I'm frustrated. Everyone is talking about the loss of jobs from the recession and no one pays attention to the loss of jobs from off-shoring. Everyone's attention is directed to the Iraq War and the Afghan War and no one pays attention to the Trade War.

After World War II,...

We learned after ten years and 58,000 dead in Vietnam that you can't force feed democracy. And now corrupt foreigners can't force feed a corrupt democracy in Afghanistan. After eight years and 833 dead in Afghanistan, the United States mission boils down to that described in a New York Times...

The perfect desertion is forming to take the nation down. The politics of the President and the Congress, influenced by the politics of the financial community, brews into the perfect desertion. The people don't realize it or else they would force change. They know something is wrong. But their belief...

Washington is a hard learner. It took ten years and cost 58,000 lives in Vietnam to learn that you couldn't build and destroy or secure the country and institute democracy at the same time. Now we insist on trying it in Afghanistan. A second election won't do it. As Secretary...

In the Spanish Civil War of 1936, there developed within the ranks of the Spanish forces troops favorable to the enemy -- and this enemy within was called a Fifth Column. Unfortunately, in the trade war today there is a Fifth Column leading the American forces.

After World War II,...

Let's go back to 9/11 - the worst of terrorism. Osama bin Laden told us why. He said the U.S. support for Israel was a crusade or holy war against Islam. Osama made so much trouble in his native Saudi Arabia that he was expelled to Sudan. And making trouble...

Barack Obama has done a lot of contentious things since becoming President. But getting Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense is one thing that has received universal acclaim. Gates' reaction over the weekend to withdraw from Afghanistan shows the best of our leadership has yet to understand the...

In his imposition of tariffs on imported tires from China, President Obama stated: "We are not going to see a trade war." We have been in a trade war since World War II, when Japan closed its domestic market, subsidized its manufacture, and sold its exports at cost, making up...

During the war in Vietnam, Peter, Paul and Mary sang a song that asked the question: "When will they ever learn?" Going to Vietnam in 1966, I was briefed by Cy Vance, Deputy Secretary of Defense. Vance cautioned that General Westmoreland would be asking for more troops. We were trying...

From time to time, I am asked the difference between being Governor and Senator. Senators and Congressmen are constant campaigners. Governors are doers. Coming to the Congress, Senators have taken a poll; they know the issues, and the first thing a pollster will tell you is don't split or divide...

One would think by now that we had learned the lesson of Vietnam: i.e., is that you couldn't build and destroy at the same time. We'd come by day with gunships and flamethrowers and clear the Viet Cong from the village and then back to camp at night. Charlie would...

Henry Ford developed the middle class in America by doubling the minimum wage, providing health care and retirement benefits for his employees. We in public service trusted business to look out for the economy. After all, business knew how best to protect its investment and the nation's economy. As General...

The administration now says it underestimated the severity of the economic downturn. But the truth is it overestimated the effect of stimulation. In the Bush eight-year term, we increased the debt or stimulated the economy $5 trillion. In the same period, household debt increased or stimulated the economy an additional...

Campaigning is usually good for government. And government is good for the campaign. But the needs of the campaign sometimes conflict with the needs of the country and government -- which prevents good government. That's the situation in Washington today. We need desperately to stop the offshoring of jobs, production,...

Politics is like cancer - if you don't catch it in time, you don't have a chance. If the budget deficits and deficits in jobs from offshoring are not caught now, by 2012 we'll give it back to the Republicans.

After subprime mortgages, derivatives, and credit default swaps, we should...

Now we are in real trouble. We've lost the markets for textiles, cameras, radios, TVs, steel, electronics, computers, communications equipment, machine tools, advance technology, robots, steppers, etc. The little that we produce has now been bought up by foreigners. Big Blue, IBM and the Hummer to China; Westinghouse Nuclear and...

The one lesson I learned in fifty-two years of public service was as de Tocqueville said: "America is good." All elements of our society support the nation's economy, except Wall Street and its entities, such as the big banks, brokerage houses, etc.; a/k/a the financial leadership. It is not interested...

This week's Toles cartoon has President Obama looking at a pile of sand and talking to the U.S. in the first frame with the heading: "We're not going to build a new economy on this same pile of sand." The next frame of the cartoon shows President Obama talking to...

Our trouble is that the agents of change - Obama, Axelrod and Gibbs - have changed to Washington's conventional wisdom:

-- On Afghanistan: The conventional wisdom is to train Afghans to defend Afghanistan from the Taliban so that we can withdraw. We spent ten years trying to train the...

"Free trade" means different things to different people. To economists in the United States, "free trade" means an open market where goods are unfettered or unprotected by tariffs, quotas or subsidies. To one of John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, Henry Clay, "free trade" was pure fantasy. Clay thought "free...