Biography
Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has reported on national and international issues from Washington for more ...
McManus: Obama's call to arms
January 22, 2013
On the eve of Inauguration Day, White House political strategist David Plouffe promised that President Obama's inaugural address would include a call for bipartisan cooperation.
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McManus: Obama, Version 2.0
January 19, 2013
Four years ago, on a bright, cold Jan. 20, Barack Obama took his first oath of office as president and proclaimed a new post-partisan era. "The stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply," the Obama of 2009 said.
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McManus: For Democrats, unity and its pitfalls
January 16, 2013
It's hard to recognize the Democratic Party these days. In recent decades, it's been a divided, brawling tribe. But this year, Democrats are one big, happy family.
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McManus: Confronting Iran -- again
January 13, 2013
Here's a prediction I don't think I'll have to apologize for at the end of the year: Some time in the coming months, probably this spring, there will be another crisis over Iran's nuclear program.
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McManus: The GOP looks inward
January 9, 2013
No political party enjoys losing an election, but a healthy party reacts to defeat — after a suitable period of grieving — by trying to figure out what went wrong.
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McManus: The worst job in Congress
January 6, 2013
Spare a little sympathy, if you can, for John A. Boehner of Ohio, speaker of the House of Representatives.
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McManus: The perils of political punditry
January 1, 2013
Back in 2011, at the dawn of a long presidential campaign, I established a fine baseline for my credentials as a political prognosticator: I told readers that Mitt Romney's strongest challengers for the Republican nomination would be Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
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McManus: After Benghazi, reassessing risk
December 23, 2012
Soon — perhaps very soon — the Syrian government of Bashar Assad will fall. On that day, and for months after, Damascus will probably be a disorderly and dangerous place, a risky place for American diplomats to be.
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McManus: Newtown, politics and gun control
December 19, 2012
If you're thinking that last week's tragedy in Newtown, Conn., makes it likely that Congress will soon pass stricter federal gun laws, remember this: People thought the same thing in 2011, after a gunman shot into a Tucson crowd, killing six and injuring others, including Gabrielle Giffords, one of the House of Representatives' own members.
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McManus: Susan Rice, done in by the 'fiscal cliff'
December 16, 2012
It's no secret that Senate Republicans, led by John McCain, took aim at Susan Rice. The only question is, why?
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McManus: Will it be Clinton? Cuomo? Warren?
December 12, 2012
Shortly after the 1988 presidential election, pollsters asked Democrats whom they favored to be their party's nominee in 1992. The strongest candidates were Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York. The governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, didn't even register.
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McManus: A call to arms for Syria's rebels
December 9, 2012
A new word defines the debate over Syria in Washington: endgame. Policymakers expect the regime in Damascus to fall soon, and their focus has shifted to what happens then.
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McManus: Your guide to the 'fiscal cliff'
December 5, 2012
Are we about to go over a fiscal cliff? It's looking more likely, but it may not be as alarming as it sounds.
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McManus: Doubts about drones
December 2, 2012
When President Obama came to office in 2009, it didn't take his new administration long to settle on a favorite anti-terrorist tactic: drone strikes. In his first three years in office, the number of drone strikes against targets in Pakistan and Yemen increased dramatically, from 35 in 2008 to 121 in 2010, before dropping back to 79 so far this year, according to the Long War Journal, a website that has attempted to keep track of reported strikes.
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McManus: What would Lincoln do?
November 28, 2012
In the rest of the country, it may be just another movie, but in Washington, Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" has become a political Rorschach test.
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McManus: Petraeus, the comeback general
November 25, 2012
Gen. David H. Petraeus, long the most famous overachiever in the U.S. Army, is already on his way to a new career distinction: breaking the land speed record for rehabilitation from a scandal.
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McManus: Grover Norquist the has-been
November 21, 2012
Grover Norquist is losing his grip.
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McManus: The death of the moderate Republican
November 18, 2012
Republicans just lost eight seats in the House. But if you'd wandered into the House of Representatives last week without reading the election returns, you might have concluded that the GOP won big on Nov. 6.
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McManus: Reshuffling Obama's Cabinet
November 14, 2012
"Second terms are hard work," a veteran of the Bill Clinton White House told me Tuesday. "It's a good idea to get some fresh blood in there."
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McManus: Wielding wedge issues
November 11, 2012
Once upon a time in American politics, there were things called "wedge issues," and they generally terrified Democrats. They were mostly social and cultural issues: abortion, feminism, gay rights, illegal immigration and race. Conservatives wielded them to divide working-class Democrats. Wedge issues helped elect Ronald Reagan to the presidency and dozens of other Republicans to Congress.
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McManus: Obama's second act
November 7, 2012
Second terms have rarely been kind to American presidents.
