At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
WASHINGTON — Two events occurred here on Thursday this week that together are a nearly perfect distillation of why this otherwise pleasant city has become the capital of intransigence and frustration for people like me concerned about our national interest. In the morning the U.S. Supreme Court announced, in a 5-4 decision, that campaign donations are a form of free speech, and that the wealthy can spend just about as much as they like to …
EMPIRE, Michigan — It’s winter in Northwest Michigan, the coldest and deepest season of ice and snow in years. It’s possible that the severe winter will produce the conditions necessary to curb the newest noxious and unsightly threat to the region’s waters: the algae blooms overtaking northern Lake Michigan and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The blooms not only illustrate the presence of rising levels of nutrients in the water. They also are evidence of …
After delivering a second inaugural address fused with measured confidence, President Obama beams at the huge, cheering crowd that greeted him along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route. Photo/Keith Schneider WASHINGTON — Four years ago, when crisis lay like a dark shadow across the land, and President Obama’s first inaugural address served as a kind of pep talk to refute what he called “the nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable,” this week’s inspiring and dignified …
Along the Champs Elysees on Christmas Day, nobody worried about getting gunned down in the street, or about a marauding minority political party bent on wrecking the nation. Photo/Keith Schneider PARIS — Along the Champs Elysees’ on Christmas night, an angels’ envy of rope-thin LED halos — colors shifting from red to blue to white — circled the trees and lit the broad boulevard where thousands of people strolled carefree. Nobody worried about the sick …
In India, and around the world, people now question the credibility and character of American governance. Photo/Keith Schneider NEW DELHI, India — America seems, finally, to be getting it. The Newtown massacre changes things. Just how much and how fast is unpredictable. But we are different today than we were on December 13, the day before the killings. The age and number of children murdered. The blood-exploded serenity of a wealthy New England town. The …
In India, and around the world, people now question the credibility and character of American governance. Photo/Keith Schneider NEW DELHI, India — America seems, finally, to be getting it. The Newtown massacre changes things. Just how much and how fast is unpredictable. But we are different today than we were on December 13, the day before the killings. The age and number of children murdered. The blood-exploded serenity of a wealthy New England town. The …
In Sichuan Province, southwest China, boys leave classrooms at the end of the day in a country where school can be hazardous. Photo/Keith Schneider RAIPUR, Chhattisgarh, India — News of the Newtown massacre reached this city of jammed streets and honking bedlam as part of the shock wave that struck the United States, and then swept around the world. As the ritual of sorrow and weeping commenced in America and here, the next thought that …
In 2008, on the eve of his election to the presidency, Barack Obama greeted a huge and bouyant crowd in Chicago with this invocation to unity: “This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while …
Maybe, for just a moment last night, like when the early returns from Virginia put Mitt Romney well ahead of President Obama, I wondered whether we’d have a new White House occupant. Then fresher election results from Virginia, and from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Iowa, and finally Florida showed Obama earned a clear victory. The president’s supporters, very plainly, are thrilled, as they should be. But there is no glee for the …
It takes a transcendant candidate — a Bill Clinton, a Ronald Reagan — to beat an incumbent president. Mitt Romney, who’s repudiated his signal achievements as a governor and shifted views as often as the game plan strategy required, certainly is not that. So I anticipate that Barack Obama will win a second term today, an honor that he has earned and deserves. Still, we are a dangerously immature country. How does a president govern …
