The American Prospect

The U.S.-Israeli relationship may well be built to last, but in AIPAC's (and McCain's) world it's not built to love, but rather to wage war. As Daniel Levy put it, McCain offered "the same vision of perpetual warfare served up by Bush ... . What was most remarkable though was how shallow and devoid of context McCain's understanding of the region proved to be. He is indeed positioning himself as the true inheritor of the neoconservative mantle." LINK

"Saving our future requires tough choices today" may be a banal sentiment, but it's not an easy one to challenge. That is the headline on the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour," a slide show created by David M. Walker, formerly head of the Government Accountability Office. In hopes that it will be to the long-term budget deficit what Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" slide show has been to climate change, Pete Peterson has set aside a billion dollars out of his recent windfall from the Blackstone Group to fund Walker's national tour and like endeavors.

There are two points at which a political party or an ideological faction can find its voice and begin to claim power. One, of course, is when it is at the height of confidence and electoral success, like Ronald Reagan's conservatives in 1981. The other is when it has hit bottom, when there's nothing more to lose, no constituencies to feed, no illusion that anything in the current strategy is working, no excuse for caution.

Ever since "authenticity" became the quality we most value in our politicians, its converse, "hypocrisy," has been the political vice of which we are most conscious. Thus, those who have noticed that Sen. John McCain enjoys a reputation as a "maverick" who "stands up to special interests" while leading a campaign that is operated and funded entirely by lobbyists have seen this as a contradiction. Is McCain a hypocrite, or perhaps a divided soul, with the angelic maverick voice of reform perched on one shoulder and a diabolical little influence-peddler on the other?

Whether he becomes president this year, sometime in the future, or never, Barack Obama will surely stand as a distinctive and surprising figure in our political history. Yet as the lens pulls back, individuals who at first seem uniquely transformative almost always come to be seen, more modestly, as reflections of their times, as products of trends and choices not of their own making.

Darth Vader makes a better villain than Mr. Magoo. A sinister mastermind is not only more dramatic than a myopic bumbler but more reassuring, because a universe controlled by a malevolent intelligence is at least controlled by intelligence.

Listen carefully when a new president is inaugurated next January for the sigh of relief coming from most of those Middle Easterners whom President Bush embraced as allies. Conversely, Bush’s rivals in the region are likely to tune in to the occasion in a disgruntled mood. For them the Bush years have been good for business. The menu of grievances on which they’ve fed has become a veritable feast.

"The most troublesome task of a reform President," wrote Henry Adams, is "bringing the Senate back to decency." Adams was writing about the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, which began with an Obamaesque promise of national reconciliation and reform but was dragged into scandal by the senatorial kleptocrats of the day.

The Almanac of American Politics is not the only brick-heavy biennial profile of members of Congress, their districts, and their voting records. Congressional Quarterly's competing volume, Politics in America, has its merits, but the Almanac has always been what reporters scan before interviewing a member of Congress. The reason is simple: Any such book is written by committee, but the Almanac reads like it's not. Its distinctive selling point is an attitude and voice.

According to a widely held theory of American politics, Democrats and liberals are doomed whenever foreign policy and national security are the primary concerns of voters. After all, Bill Clinton -- the only two-term Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt -- won his elections at a time when foreign policy and national security mattered less than at any time since the 1930s. As soon as the world crashed back into our lives on September 11, 2001, Republicans regained dominance.