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McManus: The likely winner -- gridlock
November 4, 2012
After a year of campaign sound and fury, we're about to hold an election that will probably fail to usher in the one thing voters of all stripes would like to see: an end to the partisan gridlock in Congress.
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McManus: Ohio's deluge of spin
October 31, 2012
Be glad you don't live in Ohio. It's a fine old state with pretty towns, friendly people and a fairly healthy economy. But over the last six months, its citizens have endured a volume of political advertising unequaled in the history of Western civilization.
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McManus: The Ohio presidential equation
October 28, 2012
If there's a ground zero in this presidential campaign, it might just be the parking lot of a downscale shopping center in North Columbus, Ohio, halfway between Papa John's Pizza and Payless Shoes.
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McManus: A kinder, gentler Romney
October 23, 2012
It's a safe bet that President Obama misses the old Mitt Romney — the one who described himself as "severely conservative."
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McManus: Applying the 'ground game'
October 21, 2012
Outside the old red-brick City Hall in Manassas, Va., Dorothy Cummings was beaming. She had finally persuaded her son Charles to register to vote — and now she was marching him into the registrar's office to make sure he got it done.
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McManus: Who wins a tied debate?
October 17, 2012
When two presidential candidates battle roughly to a tie in a debate, is there a winner?
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McManus: What the undecided voters want
October 14, 2012
What do undecided voters want from presidential candidates, anyway?
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McManus: Romney's big bounce
October 10, 2012
Last week's debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney was an even bigger win for Romney than it appeared at the time. That's what the polls are telling us.
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McManus: Moderate Mitt? Don't count on it
October 7, 2012
Who is the real Romney?
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McManus: Real presidential debate is possible
October 3, 2012
There are two ways that Wednesday's debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, could change the course of the presidential campaign.
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McManus: The prophets of budget balancing
September 30, 2012
Here's one thing the two presidential candidates agree on: the federal government's current fiscal course will lead to disaster.
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McManus: A Rove 'money bomb'?
September 26, 2012
Here's a short list of Democrats who secretly hope Mitt Romney gets his presidential campaign turned around fast and gives President Obama a run for his money: Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic Senate candidate in North Dakota; Jon Tester, the Democratic senator from Montana; and Rep. Shelley Berkley, the Democratic Senate candidate in Nevada.
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What the presidential polls show
September 22, 2012
Only six weeks to go in the presidential campaign, and the public opinion surveys have developed a case of the jitters. Last week, one respected poll reported that President Obama had opened an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney, but another reported that the race was dead even. Other surveys were scattered in between. What's a poor voter supposed to believe?
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McManus: Are businessmen better presidents?
September 19, 2012
It's one of Mitt Romney's favorite lines: America needs a businessman in the White House. It's "a basic qualification" for the job, he said in his speech at the Republican convention last month, "one that's essential to [the] task."
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McManus: Romney vs. Obama on foreign policy
September 16, 2012
In a presidential campaign dominated by voters' unhappiness with the economy, it took a tragedy — the killing of a U.S. ambassador by Libyan extremists — to prompt a real debate on foreign policy.
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McManus: Who's still undecided?
September 12, 2012
Do you know how you'll vote in November's presidential election?
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McManus: Conventions without compromise
September 8, 2012
Attending two political conventions back to back is like visiting two parallel universes: one conservative, one liberal; one overwhelmingly white, the other emphatically multiculti; and each one strangely confident that its candidate is on a steady course to victory.
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McManus: Clinton's common touch
September 5, 2012
There's something delicious about Bill Clinton being asked to serve as the chief character witness for Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton, let's recall, was a very messy president. His meetings didn't start on time; his speeches didn't end on time. His biggest legislative project, healthcare reform, never passed (unlike Obama's). He made compromises with Republicans; he made Democratic liberals furious. He even got impeached (and ultimately acquitted) over sexual peccadilloes, though nobody seems to remember the details now.
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Between conventions, both sides still looking for a breakout moment
September 2, 2012
It's halftime in America, as Clint Eastwood once said.
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For Mitt Romney, the election hinges on the middle class
August 28, 2012
TAMPA, Fla. — The conventional wisdom is that this week's Republican National Convention needs to make Mitt Romney more "likable" — to replace his image as a frosty billionaire with the warmer (and, friends say, more accurate) picture of a family man, devout Mormon and private do-gooder.
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It's Medicare vs. the economy
August 26, 2012
ARCADE, N.Y. — Kathy Hochul is a young, first-term Democratic congresswoman fighting for her political life in a solidly Republican district outside Buffalo, N.Y. Unlike most of that liberal state, this is Romney country; a poll last week showed the GOP candidate ahead of President Obama in her district by a whopping 12 points.
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Gridlock likely in Washington no matter who wins presidential race
August 23, 2012
There are plenty of things not to like about this year's presidential campaign, including how nasty and negative a mud fight it's become, with both sides engaging in shameless distortion.
