In Washington, I'm often asked how many seats Republicans will pick up in the House and whether they'll win a majority in the Senate. But I'm seldom asked anything about the 37 races for governor that will be decided next month (except for Georgia, which will have a runoff if no candidate tops 50 percent).
My subject today is the civil war raging in one of our great political parties, as highlighted in recent primary elections.
"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases."
When you spot the word "triage" in a political news story, you know someone is in trouble.
Imagine that you have a product whose price tag for decades rises faster than inflation. But people keep buying it because they're told that it will make them wealthier in the long run. Then, suddenly, they find it doesn't. Prices fall sharply, bankruptcies ensue, great institutions disappear.
Some of the most important things in history are things that didn't happen -- even though just about everyone thought they would.
Every 10 years, it's time for reapportionment and redistricting. The framers of the Constitution created the first regularly scheduled national census and required, for the first time that I am aware, that representation in a legislature be apportioned according to population.
Like many Democrats over the past 40 years, Barack Obama has hoped that his association with unpopular liberal positions on cultural issues would be outweighed by pushing economic policies intended to benefit the ordinary person.
When I drive from downtown Washington to Reagan National Airport, I often encounter delays on the George Washington Parkway due to construction of a small bridge over an inlet of the Potomac.
The deaths this week of two political Old Bulls has inspired some harsh commentary.
"The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated." Those were the carefully chosen words of the Federal Reserve Board after its meeting Tuesday. Translation into English: We wuz wrong.
Republicans are starting to think about how to answer the Robert Redford question.
Everybody, even White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, agrees that Republicans are going to pick up seats in the House and Senate elections this year. The disagreement is about how many.
Let's put government on a diet. That's what voters seem to be saying in response to the Barack Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government.
Democratic spin doctors have set out how their side is going to hold onto a majority in the House. They'll capture four at-risk Republican seats, hold half of the next 30 or so Democratic at-risk seats, and avoid significant losses on target seats lower on the list.
Grass somehow manages to grow up through small cracks in the sidewalk. Similarly, the American private sector somehow seems to be exerting itself despite the vast expansion of government by the Barack Obama administration and congressional Democrats.
Many years ago, I was privileged to attend a dinner with James Rowe, one of the "passion for anonymity" young aides to Franklin Roosevelt, original author of the winning strategy for Harry Truman's 1948 campaign and close confidante of then-President Lyndon Johnson.
One of the interesting things about the Obama administration is the strange dominance of labor unions. Yes, Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders do owe the unions something: Unions gave $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle, and they expect to get something in return.
Home mortgage interest rates are the lowest in history, but house sales are plunging. Banks can make money easily because of the Federal Reserve's low interest rates, but they're not making many loans. Major corporations are sitting on something like $2 trillion in cash, but they're not investing.
In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell wrote an opinion in the Bakke case asserting that the need for diversity could justify racial preferences in university admissions. No other justice joined this opinion, but because the other justices were split 4-4, Powell's opinion decided the case, and in time his argument has been embraced by a majority of the court. A regrettable result, in my view, but a consequential one.
