President

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Darrell Issa, blasted President Obama for failing to run a transparent administration in a radio interview earlier today with Laura Ingraham.

The memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed by architect Frank Gehry fails miserably to capture the essence of our 34^th president. Bruce Cole’s article “Doing Right by Ike” in a recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD makes this point, coupled with this indisputable plea: Let’s give Ike the memorial he deserves.

Earlier today, President Obama assured Americans that "the private sector is doing fine." Now, Republican Mitt Romney has responded by saying that the president is "out of touch."

Roger Simon has an interesting and amusing piece at Politico about Bill Clinton's recent shenanigans undercutting Barack Obama.

The men and women who go the hard yards to cover the White House belong to an organization that calls itself the White House Correspondent's Association. This outfit puts on a little soiree every year, where members can decompress after the tortures of being condescended to, hour after hour, by spokesman Jay Carney.

Now more than halfway through his third year in office—with the economy flat-lining, American prestige evaporating, and public anxiety spiking—Barack Obama is the most vulnerable incumbent president since Jimmy Carter. The election is still 14 months away, but it’s not too early to see the broad outlines of the GOP’s case against the president.

I was struck by these sentences in President Obama’s speech:

Now, what makes today’s stalemate so dangerous is that it has been tied to something known as the debt ceiling – a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.

President Obama, at a speech earlier today at the National Council of La Raza, indicated that he "need[s] a dance partner here -- and the floor is empty."

I knew pretty early on during tonight’s speech that President Obama had rejoined—or joined—the historical American foreign policy mainstream. It was when he mentioned Charlotte (the city, not the spider):

“Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, ‘No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.’”

“Obama Seeks a Course of Pragmatism in the Middle East,” The New York Times, March 11, 2011.

President Obama’s speech in Tucson was fine, as far as it went. The protocol in such circumstances seems to require presidents to call for healing, unity, civility, fellowship, and a determination to move forward, as well as a shout-out to heroes and victims. The president appears to have done all this, and with generally satisfactory results; I leave it to others to debate whether he failed or succeeded.

For me, the great political mystery of the last two years is not what makes Barack Obama tick, or where the Tea Party came from, but Hillary Clinton. Namely, why did she give up life tenure in a U.S. Senate seat from New York to join the Obama administration as secretary of state?