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McManus: In politics, accentuate the negative
July 29, 2012
When the Olympic Games began almost 30 centuries ago in ancient Greece, rulers of city-states proclaimed an "Olympic truce," a ban on warfare to allow athletes, poets and spectators to attend without getting speared.
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McManus: The NRA has won
July 25, 2012
Politicians haven't always been allergic to gun control, not even Republicans.
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McManus: The candidates play gotcha
July 22, 2012
There's no argument about one thing this election year: The biggest issue on Americans' minds is the economy and which presidential candidate could better help it grow. So why does what should be a serious policy debate sound so much like a schoolyard spat?
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McManus: All quiet on the war front
July 18, 2012
Here's an important fact you haven't heard much about in the presidential campaign: The armed forces of the United States are at war in at least four countries, and that number could increase any day.
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McManus: Attack-dog days of summer
July 15, 2012
The dog days of July were once a slow time in our presidential campaigns, a time when candidates could take vacations and voters could take a break. The party conventions were still a month or more away; aside from fundraising and backroom strategizing, there wasn't much to see.
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McManus: Campaign ads -- an American art form
July 11, 2012
Today's topic: the billions (yes, with a "b") that will be spent on advertising in this year's presidential and congressional campaigns, and what kind of messages that money is sending.
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McManus: Attack ad politics
July 8, 2012
In this pivotal election year, fellow citizens, I give you a chilling vision of two Americas.
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McManus: Obama's victory is now his challenge
July 1, 2012
"In my first term, we passed healthcare reform," President Obama joked this spring. "In my second term, I guess I'll pass it again."
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McManus: The Obama edge
June 28, 2012
On paper, June looked like a bad month for President Obama. It began with a gaffe, his lighthearted comment that "the private sector is doing fine." Then the Federal Reserve revised its growth forecast downward, making it clear that 8% unemployment is likely to linger past election day. Consumer confidence has sagged to a five-month low, and in one poll released this week, 61% of Americans said they think the country's on the wrong track.
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McManus: Romney's arithmetic problem
June 24, 2012
Here's an issue that hasn't been debated much in the presidential campaign but ought to be: How much should we spend on defense?
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McManus: Romney breaks the stained-glass ceiling
June 21, 2012
If Mitt Romney wins the presidential election this fall, he'll have Harry Reid partly to thank.
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McManus: An election referendum or a choice?
June 17, 2012
Is November's presidential election a referendum on President Obama's record or a choice between two different approaches to government? How voters answer that question could well determine the outcome.
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McManus: All pain, no gain in southern Europe
June 14, 2012
Milan, Italy — From the American side of the Atlantic, the debate over Europe's economic future often sounds like a bloodless, mind-numbing discussion of currency zones, bank recapitalization and interest rates. But in countries with fragile economies like Spain and Italy, it takes on real-life urgency.
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McManus: A campaign bombshell
May 20, 2012
The Supreme Court is about to toss a judicial bomb into the middle of the presidential campaign, and nobody knows what impact it will have.
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McManus: Americans Elect meets reality
May 17, 2012
What happens if you start a political party and nobody comes? Six months ago, a newfangled third party burst onto the scene, full of hope and promise. It was called Americans Elect, and it sought to give voters a choice many said they were looking for: "centrist" candidates who could break the partisan gridlock paralyzing Washington.
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McManus: Lies, damned lies and political advertising
May 13, 2012
The television commercial is designed to spark outrage. "Billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries," it intones. "The Obama administration admitted the truth — that $2.3 billion of tax credits went overseas, while millions of Americans can't find a job…. American taxpayers are paying to send their own jobs to foreign countries."
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McManus: Obama evolves on gay marriage
May 10, 2012
President Obama's announcement Wednesday that he was done "evolving" and now supports same-sex marriage was, in retrospect, inevitable. Vice President Joe Biden made it so Sunday, when he remarked almost casually that he had grown "comfortable" with gay marriage.
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McManus: Coming clean on drones
May 6, 2012
In recent weeks, a parade of top officials has given sober, underpublicized speeches explaining why President Obama not only considers "targeted killing" drone strikes against terrorists legal but has massively expanded their use, even approving a strike against a U.S. citizen, the New Mexico-born Al Qaeda preacher Anwar Awlaki, in Yemen last year.
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McManus: Bin Laden and ballots
May 3, 2012
We're far enough away from it now that we can probably all agree: It was a mistake for George W. Bushto land on that aircraft carrier in a flight suit to proclaim "Mission Accomplished." And not just because the war in Iraq was far from over at that point.
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McManus: Mitt Romney stays put
April 29, 2012
If you've been holding your breath to see whether Mitt Romney would pivot to the center now that it's a two-man race between him and President Obama, you can exhale; he won't.
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McManus: And Romney's veep choice is ...
