Just as aspiring judges ought to possess the quality known as "judicial temperament," a would-be president should have certain obvious attributes of mind and character. Two incidents tested Mitt Romney this week -- and both times, his ambition overwhelmed his judgment.
Colombian prostitutes and lavish partying in Vegas inspire hot headlines -- and understandably infuriate the public. But concerned as President Obama must be over the unfolding embarrassments in the Secret Service and the General Services Administration, he may actually be comforted by the feeble attempts of a few politicians to wring political profit from those scandals. The likelihood that the White House is implicated can be measured by their stature.
With the Republican primary contest over and the general election underway, Mitt Romney faces a voting public whose disdain for him has reached levels that pollsters describe as "historic."
When George W. Bush made his first public appearance in many months to discuss economic policy in New York on Tuesday, his utterances may have revealed more than he intended. "I wish they weren't called the 'Bush tax cuts,'" he said of the decade-old rate reductions that bear his name. But does he really believe, as he seemed to suggest, that Americans want to let those cuts expire from a desire to spite him? Or is there a deeper Bush somewhere within who would prefer not to be associated with fiscal profligacy and ideological overreach?
How the Supreme Court majority will rule on President Obama's Affordable Care Act may well have been foretold months or perhaps years ago -- not so much by their questions during argument this week, as by their flagrant displays of bias outside the court, where certain justices regularly behave as dubiously as any sleazy officeholder.
Despite significant negative signals, the final outcome of this week's arguments over the Affordable Care Act will remain unknown until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in June. What is painfully obvious today, however, should have been clear enough long before any of the lawyers opened their mouths. The five Republican justices represent an ideological bloc as adamantly hostile to universal health care -- no matter the cost in lost lives or squandered trillions -- as in 1965, when Medicare passed.
If the foreign adversaries and competitors of the United States imagined a future that would fulfill their most ambitious objectives, it might begin with a government crippled by the House Republican leadership's "Ryan budget" released on Tuesday. Followed to its absurd conclusion, this document would lead America toward a withered state, approaching the point where Marxian dreams and Randian dogma converge.
When President Obama disparaged "loose talk about war" against the theocratic regime in Tehran, he wasn't minimizing the consequences of atomic weapons in the hands of the mullahs. The danger of terrorists acquiring a bomb would be multiplied by a regional arms race. The international nonproliferation regime would be crippled if not destroyed. The prestige of the United States would suffer fresh damage, and yes, Israel would be gravely threatened.
Seeking applause from a right-wing audience in Michigan, Mitt Romney vowed on Saturday: "I will cut spending, I will cap spending, and I will finally balance the budget," saying that he will end federal funding for all the usual Republican budgetary scapegoats -- the Public Broadcasting System, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has said much the same thing many times in recent months, hoping to woo the tea party extremists who keep rejecting his candidacy.
What is most striking about the showdown over contraceptive freedom is not the political victory that President Obama earned by standing up for women's reproductive rights, although his Republican adversaries are certainly helping him to make the most of it. Those adversaries don't seem to realize they have fallen into a trap, whether the White House set them up intentionally or not.
If the Conservative Political Action Conference can be expected to accomplish anything more than angry bellowing, it is to reliably embarrass every decent and sane conservative in America. Sometimes the problem is a conspiratorial extremist co-sponsor, like the John Birch Society; sometimes the problem is a certifiable kook giving the keynote address, like Glenn Beck; and sometimes the problem is just vicious bullying of gay conservatives, who have been officially expelled from the conference.
Mitt Romney's convincing victory in the Florida primary erased his earlier defeats and perhaps any serious obstacle to his nomination. The question that still troubles party leaders, however, is the damage he will sustain before returning to Tampa in September for their convention.
Why the Republicans chose Mitch Daniels -- the Indiana governor who once thrilled right-wing pundits as a 2012 hopeful -- to deliver a rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address is puzzling. His uninspiring remarks surely killed the Daniels fad, revived lately as Republicans fret over the unappetizing choices available in their primaries.
Mitt Romney's latest flip-flop is almost complete. Having vowed a month ago not to release his federal income tax returns, the Republican presidential front-runner conceded during Saturday night's debate that he would "probably" release his returns, and then on Tuesday afternoon finally said he will do so -- in April, long after he is likely to have secured his party's nomination. With characteristic arrogance, he excused the delay by suggesting that April 15 is the traditional date when public officials supply this information, which is certainly true if you're already president.
Politicians and their flacks lie every day, but it is unusual for someone prominent to utter a totally indefensible falsehood like the whopper that just sprang from the mouth of Eric Cantor's press secretary on national television.
While interviewing the House majority leader, "60 Minutes" correspondent Leslie Stahl suggested that he might consider compromise because even Ronald Reagan had raised taxes several times. Cantor's flack then burst out in protest, saying he couldn't allow her remark "to stand."
Even as Barack Obama gradually climbs in national polls, more than a handful of the president's once-ardent admirers suddenly seem more attracted to Ron Paul.
The latest evidence of simmering racial resentment on the American political fringe showed up Monday in a Facebook post by a California man who urged the assassination of the president and his two daughters in obscene, racist language.
If these are the last weeks of Rick Perry's ridiculous presidential campaign, his desperation is turning him into a nasty clown indeed. By publicly attacking the gays and lesbians who have chosen to serve their country in uniform, the Texas governor seems to have gained ground in Iowa.
Held aloft by the highest approval ratings of any governor in America, Andrew Cuomo scarcely seemed to worry about angering his state's progressives, who were disappointed by his refusal to extend a state surtax on New York's millionaires.
Marketing genius is perhaps the most appropriate way to describe Donald J. Trump's newest incarnation as the announced host -- he can hardly be called a "moderator" -- of a post-Christmas Republican debate sponsored by Newsmax, the conservative magazine. Why did several candidates, including potential victim Jon Huntsman, instantly agree to join this spectacle?
