On the housing front, the good news is that the president wants Mel Watt to head the FHFA. The bad news is that, precisely because the president wants him, there is no certainty that Mel Watt will be confirmed. The really bad news is that the problems in the U.S....

Perhaps it is the sheer size of this country that makes important problems invisible -- with each problem so localized and personal as not to count in public discourse. Or perhaps it is the sheer size of the problems themselves that enables them to hide in the open -- with...

The president is likely to have a bad week with his progressive base, if what we are told to expect in his budget tomorrow turns out to be true. We are told that his budget will trade "modest entitlement savings," including future reductions in Social Security payments, for...

It's been quite a month for budgets -- both here and, as it happens, in the U.K. too. In London in March, the coalition government provided another round in its continuing pursuit of economic growth through fiscal austerity -- an economic growth which continues to elude it -...

Faced by insurmountable odds as the Carthaginians swept down the Italian peninsula during the Second Punic War, the Roman general Fabius Maximus simply retreated and retreated, wearing the opposition down by declining to engage with them at all. Watching the Republicans play the President right now, the scorched earth policy...

Amid the urgency of the sequestration crisis, many things of substance are likely to fade into the background of public debate -- at exactly the moment when they should not.

Among those are the president's call for a strengthening of the economy's manufacturing base and the recreation of well-paying...

So, the State of the Union is strong, is it? Well, maybe it is for the people the president chose to speak about last night. But what about the ones he only mentioned in passing, or the ones that he omitted to mention at all? What about the state of...

SOTU addresses at the start of a second presidential term are relatively rare phenomena, and in recent times they have also been also relatively ephemeral ones. George W. Bush used his SOTU Address in 2005 to make a prolonged pitch for the partial privatization of Social Security. That...

Half-way points in two-term presidencies are inevitably moments to take stock and to consider redirections of policy. Right now, the political blogosphere is properly full of that stocktaking and redesign. Lists abound on policies needed and priorities to be pushed, which is why there is no need to add to...

Two previous recent postings explored the parameters and the prerequisites for a progressive second presidential term for Barack Obama. Each of those postings triggered three broad responses from a largely skeptical audience. One broad response, from conservative or libertarian bloggers, was that since progressive answers to America's contemporary...

Amid the scampering up and down the fiscal cliff that now dominates political life in Washington, some more important and basic questions are in danger of vanishing from view, questions about the general character and progressive potential of Barack Obama's second term. Questions such as these. Will this administration in...

Co-authored with Don Frey .

As reports thicken of a possible deal between the White House and the House Republicans -- a deal which will supposedly avoid the rest of us going over some fiscal cliff on January 1 -- it is worth remembering at least four reasons...

Public conversation in and around Washington D.C. is currently preoccupied with the question of the fiscal cliff. And rightly so, for very big things are at stake -- not least whether or not a political crisis will tip the economy back into recession, and whether an election result that mandated...

It is lobbying week in Washington D.C. Tuesday was labor's day at the White House. Wednesday it was the turn of the business community. Friday it will be the usual politicians -- Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Pelosi, Reid -- in other words, the usual political gridlock masquerading as democracy in action....

Basic belief systems, if regularly reinforced by carefully orchestrated advertising campaigns, are enormously difficult things to shift. Paradigms of thought, once established in dominance, are hard to get rid of. We have just lived through 30 years of an orchestrated consensus on the wonders of free-market capitalism. No matter that...

Co-authored with Eileen Coates: National Board Certified Public School Teacher

One of the most telling questions in the second of the debates between the presidential candidates focused on the gender pay gap: asking in what ways the candidates would "rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females only...

If you listen only to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, you could be forgiven for thinking that the United States is not simply in need of strong interventionist leadership abroad. It is also short of military hardware and troops.

A Romney Administration, the Governor told the Virginia...

Central to the Republican critique of the Obama Administration in this election cycle has been the Administration's supposed failure to address and resolve the problem of America's growing debt. There is much wild and loose talk in beltway circles these days about federal over-spending, about federal over-borrowing, about the nation...

Charles Dickens came to mind again this week -p his opening to A Tale of Two Cities -- his intriguing contrast between "the best of times....the worst of times...the age of wisdom...the age of foolishness." His cities were London and Paris. Ours were Tampa and Charlotte, but the contrasts remain...

Unless the Republican convention in Tampa is swept away by hurricane force winds -- itself a fascinating prospect for a party, so many of whose activists claim to be in regular and direct contact with the Almighty -- the media will make next week an entirely R week. Monday through...