Monthly Archives: October, 2010

Peter Baker and Maureen Dowd write in the New York Times about the public’s perception that Obama is an elitist. He is certain he is right, and that makes him believe those who disagree are dumb, dishonest or immoral. (In his memoirs Tony Blair writes this is a characteristic of far left progressives. They think [...]

It seems odd, considering that the Financial Times is a business paper, that it tends to have a hostile attitude toward America. The explanation, I think, relates to postmodernism. Postmodernists are determined to seek redemption from the West’s historical racism. The FT is convinced that America suffers from lingering racism. They applauded the election of [...]

The debate about Barack Obama’s record is now over and the Financial Times editors have decided that America’s economic problems can be blamed on the Founders. They wrote a constitution that has been effective in preventing tyranny, but the system of checks and balances also makes it impossible to deal with our economic problems. This [...]

The debate in the Financial Times about Barack Obama’s record continues today, with Nouriel Roubini describing the president’s disastrous economic policy, and Philip Stephens praising his realistic foreign policy.
Roubini writes that Obama failed to combine his stimulus program with an effort to control future entitlement spending, and this will eventually bring fiscal disaster (A Presidency [...]

During the 2008 primary campaign Barack Obama argued that he should be the Democratic candidate in preference to Hillary Clinton, because she was mired in the controversies of the 1960’s. Obama said he was in a better position to unite America and move us forward into a post-partisan era.
Shelby Steele, however, thinks that Obama is [...]

John Gapper writes in the Financial Times that Barack Obama should stop being so hostile to big business (Obama Must Learn to Love Business), and David Frum says his loss of support has to do with the fact that Americans are worse off financially than two years ago (Punished for Ignoring America’s Pocket Book).
Frum writes [...]

Today the Financial Times begins a series of debates about President Obama’s record during his first two years in office. Simon Schama says Obama’s loss of popularity with voters is a consequence of his superior intelligence and morality, whereas Martin Wolf says the problem is the economic stimulus program was not large enough.
Schama (Time for [...]

David Brooks writes in the New York Times (No Second Thoughts) about the complications that Democrats are forced to deal with because of their certainty and self-regard. Brooks says it is hard not to be impressed by the spirit of self-approval that Democrats have maintained in this election.
Because Democrats are so confident they are right [...]

A peculiarity of the coming election is that so many people are unwilling to wait until the results come in before analyzing what went wrong (for Democrats, of course).
Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times that the problem is the stimulus was not large enough to turn the economy around (Falling Into the Chasm).
Ross [...]

One reason Tony Blair is such an interesting politician is that he tends to downplay the importance of ideology. He seems genuinely to believe there is a third way between capitalism and socialism. He says Margaret Thatcher was right to emphasize aspiration, but she did not have enough compassion. It is not enough to want [...]