Outside the Beltway

Paul Manafort walked into court yesterday facing the possibility of 20 years in prison. He came away with a much better outcome.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan continues to sound like someone seriously considering running against Donald Trump.

Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld is preparing for a primary challenge against Donald Trump. He won’t win, but he could still have an impact.

The former #2 official at the FBI is trying to sell a book.

A reading recommendation.

Looking ahead, the political landscape does not look well for the President.

Could Maryland Governor Larry Hogan be just the kind of Republican to challenge Trump in 2020?

A nation says farewell to a war hero, public servant, former President, and great American.

George H.W. Bush,, who served his nation as a warrior, Congressman, Ambassador, Vice-President, and President, has died at the age of 94.

In the end, the race between Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy was not even close.

It would be a rather quixotic effort, but Jeff Flake isn’t ruling out challenging the President for the Republican nomination in 2020.

Is political satire even possible in the age of Trump?

The Kavanaugh fight is just another indicator of our national divide.

We should take Congressional officers out of the line of succession.

Former Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty failed in his comeback effort last night, confirming yet again that the GOP is now the Trump Party.

Paul Laxalt, the former Nevada Senator who was one of President Reagan’s closest confidantes outside the White House, has died at 96.

Seemingly out of nowhere yesterday, the Commander-in-Chief ordered the Pentagon to create a fifth service.

Earlier this week, the Illinois legislature ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. What’s unclear is if this act has any meaning at all.

It’s been 441 days since Donald Trump held a full-fledged Presidential press conference. Does anyone care?

President Trump’s on-again, off-again visit to Great Britain appears to be on again.

The campaign-agnostic political science models predicted a toss-up in 2016 and again in 2020.

Donald Trump is wildly unpopular in the United Kingdom, and that’s apparently causing him to eschew visiting the United States’s most important ally.

One year after his Inauguration, Donald Trump is the most unpopular new President since the invention of modern polling. However, his numbers are generally the same that they’ve been for some time now.

There’s something in the water up at Harvard……

President Trump delivered a wholly inappropriate political speech to the Boy Scout Jamboree, but that should surprise nobody.

Donald Trump is unlikely to ever be a popular President, but that may not matter.

Donald Trump is the most unpopular incoming President in more than eighty years.

In the immortal words of Warren Zevon, “Send lawyers, gun, and money. The shit has hit the fan.”

Delegating the morning briefing to advisors isn’t actually that unusual.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the election is “over,” because it isn’t.

Not surprisingly, Latino voters are heavily turned off by Donald Trump and seemingly quite eager to vote against him in the fall.

A revered Republican foreign policy guru has endorsed the Democratic nominee for president.

In an unprecedented move that reeks of desperation, Ted Cruz is naming Carly Fiorina as his running mate before the primary process has even ended.

Ted Cruz pulled off a win in Wisconsin, giving some hope to the “Stop Trump” crowd.

Chris Christie has gotten the endorsement of the biggest newspaper in New Hampshire, but it’s not clear that this will have any impact on the race.

To listen to many of the Republican candidates for President, it would appear that the lights have been turned out on Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

My latest for The National Interest, “Obama’s Paris Blunder: Part of a Much Bigger Problem,” has posted.

The Obama Administration took some fire yesterday for recent Ambassadorial Appointments, but the President’s record has been consistent with those of his recent predecessors.

The next President will have a profound ability to shape the future of the Supreme Court, but that is unlikely to be the most important issue on voters minds in 2016.

Newly released documents reveal that Henry Kissinger wanted to attack Cuba in the mid-1970s.

Some have argued that there is an historical bias against political parties holding on to the White House for more than two terms. As with most commonly held ideas, that simply isn’t true.

Even with the passage of time, Watergate remains a singularly important event in American history

Perhaps some justice for the casualties in the War On Drugs

Our tax system is so complicated that whether we’re filing our returns correctly is a known unknown.

The Second Amendment isn’t broken, and you don’t fix things that aren’t broken.

Americans are skeptical about getting involved in the Ukraine crisis. This isn’t a surprise.

Tonight, the American political system stops to engage in the biggest waste of time ever invented.

The news that Obama aides discussed a change to the 2012 ticket is part of the latest Halperin/Heilemann campaign history.

Divided government is the worst political system ever, except for all the others.