April 26, 2012
The "Veepstakes" are on — but the smart money says they're already over.
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McManus: A smaller, smarter military
April 22, 2012
President Obama has called a halt to the decade-long rise in defense spending that began after Sept. 11, and has proposed shrinking the Army and Marine Corps by about 14%.
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McManus: The Iran squeeze
April 19, 2012
The Obama administration faces two dangers in its nuclear negotiations with Iran, which began in a burst of optimism last weekend after the two sides managed to get through a day and a half of talks without anyone walking out.
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McManus: The bottom line on taxes
April 15, 2012
On April 15, everyone's in favor of tax reform.
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McManus: Romney, the worst candidate?
April 12, 2012
In the spring of 1980, the race for the Republican presidential nomination got nasty. The front-runner, Ronald Reagan, said his main challenger,George H.W. Bush, wasn't a real conservative. Bush went on the attack, accusing Reagan of peddling "voodoo economics" and "a list of phony promises."
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McManus: A ticking clock on Syria
April 8, 2012
The interventionist liberals of the Obama administration were a doleful bunch last week. It was the 20th anniversary of the siege of Sarajevo, when a Bosnian Serb army battered a city full of civilians with artillery while the United States issued ineffective cries of alarm. The comparison with this year's massacres in Syria was painfully apt.
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McManus: Time for a presidential campaign experiment
April 5, 2012
We got our first real glimpse this week of how President Obama and his now-almost-certain Republican rival, Mitt Romney, intend to wage their campaigns in the lead-up to the general election.
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McManus: The nuclear countdown in Iran
April 1, 2012
Not long ago, an astute reader noted that it has been nearly two years since I wrote in a column that "most experts now estimate that Iran needs about 18 months to complete a nuclear device and a missile to carry it."
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McManus: Obama's 'tax' lapse
March 29, 2012
In 2009, President Obama was asked whether the individual mandate in his healthcare plan was really just a tax in disguise. "I absolutely reject that notion," he responded.
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McManus: Fuming about gas
March 25, 2012
When the price of gasoline rises, the supply of hot air expands.
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McManus: Don't close the GOP show
March 22, 2012
We in the mainstream media harbor a dirty little secret: Most of us are rooting for Rick Santorum. It's nothing personal, although Santorum is a reasonably appealing guy. And it's not ideological; most of us aren't yearning for Bible-based social conservatism to become the law of the land. It's worse than that. We're just hoping to see the gaudy spectacle of this primary campaign continue as long as possible.
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McManus: Will Romney be the GOP's Dukakis?
March 18, 2012
There's an old saying in Republican politics: Massachusetts produces only two exports — lobsters and liberals — and neither one travels well.
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McManus: A Plan C for Afghanistan
March 15, 2012
President Obama has long been criticized by Republicans for his purportedly inadequate zeal in pursuing the war in Afghanistan. He was criticized sharply from the right for his plan to draw down troops over three years; too fast, they said.
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McManus: No quit in these presidential candidates
March 8, 2012
Poor Mitt Romney. He won six of 10 states on Super Tuesday, including hotly contested Ohio. He lengthened his lead in the count of delegates who will actually choose the Republican presidential nominee. But he's still a long way from claiming victory.
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McManus: Israel's brinkmanship, America's peril
March 4, 2012
Last week, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, confirmed a no-longer-surprising fact: the Pentagon has sent the White House a menu of options for going to war with Iran.
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McManus: Romney won't be a pushover in November
March 1, 2012
Mitt Romney started as the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination, and he's never really lost that spot. Still, he's had a rough six weeks.
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McManus: Campaign 2012's lessons so far
February 23, 2012
It sometimes feels as if the struggle for the Republican presidential nomination has been going on forever, but if you measure the campaign by the number of delegates chosen so far, we're only about 10% done.
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McManus: Mixing Medicare and mudslinging
February 19, 2012
Don't look now, but the 2012 election is turning into a national referendum on what to do about Medicare.
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McManus: Santorum's surge
February 16, 2012
When this year's presidential campaign began, Rick Santorum looked like a fringe candidate, consigned permanently to the outside edge of an overcrowded debate stage. But as earlier conservative front-runners sputtered, Santorum plugged away, sticking doggedly to his unfashionable message of uncompromising social conservatism.
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McManus: Romney's pain, Obama's gain
February 12, 2012
The rest of the country may be tiring of it, but the drawn-out, high-decibel battle for the Republican presidential nomination is just fine with the Obama campaign.
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Those mudslinging Republicans
February 9, 2012
This was the week Mitt Romney should have sealed the Republican presidential nomination. He was expected to win Tuesday's caucuses in Colorado, to win or tie in Minnesota and to do credibly well in Missouri. Instead, the former Massachusetts governor managed to lose all three contests to Rick Santorum, a candidate who has spent most of the campaign stuck near the bottom of the polls.
