Call it the "audacity of governing." It's time for battle. If Obama cares about the country as much as he says, and believes in his ideas as much as he professes, he will pull out all the tools at his disposal.

So much for reconciliation -- apparently, when the GOP uses it, it's a legitimate legislative tool, but the Democrats refuse to touch the one potent weapon at hand.

It's March 16, 1965. We have a Democratic President. We have large Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. It's long been part of the progressive and liberal platform...

David Broder simply doesn't understand the way that today's Senate operates, Jim Manley concluded on Wednesday. Manley, the senior communications advi...

Over the last few months, a number of prominent political columnists have pointed to historian and social critic Richard Hofstadter to explain what is happening to the Republican Party. Here's why they shouldn't.

The opt-out is a hard blow to the public option, and potentially a crippling one. When a solution sounds too good to be true -- we can compromise and still get everything we want! -- it probably is.

On Friday night, Bill Moyers played clips from the Lyndon B. Johnson tapes on his PBS television show. Moyers drew correlations between the factors f...

We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. But that's not how things work at the top, especially where "national security" is concerned.

General McChrystal's recommendation for more troops and material has a distinctly Westmorelandian flavor to it. If approved, it could create an additional $40 to$80 billion per annum in war costs.

Progressives can be as bad as teabaggers, with their chronic dissatisfaction, ideological disdain for compromise, and limited understanding of historical precedent.

No matter what healthcare bill passes, it is not going to remain static. It is going to be revisited again and again over the next few decades. That's how lawmaking works.

Robert S. Erikson is a professor of political science at Columbia University. If the health care reform bill finally passes Congress and is signed in...

The GOP cannot even claim credit for bringing the bills to the middle of the road -- the Democrats are hogging all of it. And that is a good thing, despite what some may think.

When it comes to Obama lining up votes from recalcitrant members of his own party, LBJ's brawling, Southern style of trench politics is the one best suited for the current health care reform challenge.