How low can he go?

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Doing anything to pass something

Be careful what you vote for -- you just might get it

Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009

Former President Bill Clinton visited Capitol Hill recently to deliver a pep talk to Senate Democrats. "It's not important to be perfect here. It's important to act, to move, to start the ball rolling," he reportedly told senators. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel sounded a similar theme in an interview with the New York Times. "I'm sure there are a lot of people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute ... who will tell you what the ideal plan is. Great, fascinating. You have the art of the possible measured against the ideal."

The fall of uplift

Obama's moral leadership balloon crashes

Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009

The world thinks better of the United States, we are told, because President Obama is in the White House. Maybe the world is wrong.

A hard act to follow

Can Obama rise to Harding's level?

Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009

Picture this: It is midnight on Nov. 4, 2009. The previous day's elections in Virginia, New York's 23rd Congressional District and New Jersey have all been won by Republicans. Health reform is stalled. The latest employment numbers are still dismaying. President Obama cannot sleep. He paces the halls of the White House and comes upon a portrait of President Warren G. Harding. Since Mr. Obama is nothing if not a receptacle of received understanding, he would probably snort, "Harding! What a disaster he was! Cronyism. Laissez-faire economics. Corruption. Incompetence."

Irreplaceable Irving

Kristol was one of a kind

Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009

Irving Kristol, who passed away last week at the age of 89, was like everyone's favorite uncle - if the uncle were a transformative intellectual of empyrean stature. He was both a warm and approachable human being and a penetrating social critic. He was, in a very American way, a practical man, and his approach to ideas was always firmly and refreshingly reality-based.

Democrats failed on digital divide, too

They have a long history of problematic 'solutions'

Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009

The Democrats have never seen a problem they didn't think could be fixed with a government program. And they sometimes discern crises crying out for government solutions where there are none.

Remembering his darker side

The vagaries of his more decent attributes

Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009

The death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, we are being told, should strengthen our resolve to act in a bipartisan fashion. Many of the tributes, from former presidents and Republican colleagues, have stressed the late senator's willingness to find "common ground." Well, since ancient Rome, we've been exhorted not to speak ill of the dead. But neither should we completely disfigure the truth.

Outsiders plot their own 'coup'

Campaign to force a would-be strongman back into office

Saturday, July 4, 2009

News that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was removed from his post and spirited out of the country by the Honduran military elicited official condemnations from the governments of France, Ecuador, Chile, Spain and Argentina as well as protests from the Organization of American States and the United Nations. The U.S. State Department called the events an "attempted coup," and demanded Mr. Zelaya be returned to power ito facilitate the "restoration of democratic order."

CHAREN: Jack Kemp, RIP

A passionate advocate of opportunity for all

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Jack Kemp was supposed to read this column. A dinner in his honor was scheduled for next week, and I had timed the column to appear just prior. The last his friends had heard, he was improving. Now it's too late.

CHAREN: An ugly handshake

Holding onto America-hater Hugo Chavez

Saturday, April 25, 2009

In one photo, President Obama grins as he clasps Hugo Chavez by the hand. In another, he warmly grasps the Venezuelan president by the shoulder. Those pictures disgusted several members of Congress. Some said so on national television.