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McManus: Who reviews the U.S. 'kill list'?
February 5, 2012
When it comes to national security, Michael V. Haydenis no shrinking violet. As CIA director, he ran the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretaps against suspected terrorists.
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McManus: The Gingrich playbook
February 2, 2012
Newt Gingrich says he's staying in the Republican presidential race all the way to the GOP convention in August, and that he's willing — even eager — to fight for the nomination on the convention floor. But does he have a chance?
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McManus: A Gingrich presidency?
January 29, 2012
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that if Mitt Romney won the South Carolina primary, the Republican presidential race would be over and he would be the nominee. But Romney didn't win, and that means it's time to consider the unthinkable: What would life under President Gingrich be like?
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McManus: Obama's common touch
January 25, 2012
The State of the Union address is a political exercise in the best of times. But when a president is running for reelection and Congress is dominated by his most bitter opponents, there's even less pretense than usual.
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McManus: Is Romney a true conservative?
January 22, 2012
For months, Mitt Romney's rivals in the Republican presidential race have hammered him as a closet moderate, especially on third-rail social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
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McManus: Red meat for the tea party
January 15, 2012
Mitt Romney isn't a naturally eloquent man. His stump speeches are nearly content-free. They combine exaggerated denunciations of President Obama ("a pessimistic president," "the great complainer") and ardent professions of patriotism. "I love our country," Romney announces at every stop. "I love our national anthem.... I love it dearly. I love putting my hand over my heart." He often closes speeches by reciting lines from "America the Beautiful."
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McManus: Romney's 'electability' is key
January 12, 2012
New Hampshire Republicans are practical people.
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McManus: Obama's modest proposal on defense
January 8, 2012
As he unveiled his administration's new blueprint for U.S. defense strategy last week, President Obama sought to vaccinate himself against charges that he was gutting the nation's military.
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McManus: Oops! That was the year that wasn't
December 29, 2011
A year ago, soon after the Tunisian uprising, I demonstrated my powers of prediction in a column about the democracy movement in the Arab world. The revolution in Tunisia, I wrote, "arose from local circumstances that don't foretell what will happen anywhere else." Three weeks later, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak fell, and the Arab Spring was in full bloom.
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McManus: Change in Saudi Arabia
December 25, 2011
Women in Saudi Arabia won a small but promising victory this year. No, they aren't being allowed to drive; that's still forbidden. Most of the time, they still can't work, travel or even open bank accounts without the approval of a male guardian. But they do have this: Saudi women can now buy lingerie in stores from female salesclerks, instead of the sometimes leering men who used to staff the counters. If this modest wave of liberalization continues, they may even get fitting rooms.
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McManus: A long goodbye to Afghanistan
December 22, 2011
This week, the last convoy of U.S. troops in Iraq drove noisily across the border into Kuwait and shut the gate behind them. The next drawdown comes in Afghanistan, where American forces are scheduled to disengage from most combat by the end of 2014.
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McManus: An elusive victory in Iraq
December 18, 2011
With the final headlong withdrawal this month of U.S. troops from Iraq, President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise to end the war. But was the nearly nine-year mission a success?
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Could Rubio save the GOP ticket?
December 15, 2011
Florida's new Republican senator, 40-year-old Marco Rubio, is handsome, personable and smart. He can talk with intelligence and ease about foreign policy, the federal budget and the aspirations of the American people. And he has a Reaganesque gift for sounding reassuring, even when he's arguing for Tea Party positions such as a complete overhaul of Social Security and Medicare.
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McManus: Obama sides with the 99%
December 11, 2011
Conservatives were quick to accuse President Obama of embracing class warfare in his speech last week in Osawatomie, Kan. And liberal Democrats were thrilled to see a hint of the populist president they had hoped they were voting for in 2008.
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McManus: Tough guys on illegal immigration
December 4, 2011
"I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally."
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McManus: Slugging it out with Gingrich
December 1, 2011
The Romney camp is worried.
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McManus: The super committee that wasn't
November 27, 2011
Here's an assessment from the Republican co-chairman of Congress' unfortunate "super committee" of why the bipartisan panel failed to produce a deficit reduction plan last week:
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McManus: For GOP, it's bland vs. firebrand
November 24, 2011
Republican voters face a choice: Do they want to play it safe, or do they feel like taking risks?
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McManus: Will 'New Newt' prevail?
November 17, 2011
When Richard M. Nixon ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, he faced a daunting problem: A lot of voters just didn't like him. Nixon had made his name in politics as an angry, partisan hatchet man, famous for lashing out against Democrats and the news media. To win the presidency, he needed to find a way to soften that too-harsh image.
