As long as the proposal is structured so the ultimate decision regarding actions taken by the House or Congress [against] members is retained by members themselves … I don't think there's any constitutional problem with that at all. |
Bush inherited a bitterly partisanship atmosphere in Washington but governed and campaigned in a fashion that greatly exacerbated it. He is now partly responsible for that tone, and nothing in his State of the Union speech leads me to believe it will change in the months before the November elections. |
Condi Rice is clearly the brightest spot in Bush's second term, perhaps the only one. |
Do you know how many times campaign-finance reform failed before final passage in 2002? Many times. |
Frankly, this goes well beyond his conservative base. The problem to most Americans across parties is that it goes to a matter of competence, and reinforces the reaction they had after Hurricane Katrina. |
From the hearing in the Supreme Court on the Clinton v. Jones case, to the extraordinary partnership associated with Speaker Gingrich's ethics case, I think all of that has also reduced the feeling of new beginning and possibility. |
From the hearing in the Supreme Court on the Clinton v. Jones case, to the extraordinary partnership associated with Speaker Gingrich's ethics case, I think all of that has also reduced the feeling of new beginning and possibility. |
He has been reluctant to share information with anyone, particularly the Congress and considers himself basically not bound by what others would see as normal requirements of transparency. |
He hasn't been in a position for some time to press successfully most of the controversial issues on which the country is divided, and there's substantial opposition in Washington. We saw that on Social Security reform. We're likely to see it on immigration reform. There are enormous obstacles in the proposal to make the tax cuts permanent. |
I can't imagine that Feldstein is directly involved, but if there were any reasonable prospect of his being called to testify, with some presumption of culpability on the part of the board, that would be a problem. |
I expect him to settle comfortably on the right of the court and write careful and intelligent decisions that support his longstanding ideological views and values. |
I think Senator Kennedy will go down as one of the giants in the Senate. While he has had a rather tumultuous life with lots of ups and downs, his record in the Senate has been consistently impressive. |
I think the early signs are that it is succeeding in firming up his base. The tough anti-terrorism rhetoric and making an affirmative case for Iraq has helped stem the decline in support among Republicans. It remains to be seen if it can have an impact on Democrats and Independents in the long run, but he has clearly made a decision to return to the one issue that has bolstered his presidency from beginning: 9/11. |
I'm skeptical about efforts to garner historical assessments from the broad public, given low levels of public information and attention to these matters. Better to start and stop with scholarly judgments. |
If those train wrecks and if that gamesmanship is being driven by broad political forces, narrow margins in the House and the Senate, divided party government, difficult decisions that have to be made, genuine differences that exist, mobilization of interest groups — if all of those things are true, you are going to find vehicles to have those fights, whether you have a two-year budget cycle or not. |