Tim Pawlenty’s Truthiness
David Corn, Mother Jones
Tim Pawlenty has a new campaign motto. In a slick video officially announcing his bid for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, Pawlenty notes that he could unveil his candidacy with a big speech replete with balloons (“red ones, white ones, and blue ones”), pass out cupcakes, and promise to eliminate a $14 trillion debt, create jobs for 10 million Americans, and restructure Social Security and health care “all without making any tough decisions.” Or, he says, “I could try something different. I could just tell you the truth.” What truth? That “our …
Obama’s Idealism and the Arab Spring
Jacob Weisberg, Slate
President Barack ObamaFew presidents arrive in office with large plans around foreign affairs. Yet most live to see their reputations defined by it. For Barack Obama, whose time in office coincides with a series of tectonic shifts in global structure”"the Arab revolutions, the relative decline of American power, the rise of China”"that pattern shows signs of holding. But what kind of foreign policy leader is he? How Obama thinks about America's role in the world turns out to be one of the murkier questions about his presidency.Obama's views fit neatly…
Try Rewarding Failure to Fix Health Care
Ezra Klein, Bloomberg
Illustration by Jason Polan Ezra Klein is a columnist and blogger at The Washington Post and a policy analyst for MSNBC. His work focuses on domestic and economic policy-making, as well as the political system that's constantly screwing it up.Tim Harford has an unusual fear about government failure. He's not worried that the government fails too often. He's worried that it doesn't fail often enough. The British economist is the author of the compelling new book,”Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure.” In it, he warns that “we face a difficult…
Obama Should Abolish the G8
Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
Turn autoplay offTurn autoplay onPlease activate cookies in order to turn autoplay offIn his Westminster speech, the US president sang a familiar old song, beautifully. Now let's hear the new oneThe west is dead, long live the west. Thus we might summarise the message of Barack Obama's trip to Europe so far "“ and Wednesday's keynote speech in Westminster Hall. There was one rhetorical moment that only Obama could have produced. An eloquent passage about well-integrated diversity being a strength of both American and British society culminated in the…
Unchanged Path to Mideast Peace
Jimmy Carter, Int’l Herald Tribune
It was not a new U.S. policy concerning the borders of Israel, nor should it have been surprising to Israeli leaders, when President Obama stated: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."
