John Peeler: So if current patterns holds, Romney’s backers will give him solid support in his base, but won’t be able to deliver much outside the base.
Azerbaijan and Israel Against Iran: Suicidal Recklessness?
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John Peeler: Obama simply cannot allow himself and his country to be held hostage by a reckless ally in Israel. He needs to do all in his power to dissuade the Israelis from proceeding with this misbegotten adventure.
Fuel Prices: How Much Blame Does Obama Merit?
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John Peeler: The Republican attack on Obama over gas prices at the pump is quite a strange line of attack from people who are incessantly demanding a return to untrammeled free markets. Do they really want Obama to impose price controls?
Free Riders: Why is Health Care Any Different from Food Stamps?
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John Peeler: Why does getting extra food stamps amount to fraud if not outright theft, while refusing to buy health insurance when you can afford it is a constitutional right? A free rider is a free rider.
This Does Not End Well: Escaping Afghanistan
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John Peeler: An agonizing series of missteps by U.S. troops in Afghanistan show us how precarious is our hold there, reinforcing the idea that we just don’t belong there, that we don’t respect the Afghani people.
License to Kill
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John Peeler: It is distressing that a president who came to office as a bitter critic of abuses of presidential authority by his predecessor now takes essentially the same position as George W. Bush. Power that is unchecked and operates in secret is always dangerous to democracy.
Why Santorum Won’t Fade
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John Peeler: The Republican primary electorate is predominantly reactionary, far-right-wing, on both economic and social issues, so it should not be so surprising that they are warming to Santorum.
Pennsylvania: The Kidneystone State
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John Peeler: Joining the conservative chorus against Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the federally sponsored mortgage giants, Gingrich has had trouble explaining his receipt of $1.8 million over several years as a consultant to Freddie Mac.
Nittany Lion Country: Gut-Check Time
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John Peeler: We are Penn State if we have ever been part of an organization that chose to keep a scandal quiet and in-house, rather than reporting it to the authorities.
The GOP Campaign: It Would Be Funny If It Weren’t So Serious
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John Peeler: So now they’re left with, of all people, Newt Gingrich! This man has so much baggage he needs a train to haul it.
Shock and Awe versus Aw Shucks: Taking Out the Bad Guys
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John Peeler: Obama has set a major contrast in style and strategy with George W. Bush: he does not grandstand, he does not order massive military interventions. He doesn’t question Bush’s commitments, but he set up the rules of engagement and the negotiating positions to allow him to dial them back.
What Occupy Wall Street Can Learn from the Tea Party
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John Peeler: Occupy Wall Street has an opportunity here to develop the kind of clout that the Tea Party has, but to do it they will have to be every bit as hard-nosed and disciplined.
Obama Betrays the EPA
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John Peeler: In what has become a pattern for Obama, he backed down, adopted the essentials of the Republican argument, and left his own EPA Director swinging in the wind.
Arab Spring: The Kings and the Presidents
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John Peeler: Just as with the fall of the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe, success in Tunisia encouraged protesters elsewhere; success in the most important Arab state, Egypt, meant that success was conceivable anywhere.
Obama vs. Boehner: Point Guard and Linebacker
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John Peeler: Obama dribbles across mid-court, fakes left, moves right, deftly avoids Boehner’s attempted steal, and goes in for a lay-up. Boehner cuts him off at the knees, grabs the loose ball and runs it back for a touchdown.
Americans Elect?
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John Peeler: Disillusioned liberals ought to know that if this effort takes off, it is very likely to siphon votes away from Obama and facilitate a complete Republican takeover of the federal government.
Lost Decade?
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John Peeler: One of the most striking features of our current global economic morass is that many Third World economies are weathering the crisis rather well, while the supposed leaders of the world economy (the United States, the European Union, the Japanese) are in deep trouble that looks to get deeper.
Reimagining Capitalism: An End to Mythologies
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John Peeler: The economy, like the polity, ought to be democratically controlled. Democracy should operate at the level of the firm as well as the community: employees should be owners.
Facing Pakistan After Bin Laden
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John Peeler: We cannot say that Pakistan is two-faced: that would imply a degree of unity that does not square with what we know about that country. Pakistan has many faces because no one is fully in control.
Obama Takes Out Osama
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John Peeler: Obama may not much like war, but he has shown that if he believes he must wage it, he intends to win it. Liberals who were hostile to the Iraq war, skeptical of the Afghanistan war, and dubious about the Libyan intervention will find little comfort here.
What’s Obama’s Game in Libya?
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John Peeler: It’s just possible that things are going pretty much as the administration intends. That is, Qaddafi’s position is deteriorating, he will ultimately fall, and Obama’s fingerprints will not be on the deed.
Obama and War
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John Peeler: Obama has done, in the Libyan case, just what he said he would: with UN Security Council and Arab League authorization, he has put together a coalition to take limited military measures to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
Libya: What Happens When Sound Bites Don’t Work?
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John Peeler: No wonder the hyper-cautious Obama is moving as if he were in a minefield that’s been covered with grease. Anything he does (including nothing) will elicit ferocious criticism from both opponents and supporters.
Winner-Take-All
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John Peeler: “Winner-Take-All Politics” provides a well-documented analysis of how the United States government, since the 1970s, has systematically enriched the top one percent of the country at the expense of everyone else. Written by distinguished political scientists, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, the book shows how big business interests ratcheted up their national organizations to defend their interests in national policy debates. In addition to employing far stronger lobbying, these interests created think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, designed to challenge the liberal conventional wisdom of the New Deal and Great Society and replace it with an explicitly conservative, free-market-oriented way of thinking.
Deficit Commission: Keynesian by Default
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John Peeler: The fact is, neither liberals nor conservatives, neither Republicans nor Democrats, have the stomach for the major sacrifices that Simpson and Bowles are calling for, and it’s not at all clear that the public in general is ready either.
Not a Post-Mortem: Checking Debris After a Big Wave
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John Peeler: The Republican takeover of the House was largely a matter of taking back the seats they lost in the last two elections, many of which are either majority Republican or conservative enough to have voted for McCain in 2008.
On the Art of Exit: Iraq and Afghanistan
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John Peeler: Obama appears determined that the wars not overwhelm his domestic agenda, even as, pragmatically, he cannot walk away from either without exposing himself to withering political attacks. If Bush saw himself as a war president, Obama wants to be a reformer with two wars to manage.