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McManus: Facing a nuclear Iran
November 13, 2011
The United Nations report on Iran's nuclear program released last week should end the debate, if any debate remained, over whether Iran is moving toward acquiring the ability to build a nuclear weapon. In cautious but convincing detail, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency listed evidence that Iran is still conducting research that would lead to an atomic bomb, much of it in secret military laboratories. And Iran has refused to answer the U.N.'s questions or allow U.N. inspectors to see much of what it's doing, the easiest way to refute its critics' charges.
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McManus: Can Barack Obama be more like Bill Clinton?
November 10, 2011
Bill Clinton feels Barack Obama's pain.
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McManus: Presidential crystal balls
November 6, 2011
Unemployment is mired at 9%, and President Obama's poll ratings are mired too. Democrats are dispirited. Republicans are fired up and ready to go. Activists on both the right and the left are demanding change.
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McManus: What about Afghanistan?
November 3, 2011
Republicans usually enter a presidential campaign with a built-in advantage on at least one issue: national security. Historically, voters trust the GOP to be tougher than Democrats on defense and foreign policy.
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McManus: The third-party wild card
October 27, 2011
American voters have fired two modern presidents after just one term, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. Both suffered because the economy was in poor shape, and both faced disaffection within their own parties. But there was another thing those candidates had in common: They both faced relatively strong third-party candidates in the November election.
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McManus: Mosque and state
October 23, 2011
At a conference two years ago, I sat in on a meeting between U.S. officials and young Islamist politicians from Tunisia, Jordan and other countries in the Middle East. The Islamists wanted to know: Would the Americans allow them to run in free elections, even if it meant they might come to power? The Americans turned the question back at them: Would the Islamists, if they won, allow free and democratic elections, even if it might mean losing power?
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McManus: Obama in the Occupy Wall Street camp
October 20, 2011
If you're one of the thousands of demonstrators sleeping in parks, carrying signs and banging on drums to protest Wall Street's hammerlock on American politics, President Obama wants you to know he feels your pain.
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McManus: Merkel intent on keeping Eurozone united
October 16, 2011
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's impossible prime minister, has committed almost every sin that modern politics affords. He entertains barely-of-age girls as overnight guests and brags about it. He appoints business cronies and television starlets to government jobs. He's under perpetual investigation for corruption.
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McManus: Mitt Romney and the Not-Romneys
October 13, 2011
There may still be half a dozen contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, but the race has always had room for only two: Mitt Romney and someone who isn't Mitt Romney. After four full-scale debates, that second spot, reserved for a more conservative candidate, is still unfilled; the fiscal firebrands of the tea party haven't found an ideal alternative to Romney, leaving the party's right wing divided. It's beginning to look as if the former Massachusetts governor will win the nomination almost by default — an odd outcome to a year that began with the tea party triumphant.
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McManus: The GOP's hard-right tilt
September 25, 2011
We've now seen three full-dress debates among the Republican politicians who want to be the next president of the United States, and here's what we've learned:
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McManus: Pity the 'super committee'
September 22, 2011
Pity the poor "super committee." Congress' special task force on the deficit already had a mission that looked nearly impossible: producing a plan to reduce the federal government's fiscal gap by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. And then the job got harder.
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McManus: Technology that protects protesters
September 18, 2011
Early this year, as street protests began spreading across the Arab world, a young Internet expert from Germany, Katrin Verclas, asked Egyptian democracy activists what kind of technology they needed most. More laptop computers? Better access to the Web? Tools to evade censorship? Software to post videos?
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McManus: Touching the 'third rail'
September 15, 2011
"We have not had the courage to stand up and look Americans in the face," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said when he was asked about Social Security at the Republican presidential candidates' debate this week. "It has been called a Ponzi scheme by many people long before me. But no one's had the courage to stand up and say, 'Here is how we're going to reform it.'"
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McManus: Obama's new tone
September 8, 2011
We already know the outlines of what President Obama plans to say in his long-awaited jobs speech before Congress on Thursday night. He will propose a list of job-creation measures — tax cuts, infrastructure spending, aid to state governments, training for the unemployed — that will probably add up to about $300 billion worth of economic stimulus.
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McManus: Palin the procrastinator
September 1, 2011
Sarah Palin is giving indecision a bad name.
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McManus: A two-man GOP presidential race?
August 28, 2011
Until a few weeks ago, the race for the Republican presidential nomination seemed wide open. There was a presumptive front-runner, Mitt Romney, but he held first place mostly because he was a familiar face; his support among Republican voters appeared broad but not deep.
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McManus: Will there be a Libya bounce for Obama?
August 25, 2011
Twenty years ago this summer, American cities staged noisy, flag-waving parades to celebrate the U.S. victory in a war we've almost forgotten: the Persian Gulf War against Iraq. The president at the time, George H.W. Bush, saw his poll ratings soar in the war's afterglow. But 18 months later, on election day in 1992, the victory parades were ancient history. The voters, impatient with the economy's slow recovery from a recession, turned Bush out of office after a single term.
