Outside the Beltway

The front page of Sunday’s NYT profiled Valerie Jarrett, the power behind the throne at the Obama White House.

The Obama campaign clearly does not want Americans to consider whether they are better off now than they were four years ago.

Lindsey Graham: “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

Jeb Bush continues to speak the truth on the GOP’s position on immigration issues. Sadly, his fellow Republicans aren’t listening.

It’s official.

The political convention we know is a 19th Century relic. It’s time to modernize it and make it a lot shorter.

Mark Levin provides the latest example.

Brookings Institute scholar William Galston says election night might end early this year even if the race remains tight.

To much fanfare, President Obama announced a shift in Afghan War policy in December 2009. There’s little evidence it’s worked.

One of these men is going to his party’s convention, the other is not. The reason why is rather obvious.

The quadrennial political conventions have become, long, boring, tedious, and largely predetermined. It’s time to shake things up by making them a lot shorter.

We have met the enemy, and it’s most likely us.

Dan Balz summarizes what has been “A most poisonous campaign” and is likely to get much worse before it gets over.

Yesterday it became clear that the Presidential campaign is headed into the mud.

There’s a large group of people out there that like the President, but they’re probably not going to vote.

Victor Davis Hanson thinks President Obama plans to win the back the White House by alienating the white man.

There’s little evidence that Vice-Presidential picks have as big an impact on elections as pundits seem to think.

There is much to critique in Washington, but the nexus of the governance problem at the moment is the GOP.

For the first time in 80 years, there are no veterans on the major party Presidential tickets.

The recent call by many on the right for Mitt Romney to select Paul Ryan as his running mate is puzzling.

Once again, people are demanding to see Barack Obama’s college transcripts for no good reason.

Mitt Romney faces an uphill battle in trying to get to that magic number of 270 Electoral Votes.

Mitt Romney is no more of a wimp than George H.W. Bush or John Kerry.

My latest for World Policy Review, “Oversight or Not, Drones Are Here to Stay,” has posted.

Don’t look for an effort to enact new gun laws in the wake of the Aurora shootings.

Antonin Scalia says “The only question in Bush v. Gore was whether the presidency would be decided by the Florida Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court.”

Virginia could be the state that decides who controls the United States Government.

While the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United has been blamed for the massive increase in money in this year’s campaign, it really wasn’t the culprit.

By failing to respond adequately, Mitt Romney is letting his opponent define him for the voters. That could hurt him greatly in November.

Mitt Romney’s intransigence over releasing more tax returns is politically stupid.

Mitt Romney’s campaign is mishandling their response to the Bain story, and hurting the candidate in the process.

John Boehner speaks an inconvenient, for Mitt Romney at least, truth.

If the GOP wins in November, there will be very few actual barriers in the way if they really want to repeal the PPACA.

Electing Romney hardly means repeal of the PPACA, even if he will make it sound that way.

The Republican strategy on health care in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision needs some tweaking.