Michael J. O'Neil

What impact will Obama's endorsement of gay marriage have on the presidential election?

I am tempted to respond the way Chou En-lai did when he was asked what he thought was the impact of the French Revolution: "Too early to say."

In simplistic terms, however, there are several basic relevant...

The 2012 campaign for the Republican nomination for president has provided a clear indication of the shape of post-Citizens United politics in America.

Just take a look at what has happened in the campaign thus far:

Mitt Romney emerged as an early frontrunner. A series of candidates then sequentially emerged...

Three things will ensure the victory in almost any election. Indeed, the first two of these are often sufficient. With the third, however, victory is a lock cinch:

1. One side launches a substantial negative campaign defining his opponent to the voters.
2. The opposing candidate does not respond.
3. The opposing candidate...

When I wrote this in the Huffington Post last week, there was but a single presidential poll after February 7, when Santorum began his dramatic national surge in the polls after a triple victory night. Unlike the January polls in which Santorum barely registered, this poll showed a...

With simultaneous victories in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, Rick Santorum's campaign has created serious doubt about the inevitability of Mitt Romney's nomination.

This trifecta gave his candidacy instant credibility. As a result, his poll numbers shot up overnight. Nationally, he went from almost 20 points behind Romney prior to...

The recently appointed congressional Super Committee has a unique opportunity to accomplish something that normal legislative processes would almost certainly preclude. Legislation normally goes through a labyrinth process weaving through obscure committees where it can be amended almost invisibly at the request of lobbyists acting largely out of public view....

A few days ago, I watched the Joplin Memorial Ceremony attended by President Obama, the governor of Missouri and a host of others. Something has stuck in my craw since viewing that ceremony. Someone -- I believe it was Governor Nixon -- made an impassioned reference to "Good Samaritans," and...

Tax Day. Unless you are an anarchist, you recognize that taxes are a necessary evil. Most discussions about reforming the tax code however, conflate two entirely separate issues:

1. The amount of taxes we pay, and
2. What it is that we tax.

For purposes of this essay, I propose...

Many thousands of Egyptians, fed up with 30 years of oppressive rule, successfully called for Mubarak's resignation. Their rhetoric is all about Democracy. If their focus remains only on Mubarak, however, they're unlikely to end up with anything resembling real democracy. It is easy for an oppressed group to see...

I'd love a tax break and pay 35 percent instead of 39 percent on that last dollar of income. Why not? I pay a lot in taxes. And besides, I work hard.

Here's why.

The Federal Government takes in (at current rates), about $2.4 trillion. That is a lot....

As the in decade of the 1970s was ending a one-time Saturday Night Live comic deadpanned an ongoing routine that he introduced as follows:

Well, the "me" decade is almost over, and good riddance, and far as I'm concerned. The 70's were simply 10 years of people thinking of...

OK, the Republicans won big in a "wave" election. What happens next? I have two scenarios

The Optimistic View

Both parties recognize that they have to compromise in some matters of policy. There are two obvious ones from which each side could gain something.

Health Care. ...

I have had my 2010 election ballot for almost a month now. I found most of the choices to be fairly easy. I have agonized, however, about one particular choice. I'd like to share my thinking with you, not to urge you to vote one way or another, but to...

Oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. And we are unable to even agree on the rate of gush. In September of 2009, the nation's economy seemed poised to fall off a cliff. In each case, public attention focused on the government's immediate response to the respective crisis. In...

As a resident of Arizona, and observer of Arizona's political scene for the last 30 years, I have followed the national furor about the Arizona immigration law with great interest. There are a number of things about this law, and the way it came to be, that have not all...

Much of the country is angry about multimillion dollar bonuses paid out to senior executives at Wall Street firms that accepted bailout funds from the federal government.

This is part of a broader discontentment about the extent to which the federal response to a very real financial crisis has...

Martha Coakley may have run a poor campaign, but she was also saddled with having to defend a healthcare plan that is poorly understood by the public and whose adherents have failed to effectively articulate its core aspects and benefits.

This weekend, I was asked to participate in a...

I decided to write a letter to an old friend from Crabapple Cove, Maine. With almost anybody else, I would send an email, but he's a geezer whom I am fairly certain is computer illiterate. So I hand-wrote a three page letter, and I considered how to send it. For...

In the course of our ongoing national debate about health care, it is instructive to observe the words that are used -- and the words that are avoided -- to describe different models of healthcare. Consider:

Socialist Health Care System. This is the model under which the government pays...

I was thrilled to see the President invite Sgt. Crowley and Professor Gates to the White House for a beer.

While this conclave of three Alpha Males could become the temporary testosterone capital of the world, I have genuine optimism for what may transpire. The more I consider who...