Michael Gerson
10/26/2010

This has been a tumultuous election season, but the Republican advantage has been tamed somewhat from where it was a month ago. Democrats have largely abandoned running on the president’s record and the tired refrain of attacking former President Bush. Rather, they’ve begun to focus their energies on the personalities and flaws of their opponents, several of whom rode reactionary waves into contention outside the traditional vetting process. Republicans should still achieve a majority in the House, while the Senate looks to be a much closer contest.

Gerson writes about politics, global health and development, religion and foreign policy.

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John Lee
10/27/2010

In Asia today, the source of America’s strategic pre-eminence is not just the dominance of the Seventh Fleet but strong regional support for a continued US presence. China has long viewed American pre-eminence in the region as a historical accident and an aberration and wants to ease America out of the region, but other nations want to reaffirm the US role. Therefore it is no wonder that Beijing is now rooting for Asean-plus-three–which does not include America–to be the primary problem-solving meeting. However, if expected US membership transforms the East Asia Summit into the region’s principal security institution, clumsy and impatient Chinese diplomacy will have contributed to the rise of a multilateralism that largely entrenches an extended US-led network of security alliances and partnerships.

Lee is a foreign-policy fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington, and the author of “Will China Fail?” (CIS, 2007).

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Bob Herbert
10/26/2010

Our nation’s water systems are deteriorating, Herbert says, with some built around the time of the Civil War. Sewage systems are contaminating drinking water and many are overwhelmed by heavy rain. Rather than fighting wars, Herbert says we need to spend money to fix our nation’s infrastructure, yet politicians don’t seem to have the political will to do so. If we don’t start correcting the problem now, we will pay dearly later.

Herbert is a New York Times columnist.

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George Soros
10/26/2010

Soros details the reasons he supports California’s marijuana legalization initiative, Proposition 19. He says the criminalization of marijuana has resulted in extensive costs and negative consequences to society. We should invest in effective education rather than ineffective arrest and incarceration. While legalizing marijuana wouldn’t solve all the problems connected with the drug, it would represent a major step forward and its deficiencies can be corrected on the basis of experience. He concludes that proposition 19 already is a winner, whatever happens on Election Day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy.

Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and founder of the Open Society Foundations.

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Richard Cohen
10/26/2010

Anger is the primary motivation behind the Tea Party, but that is not an unusual trait among political movements of the past. Even Obama’s campaign for hope and change was one step away from anger. What unifies the Tea Party today and contributes to its nebulous nature is the internet. Obama can not engage a political enemy that is so hard to identify (a search by The Post turned up only 647 of the alleged 2300 local Tea Party groups). Cohen notes that it is not unlike trying to do battle with the elusive Taliban.

Cohen is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on domestic and foreign politics.

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Barry C. Burden and Kenneth R. Mayer
10/25/2010

The authors conducted research showing that the opportunity to vote by mail actually depresses voter turnout, typically by three percentage points. Although early voting does not eliminate the two-step process of registration and then voting, it does dilute the intensity of Election Day because campaigns begin to scale back their efforts once a significant portion of votes have been cast. To improve voter turnout, their research shows that combining early voting with same-day registration reverses the depressive effect of early voting.

Burden and Mayer are professors of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Ross Douthat
10/25/2010

Rage about the Wall Street bailouts is what fueled the birth of the Tea Party and an anti-Obama movement. Douthat looks at what the bailout cost, however, and says it may actually cost the taxpayer less than $50 billion over all, rather than the $700 billion originally set aside to pay for it. The problem with the bailout wasn’t the end game, which may have saved America from 15 percent unemployment, but how it implicated the government in crony capitalism. Although it was necessary and it worked, it did damage to the credibility of Wall Street and Washington.

Douthat is a New York Times columnist.

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Bob Livingston
10/22/2010

Why, Livingston wonders, does Congress all too often accept the president’s spending priorities? His advice to Republicans, if they regain the majority, is not to shun the appropriations committees and not to shun good and honorable earmarks, which even in the worst of years accounted for less than 1% of the federal budget. If earmarks have merit, they should be transparent to the public and not snuck through in the dead of night. Republicans, including supporters of the tea party movement, need to keep in mind that the president cannot force Congress to spend money it refuses to spend. And members of Congress have the right, the power, and the duty to appropriate money in accordance with their own responsible judgment of what is in the public interest.

Livingston was a Republican member of Congress from Louisiana and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee from 1995 to 1999.

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Michael Gerson
10/22/2010

Tea Party supporters and luminaries fashion themselves as constitutional conservatives, but in at least one significant area, their self-assessment betrays a basic lack of familiarity with the Constitution itself. The conception of America as a Christian nation carries profound weight among Tea Party conservatives, but it stands plainly counter to history and the Constitution itself. While an avowed reverence for the rights and dignity of all humanity is firmly rooted in the Christian heritage shared by many in the founding generation, it is precisely because of this that the original posture toward faith was fundamentally anti-institutional.

Gerson writes about politics, global health and development, religion and foreign policy.

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