Roundup: Media's Take

Andrew Rawnsley: David Cameron's ambivalent relationship with the lady in blue

[Andrew Rawnsley is the The Observer's award-winning Chief Political Commentator as well as being a best-selling author and critically-acclaimed broadcaster.] David Cameron sometimes entertains visitors to Number 10 in a first-floor room which looks over Horse Guards towards St James's Park. For many years, it went by the bland name of the White Room; recently, it was retitled the Thatcher Room. A portrait of the blue lady has been hung on a wall. But you'd be wrong to think it was

Edward Luce: It is time for Obama to switch from hope to fear

[Edward Luce is the Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times, London.] Sarah Palin, America’s most high-profile conservative, attracted some opprobrium earlier this year when she posed the following rhetorical question to Barack Obama’s supporters: “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?” In addition to the sarcasm, opposing hope is rarely an advisable path to American hearts. Such traits may explain why Ms Palin got a 22 per cent approval rating in a

David R. Stokes: The Forgotten Lesson of 1964

[David R. Stokes is a minister, broadcaster, columnist, and author. His current project is a book entitled, Checkers—The Speech That Saved Nixon & Changed Politics at the Dawn of the Television Age. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.]For years, during campaign after campaign, moderate Republicans—in various shades of pastel—have preached a big-tent gospel, one that insisted on conservatives being good soldiers in support of the GOP.  And the record has shown that conservative minded Re

Chris Lehmann: The Gold ATM Comes to America

[Chris Lehmann's book is Rich People Things] ...Gold really isn’t an asset, in the conventional sense of the term, at all. It is, rather, another sort of currency, whose value does indeed spike during times like the present, when governments contract enormous debt and investors grow anxious about how resulting inflationary pressures will devalue their holdings over time. Unlike silver, which is also likely on the verge of its own bull rush, gold has very few industrial applications,

Wang Feng: China’s Population Destiny: The Looming Crisis

[Wang Feng is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. His books include Boundaries and Categories: Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China (Stanford University Press, 2007).]Observers of China’s rise, when assessing the implications for global peace and prosperity, have largely focused their attention on the country’s economy, on its energy and resour

Eugene Robinson: Why Won't the GOP Compete for African American Votes?

[Eugene Robinson is a columnist for the WaPo.] ...The history of the Republican Party's estrangement from African Americans is well known. In 1960, Richard Nixon won 32 percent of the black vote. In 1964, Barry Goldwater -- who had opposed the landmark Civil Rights Act -- received just 6 percent of the black vote. This dramatic shift made possible Nixon's "Southern strategy," which political strategist Kevin Phillips explained to the New York Times in 1970, using some arch

Dana Milbank: Mormon Prophecy Behind Glenn Beck's Message

[Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation's capital. He joined The Washington Post as a political reporter in 2000, after two years as a senior editor of The New Republic and eight years with the Wall Street Journal.]In one of his first appearances on Fox News, Glenn Beck sent a coded message to the nation's six million Mormons -- or at least those Mormons who believe in what the Latter-day Saints call "the White Horse Prophecy.""We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance," Beck told Bill O'Reilly on November 14, 2008, just after President Obama's election. "I feel theConstitution is hanging in the balance right now, hanging by a thread unless the good Americans wake up."The Constitution is hanging by a thread.Most Americans would have heard this as just another bit of overblown commentary and thought nothing more of it. But to those familiar with the White Horse Prophecy, it was an unmistakable signal.The phrase is often attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church. Smith is believed to have said in 1840 that when the Constitution hangs by a thread, elders of the Mormon Church will step in -- on the proverbial white horse -- to save the country.

Jay Bookman: Gingrich Cheats as a Historian, Too

[Jay Bookman is a columnist and blogger at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, specializing in foreign relations, environmental and technology-related issues and state and local politics.] Newt Gingrich the historian is not a man to be trusted. Much like Newt Gingrich the husband, I suppose. Yes, I know, Newt’s bona fide — he has a Ph.D in history from Tulane, and he taught in the field for a while at West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia). But as a politician, G

James M. Fly and John Noonan: Iraq's Post-War Stability Is Crucial

[James M. Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, served in national security positions in the Bush administration. John Noonan is a policy adviser at the Foreign Policy Initiative.] Heading out on the election trail, the Senate left behind a critical piece of business that could affect national security and U.S. interests in the Middle East for decades to come. In August, the last U.S. combat forces left Iraq, leaving behind a liberated nation. A few

Daniel Larison: Has NATO Outlived Its Usefulness?