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Obama's biggest challenge: Jobs
August 7, 2011
The central question facing Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign is this: Can the president persuade voters to let him keep his job when so many of them have lost theirs?
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McManus: Obama's clarity gap
August 4, 2011
We all know by now that the eleventh-hour deal to raise the federal debt ceiling didn't solve much. Federal debt is still ballooning, healthcare costs are still rising, and we're nowhere close to an agreement on raising tax revenue.
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McManus: The write stuff
July 31, 2011
The news from Washington — bickering over the debt ceiling, poor prospects for the economy — hasn't been uplifting lately. It's time for some beach reading.
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McManus: The political angle of the debt-ceiling debate
July 28, 2011
It's not hard to see what a compromise solution on the debt ceiling would look like. It's just hard to see how we get there from here before the Treasury begins running out of money Aug. 2.
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McManus: A boomlet of Perrymania
July 24, 2011
For a man who hasn't formally decided whether to run for president, Texas Gov. Rick Perry sure sounds a lot like a candidate.
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McManus: Doomsday doubters and the debt ceiling
July 21, 2011
President Obama says that if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, the consequences will be dire. A long list of economists and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree. Even the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate agrees.
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McManus: A deal with the Khartoum devil?
July 17, 2011
How do you deal with a genocidal dictator who says he wants to reform?
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McManus: One good debt debate deserves another
July 14, 2011
Republican leaders blinked this week in their standoff with President Obama over raising the nation's debt ceiling. That means we're unlikely to face a financial crisis next month, when the Treasury said it would run short of money to pay the federal government's bills. But it doesn't mean we've solved any of our fiscal problems.
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McManus: A measured U.S. response in Syria
July 10, 2011
When pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in Syria this spring, President Obama offered Syrian President Bashar Assad one more chance to embrace reform. "He can lead that transition [to democracy] or get out of the way," Obama said in May.
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McManus: Team Obama's victory plan
July 7, 2011
President Obama faces an uphill struggle in his campaign for reelection next year. His job approval rating is stuck just below 50%. The unemployment rate appears likely to remain above 8% until election day. And, though it's too soon to mean much, early polling puts the nominal Republican front-runner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, within striking distance.
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McManus: Debt-limit delay in the real world
July 1, 2011
In 2008, as financial crisis threatened the U.S. banking system, President George W. Bush asked Congress to approve an emergency bailout. Leaders of both parties blessed the idea; both presidential candidates — Barack Obama and John McCain — endorsed it. But conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats rebelled, the House defeated the bill — and the stock market plummeted in real time during the roll call. It took the prospect of economic meltdown to get the House to reverse itself and approve Bush's Troubled Asset Relief Program.
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McManus: Obama's popular in Europe, where it doesn't count
June 26, 2011
In a deservedly obscure village among the green hills and dairy farms of Ireland's midlands stands a pub that has been turned into a shrine to Barack Obama. In the back room of Ollie Hayes' saloon, a large and markedly unattractive fake-bronze bust of the president sits on a pedestal flanked by beer glasses; over the fireplace there's a portrait of the great man hoisting a pint of Guinness, and other Obama memorabilia covers the walls.
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Doyle McManus: The West is still waiting for its Libya gamble to pay off
June 12, 2011
Hope isn't a strategy. But it was a major part of NATO's decision to launch an air war against Libya's Moammar Kadafi almost three months ago.
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Doyle McManus: Shifting sands of religion and politics
June 5, 2011
Of the 44 U.S. presidents, all but a handful have been affiliated with a relatively narrow list of traditional Protestant denominations.
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Doyle McManus: Newt takes his shot
May 29, 2011
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker running for the GOP presidential nomination, is trying to put some distance these days between himself and, well, himself.
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Doyle McManus: Middle East hopes and fears
May 22, 2011
We may be the world's only remaining superpower, but we've been a secondary factor in the wave of change sweeping the Arab world.
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Fighting mosques in the name of freedom
May 19, 2011
Last year, a Muslim congregation in Murfreesboro, Tenn., a pleasant college town of about 110,000 people southeast of Nashville, decided that the time had come to build a proper mosque.
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Doyle McManus: Tim Pawlenty's gambit
May 8, 2011
Last week's Republican mini-debate may not have been the most auspicious way for a presidential candidate to introduce himself to a national audience. The stage in South Carolina didn't include most of the party's top names; instead, it boasted former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who wants to focus on gay marriage; Atlanta pizza magnate Herman Cain, who wants to run the government like a business; Rep. Ron Paul, the vinegary Texas libertarian; and Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico who hopes to be the next Ron Paul. "It looked like the bar scene from 'Star Wars,'" said Republican strategist Scott Reed.
