Gary Shapiro

This presidential election has produced a bitter divide between Americans favoring either President Obama or Gov. Romney. Cher recently tweeted that under a Romney presidency, she could not "breathe the same air as Him & his Right Wing Racist Homophobic Women Hating Tea Bagger Masters." Comedian Jon Lovitz...

Our elected leaders are failing us as they refuse to deal with the biggest issue of our time -- the exploding deficit bomb. The media is also failing us by letting politicians brush aside, deceive or evade the hard truth of the numbers. False assertions are accepted. Call me naïve,...

In her March 18 column, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a scathing and nasty indictment of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney based on his Mormon religion. She trots out various Mormon practices and beliefs many consider strange, and slams Romney for not addressing them.

If a Presidential...

In my job, I travel and talk to Americans from all walks of life, coast to coast, Red America and Blue America. I hear their wisdom, ideas, frustrations and concerns.

But in today's media culture, the ideologues on both sides monopolize the airwaves and feed the impression that we...

By coming to an agreement to extend the payroll tax cut, leaders from both political parties are destroying our children's future so they can keep their Congressional seats.

Republicans and Democrats refuse to embrace the American concept that we all must sacrifice for the good of the nation. The World...

We've all heard of the geeks -- Jobs, Bezos, Chambers, Ellison, Gates, Jacobs, Zuckerberg. But political Washington has never much concerned itself with the geek community. Yesterday, that changed. Yesterday, American geeks roared at establishment Washington, and Washington listened and acted.

In 2010, it was healthcare; 2011 was all...

Give us strength and wisdom this holiday season...

To accept that all Americans mean well and want what's best for our nation. We just have different visions on how to make America better.

To help us accept and embrace Republicans who want a stronger America, but will never accept tax...

On Wednesday, I spent a few hours with some other talking heads at CNBC's high-tech New Jersey headquarters while watching the Republican presidential candidate debate. I was thrilled to be part of this "A-Team" of economic luminaries, mostly Democrats, including former Ohio Governor Bob Strickland, former Clinton economist...

On twelve Members of Congress sits the dragon of our deficit. But the Supercommittee tasked with deciding how to slay this dragon before it consumes us all has a rather large obstacle: No one has offered to risk his own neck to slay the dragon.

The Tea Party and Republicans...

If Washington is adept at anything, it's coming up with solutions that are worse than the problems. Two bills moving through Congress at the moment seek to protect copyright owners -- in particular, movie studios -- from the threat of digital piracy. To be clear, commercial piracy of movies is...

Almost every sentient American now understands that our political leaders have done nothing to address the challenges of our growing debt, other than to kick the can down the road to yet one more committee. Certainly, Standard and Poor's, the stock market and the American people have expressed a vote...

To many, President Obama is looking a lot like Jimmy Carter: a well-meaning but unimpressive one-term president. But rather than just run a competent campaign against his Republican opposition, Obama can be re-elected enthusiastically in 2012 by taking bold moves that show the type of leadership and decisiveness he has...

Tuesday's two House elections filling vacant seats with Republicans may be signs of a nationwide voter shift. In New York, where Republican businessman Bob Turner captured Anthony Weiner's old district, Democrats just lost a seat that they have held since 1923. In Nevada, the Republican Mark...

There was a moment in President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress Thursday night when Candidate Obama returned to the limelight. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. Behind all the passion and eloquence that Obama was able to muster for one of the biggest speeches of his presidency, there was...

The August 15 New York Times front page boldly featured a menacing headline, "A Businessman in Congress Helps His District and Himself," whose accompanying article slams House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). However, key facts in the story are inaccurate and the headline crumbles without these...

With the newly created "super committee" gearing up to trim government spending, it seems wise to focus on one of the biggest multipliers to our growing debt. Not surprisingly, Medicaid and Medicare together consume 20 percent of 2011 federal spending and are projected to consume $1.38 trillion or 24 percent...

Enough already! Americans want our political leaders to stop fighting and cut a debt limit deal. While Americans are concerned about jobs, our leaders are destroying the dollar, the economy and the nation by their failure to compromise and extend the debt limit.

Leadership requires compromise. Compromise...

Every day I am asked why I am so passionate that innovation must be our national strategy.

Through my writings, media interviews and my recent book, "The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream," I have been relentless in pushing a pro-innovation agenda while urging Americans to join...

The battle over free trade has taken a crass -- and dishonest -- turn thanks to an ad campaign run by the AFL-CIO which suggests a free trade agreement between the United States and Colombia is "about murder" of Colombian labor organizers. The ad, which features a coffin,...

Not long ago, we could judge political candidates by their views on issues we cared about to see if there was a match with our own (e.g., abortion, war, spending, immigration, gay rights, unions, and the role of government). Party affiliation was important but not critical,...