John V. Santore

Over the last few years, plenty of people have attacked Barack Obama using easily disprovable falsehoods and specious reasoning. (I know -- I used to watch Glenn Beck for a living.) On Monday, a woman at a Mitt Romney event stood up during a Q&A session and said this:

The following audio report examines judicial elections in Chicago. The campaign of Ricardo Lugo, who is running for the judgeship in the Sixth Sub-Circuit, is used as a case study. Interviews with Ricardo Lugo, campaign manager Orlando Lopez, supporter Teo Gonzales, Ann Lousin of the John Marshall...

This audio report profiles Chicago comic Cameron Esposito, who will be performing at this year's SXSW. The interview was recorded in January of 2012. Run time is 11:22.

This audio report examines the commonalities and fault lines between Iowa conservatives aligned with the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street supporters. It features audio from interviews with Jim Conklin, Dan Lukor, and other members of the Iowa Conservative Union (headquartered in Marion, Iowa), as well as audio from...

This audio report on the Buddy Roemer presidential campaign features interviews with Krista Johnson and Joshua Fischer. Johnson was one of just 17 Iowans to vote for Buddy Roemer in the Iowa caucuses. Fischer was a volunteer for Roemer in New Hampshire. Audio clips were taken from interviews with Roemer...

(The following is an excerpt from an article I recently wrote on the nature of democratic participation in Clinton, Iowa, including the strength of the presidential primary campaigns there.)

And so, sitting in the passenger seat in Clinton, Iowa, overlooking the calm of Lake Clinton, the widest point on...

A friend of mine served two tours of duty in Iraq. When WikiLeaks released its Apache attack video one year ago, he expressed surprise at the attention it received. Before his second deployment, he had spent hours watching recordings of IEDs exploding in and around American military convoys....

14 Chicago wards hosted an aldermanic runoff on Tuesday, April 5th, determining close to a third of the City Council's composition. On average, voter turnout in these races was down 32.8 percent from February levels, according to official statistics from the Board of Elections. This was a greater decrease than...

The Democratic members of Wisconsin's state senate made the wrong decision when they elected to leave the capitol ten days ago. They are using procedural obstructionism in an anti-democratic way, preventing the majority party from enacting its legislative agenda, much as Republicans in Washington have abused the filibuster to nearly...

Voter turnout on Tuesday was higher than in the two previous Chicago elections, but the increase was modest given the absence of an incumbent in the mayor's race for the first time in 22 years. Forty-two percent of registered voters cast ballots, compared with 33 percent in 2007 and 34...

In recent days, I've shared my thoughts concerning the flaws in the Delaware Senate debate between Christine O'Donnell and Chris Coons, as well as a reflection on the lack of serious, sustained discourse in our national politics.

Today, I wanted to discuss the ways in...

"Leadership isn't just legislation," President Obama told 60 Minutes this week. "It's a matter of persuading people, and giving them confidence, and bringing them together, and setting a tone, and making an argument that people can understand. And I think that we haven't always been successful at that,...

As the admittedly selective nature of the following thoughts will show, I can hardly claim to understand the complete picture of the political and policy options confronting our country. But that's why I wrote this: because I don't think I'm alone.

After all elections, a strong desire exists to...

The video below outlines a few critiques of the recent Delaware Senate debate. It's just one person's opinion, of course, but I hope it sparks a conversation concerning how we could make political debates in America more useful.

Specifically, this video focuses on:

1) The structure of the...

On August 4th, the day of President Obama's 49th birthday, a group of nine Chicago residents met in a small cafe to discuss what they referred to as "the Afghanistan problem."

"This war that's been going on for nine years, we all feel frustrated by it," said David Summerhays...