[Daniel Larison is a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Chicago, where he recently completed his dissertation on the sixth ecumenical council and the monothelete controversy. He is contributing editor at The American Conservative and writes a column for The Week online.] The goal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization used to be, as its first secretary general, Lord Ismay, phrased it, "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Today, the only

Gary Schmitt: The Demilitarization of Europe

[Mr. Schmitt is director of the American Enterprise Institute's Program on Advance Strategic Studies.] Now circulating among NATO member countries is a draft "Strategic Concept," a document that describes the alliance's core roles and missions. It will be submitted for formal approval at the upcoming NATO summit in Lisbon in November. The previous Strategic Concept was adopted more than a decade ago, in 1999, and a revised document is long overdue. Much of the

Cameron Abadi: Does Germany Care If It Exports Terrorism?

[Cameron Abadi is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.] If a drone passed over Pakistan's militant-plagued North Waziristan region, leaving in its wake a destroyed mosque and the corpses of at least eight terrorism suspects of German citizenship, how would you describe what happened? You might say it's a reminder of the lethal efficiency of the CIA; an argument to remain vigilant in the war in Afghanistan; or further confirmation that Pakistan is, as the title of one

Ahmed Rashid: Obama must keep his eye on the Afghan exit

[The writer’s latest book is Descent into Chaos. A revised, 10th anniversary edition of his best seller, Taliban, has just been published.] Another fraudulent election; a banking crisis that involves the president’s family; unstoppable corruption; a war still in big trouble; and disarray in the west’s continued commitment to that war – all but the blind can see that Afghanistan is not going well for the US and Nato. The Nato summit in November and the Obama administrat

Ian Fletcher: America Was Founded as a Protectionist Nation

[Ian Fletcher is the author of the new book"Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why" (USBIC, $24.95). He is an adjunct fellow at the San Francisco office of the US Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933.Contemporary American politics is conducted in the shadow of historical myths that inform our present-day choices. Unfortunately, these myths sometimes lead us terribly astray. Case in point is the popular idea that America's economic t

Steven Pearlstein: The Cost of Rising Income Inequality

[Steven Pearlstein is the business columnist for the WaPo.] Although much of the Republicans'"Pledge to America" is given over to a discussion of economic issues, there is one topic that is never mentioned: the dramatic rise in income inequality.... It wasn't always that way. From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income gener

Mosharraf Zaidi: Reading Woodward in Karachi

[Mosharraf Zaidi has served as an advisor on international aid to Pakistan for the United Nations and European Union and writes a weekly column for Pakistan's the <em>News</em>.] Relations between the United States and Pakistan have never been more fraught. Last month, NATO helicopters breached Pakistani airspace several times. In the first instance, they engaged a group of suspected terrorists, killing more than 30. On Sept. 30, in another breach of Pakistani territory

John Fund: The real historical parallel may be 1894 when Republicans took 100 seats

[John Fund is a political journalist and conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal.] As Election Day draws closer, every major public opinion poll shifts from interviewing registered voters to those whom it identifies as "likely" voters. Gallup, the oldest U.S. polling company, first developed the model it uses for identifying likely voters back in 1950 and its final election polls have proven highly accurate. Yesterday, Gallup delivered its first 201

Steve LeVine: The End of the Great Game

[Steve LeVine, a Washington-based writer on energy and foreign affairs, is the author of The Oil and the Glory.] Has the United States stopped playing the Great Game in Central Asia? In the wake of the destabilizing violence that occurred in Kyrgyzstan this summer, that seems to be the case. The Obama administration reacted slowly when at least 300 people were killed in inter-ethnic fighting in June and Kyrgyzstan seemed on the verge of spiraling out of control. American officials d

Ruth Marcus: Justice Brennan Forever Changed the Court's Architecture

[Ruth Marcus is a columnist for the WaPo.] Just in time for the opening of the Supreme Court's new term arrives a biography of one of history's most influential justices. The subtitle chosen by Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel for their book about William J. Brennan Jr. is telling: "Liberal Champion." There are sitting justices who are tagged with the liberal label. But this is, for now anyway, a court of conservative champions and moderate-to-liberal holdouts a

Jonathan Freedland: Blair left Downing Street years ago, but his ghost haunts all Britain's politics

[Jonathan Freedland writes a weekly column for The Guardian. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, and presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View.] Is this the coalition's 10p? That's the question Tories have been anxiously asking each other in Birmingham, fretting that George Osborne's abolition of child benefit for the better-off might soon stand alongside Gordon Brown's scrapping of the 10p tax rate as a g