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Doyle McManus: Al Qaeda's very bad year
May 5, 2011
Al Qaeda is having a very bad year. And from the terrorists' standpoint, the death of Osama bin Laden isn't even the worst of it. The biggest potential blow is the spread of democratic politics in the Arab world. If it succeeds, Al Qaeda will be deprived of its reason for being.
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Doyle McManus: The right budget battle to watch
April 28, 2011
You've no doubt been hearing the harrowing warnings about what might happen if Congress refuses to lift the federal government's debt ceiling, as some conservative Republicans have threatened.
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Doyle McManus: GOP wannabes
April 21, 2011
Here's a not very bold prediction: Donald Trump won't be the Republican presidential nominee next year. He's not a credible national leader. His strategy for restoring American economic vigor boils down to threatening China with a trade war. It's not even clear that he's a conservative; he once backed Barack Obama, and he appears to favor abortion rights. The GOP can do better, and will.
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Libya's only a part of Mideast equation
April 17, 2011
The eyes of the world are on the battle for Libya. It's undeniably a compelling drama: Spirited but untrained rebels, plus NATO airstrikes, pitted against an eccentric dictator with a cinematic wardrobe.
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Drawing budget battle lines
April 14, 2011
In case it wasn't clear already, we now know what the 2012 election will be about: how fast to cut federal spending, whether to raise taxes and what to do about healthcare, especially Medicare.
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Doyle McManus: The choice between low taxes vs. Medicare benefits
April 7, 2011
Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, won praise from his fellow Republicans this week for proposing a federal budget that would reduce the deficit by slashing spending in almost every domestic program.
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No party for John Boehner
April 3, 2011
For a man who's getting most of what he wanted, House Speaker John A. Boehner looked pretty unhappy last week.
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Doyle McManus: The GOP's Libya dilemma
March 24, 2011
Republican presidential hopefuls have been scrambling to figure out the right vocabulary for denouncing President Obama's decision to launch U.S. planes and ships into action against Libya's Moammar Kadafi.
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Examining torture in the Bush era
April 26, 2009
Dick Cheney is right. President Obama should release any evidence the government has that shows whether torture -- sorry, "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- induced Al Qaeda detainees to give up information that saved American lives.
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State officials pan for gold in D.C.
April 12, 2009
Last month, a flock of Californians streamed through Washington's halls of power seeking federal money for the state's slumping economy, gridlocked transportation system and troubled schools. To their delight, they found a Democratic administration with a sympathetic ear for the state's problems -- plus a big bag of stimulus funding to spend.
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Obama's bipartisan moment on foreign policy
April 5, 2009
Don't look now, but the United States is experiencing something unusual in its recent history: a moment of bipartisan consensus on foreign policy.
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Obama's uphill climb at the G-20 summit
March 29, 2009
The last time Barack Obama went to Europe, he was cheered by 200,000 rapturous Germans. This week, he faces a tougher audience.
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Geithner can still pay off for Obama
March 22, 2009
Is Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner becoming a toxic asset for the Obama administration?
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A 'back channel' appeal to Iran
March 15, 2009
President Obama and his aides are preparing to send a secret message to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, inviting him to open a clandestine "back channel" for direct talks between the United States and Iran.
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Fear and loathing in Pakistan
March 8, 2009
Late last month, the chief of Pakistan's army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, made an unpublicized visit to the White House to meet President Obama's new national security advisor, retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones Jr.
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The power of Obama's oratory
February 25, 2009
Speechmaking has always been good for Barack Obama.
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For Obama, governing isn't campaigning
February 15, 2009
Barack Obama made running for president look easy. As a candidate, he was famously steady and cool, and his campaign team was a marvel of internal harmony. "No drama Obama," they called him.
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Obama the pragmatic idealist
February 8, 2009
Until last week, the nation's late-night comedians were having a hard time coming up with jokes about the Obama administration. The young new president came across as both idealistic and competent, which was nice for the country but a potential disaster for the satire industry.
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New president, new battlefield
February 1, 2009
In his presidential campaign, Barack Obama sometimes made foreign policy sound like a simple matter of changing the tone, turning the page -- and moving 10,000 troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.
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Great expectations -- by Americans and by Obama
January 21, 2009
Barack Obama has been criticized for being too cool, too aloof, even too serene. But the President Obama who delivered the inaugural address on Tuesday was anything but aloof. He was passionate and pleading, somber and demanding. And he did something his predecessor, George W. Bush, never quite did: He asked Americans to sacrifice for the common good.
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What Bush leaves behind
January 18, 2009
After eight unreflective years, George W. Bush has suddenly turned contemplative, arguing in a flurry of exit interviews that his record (as Mark Twain said of Wagner's music) is better than it sounds. He could turn out to be right -- but his standing in the eyes of history now depends, oddly enough, on the fortunes of his successor, Barack Obama.
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