I think there are ultimately four characteristics in candidates that I think drive our perceptions and our decisions: competence (can this person do this job); policies (does this person have clear prescriptions to deal with[…]
…liberalism has, to an unusual degree, been defined by what it wasn’t. For French liberals in the early nineteenth century, it was a defense against the excesses of Jacobins and ultra-monarchists. For the free-trading Manchester[…]
I understand that we have both College Democrats and College Republicans chapters on our campus. To be honest, I don’t understand why. Don’t get me wrong — I can readily understand why a Torah Jew[…]
Impeachment is an ancient relic, a rusty legal instrument and political weapon first wielded by the English Parliament, in 1376, to wrest power from the King by charging his ministers with abuses of power, convicting[…]
…the 10 men and women not on the stage will argue that the Democratic National Committee’s rules on how to qualify for the Houston debate (2% in four early state or national polls and 130,000[…]
…it’s important to note that despite the contemporary association of concentration camps with the Shoah, they are not a Nazi invention. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, various imperial forces — including the[…]
The congresswoman has become a handy and versatile symbol — the representative representative. For the leftward and younger wings of the Democratic Party, she serves as a figurehead and a hero; for conservative media outlets,[…]
Likability seems to have emerged as an important personality trait in the late 19th century, when it became closely associated with male business success. Before this, people liked or disliked one another, of course, but[…]
Democracies depend on buy-in; citizens need to believe in certain basics, starting with the legitimacy of elections. Trump both runs the government and runs it down. The electoral system, he asserts, can’t be trusted. Voter[…]
The very things that can make the center so appealing, however, are also its great weaknesses. As worried centrists have long noted, it can be hard to rally the people behind a message of pragmatism,[…]