to contain them all. But a few fall from such enormous heights of hype and hope that they deserve special recognition as awesome.

As such, Google Glass (2013) joins the Edsel (1957), Crystal Pepsi (1992) and Clairol's Touch of Yogurt shampoo (1979) as one of the greats.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at [email protected]. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

January 22, 2015

Obama’s Approval Rating and the Outlook for the 2016 Presidential Election By Alan I. Abramowitz

With the 2014 midterm election in the rearview mirror, the attention of pundits and political prognosticators has quickly shifted to the outlook for the 2016 presidential election. On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State, First Lady, and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton appears to be the prohibitive favorite to emerge as the nominee. On the Republican side, however, there is no clear frontrunner, and early maneuvering by prospective candidates has intensified with the announcement by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that he is seriously considering a run for the White House. In addition to Bush, several prominent current and former Republican officeholders have already signaled their interest in running, including 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

January 21, 2015

Restate of the Union by John Stossel

President Obama sure is consistent. His State of the Union address sounded like his other speeches: What I've done is great! America is in a much better position. We've created a manufacturing sector that's adding jobs. More oil is produced at home. I cut deficits in half!

January 20, 2015

Government Created the Housing Bubble and Financial Crisis -- and Could Be Doing so Again By Michael Barone

What caused the financial crisis? How can we prevent another one from happening again? The answers you most often hear to those questions are (1) greed and deregulation and (2) the Dodd-Frank law.

But they're patently inadequate. Greed -- or the desire for monetary gain -- has always been with us and always will be. And no one has convincingly linked financial deregulation to the crisis. Dodd-Frank, enacted to increase regulation, confers too-big-to-fail status on very large financial institutions, which incentivizes unduly risky behavior and penalizes smaller competitors.

January 20, 2015

Stop Making Excuses for Nonvoting Millennials by Froma Harrop

The recent economic crisis hit the American middle class hard. But for the youngest adults trying to gain a foothold in the good life, it's been devastating.

January 16, 2015

Why the Violent Extremists Welcome Attacks on Islam by Joe Conason

Whenever an act of horrific terror enrages the West, a predictable second act ensues. Furious commentators and activists on the right erupt with blanket denunciations of Islam, Muslims and their supposed plots to enslave us all under Shariah, urging that we ban the religion, stigmatize its faithful and restore the Judeo-Christian exclusivity of America. Sometimes a few even seek retribution in attacks on mosques, individual Muslims and anyone unfortunate enough to "look Muslim."

January 16, 2015

Protecting a Tolerant Society Against the Intolerance: A New --- and Old --- Challenge by Michael Barone

How far should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance? It's a difficult issue, one without any entirely satisfactory answer. And it's a current issue in the days after 40 world leaders and the U.S. ambassador to France marched together in Paris against the jihadist Muslim murderers who targeted the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

January 15, 2015

Gilded Youth and Their Pain By Froma Harrop

A Hollywood-handsome Princeton grad recently shot his hedge-fund-founder father to death. The alleged reason: Thomas Gilbert Sr.'s plan to cut his allowance by $200 a month. You can imagine what the tabloids are doing with the story.

January 15, 2015

Harry Reid & The Senate Survivors By Geoffrey Skelley

If history is any indication, it would be hard to pick against Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) if he runs for another term next year. His races are often close, but he has shown a remarkable amount of resilience over the years, frustrating Republican attempts to dislodge him. In fact, by some measures Reid has had a tougher time retaining his seat than any of the longest-serving senators during the century-long era of popular Senate elections. He is, in many ways, the heartiest of the “Senate survivors.”

January 14, 2015

The Better Option by John Stossel

It's easy to "fire" a business that rips you off. Just go to a different one. It's a lot easier to patronize another business than to get government to fix the problem.

January 13, 2015

Can Jeb Bush -- or Anyone -- Come up With a Platform for Primaries, General and Presidency? by Michael Barone

There are likely to be many surprises in a race for the Republican presidential nomination that has something like 20 plausible potential candidates. The first of those surprises came in the last hours before New Year's when Jeb Bush announced he was setting up an exploratory committee to consider running for president.