Furlough 'Consistency and Fairness'
Innovation in Government Dips
TSP Funds Stay Positive in April
5 Agencies with the Most Disconnected Leadership
No Bonuses for VA Benefits Execs
Will You Be Furloughed?
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Analysis: Obama's Amazing Speech (and Why You Probably Missed It)
April 29, 2013 After quoting Marx ("Groucho, not Karl”) to squeeze one last laugh out of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, President Obama abruptly stopped joking. Hundreds of politicians, celebrities, journalists, and corporate sponsors fell silent as he dropped a 607-word morality bomb: “We can do better,” Obama told the elites. “If ...
Analysis: 'No Politics' Doesn't Mean 'No Accountability'
April 25, 2013 “Who’s playing politics with the Boston bombing?” That question was posed by many journalists, including me, almost immediately after the marathon attack, when a few Washington politicians tried to exploit the tragedy. Some Republicans said the terrorist strike should raise questions about immigration reform. Certain Democrats said “sequestration” spending cuts ...
Analysis: George W. Bush Is a Good Man
April 23, 2013 White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer walked into the media cabin of Air Force One on May 24, 2002, and dropped identical envelopes in the laps of two reporters, myself and Steve Holland of Reuters. Inside each was a manila card – marked by a small presidential seal and, in ...
Analysis: The End of Government as We Know It
April 22, 2013 A year ago, I wrote about the decline of American institutions through the eyes of Johnny Whitmire, an unemployed construction worker, who lost his home due to systematic failures of his bank and employers as well as city, state and federal governments. “You can’t trust anybody or anything anymore,” Whitmire ...
Analysis: Why Boston Bombings Might Be Scarier Than 9/11
April 16, 2013 Call it “terrorism” if a label helps you make sense of this madness. Find who did it and squash him—or them—with what President Obama called “the full weight of justice.” But in the broad scheme of things, such loose ends matter less than this: Life in America changed with the ...
Analysis: Obama Is Raising the Pressure for a Budget Deal
April 5, 2013 Washington is edging closer to a budget deal, thanks to a gutsy change in strategy at the White House. Next week, President Obama will propose specific cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget, according to senior White House officials. That will put the onus on House Speaker ...
John Podesta Channels Rand Paul to Undercut Obama on Drone Warfare
March 15, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
When you’re President Obama and you're lambasted by Clinton-era White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, it’s far past time to give Congress the rules and justification for killing U.S. citizens without due process. “Give them up, Mr. President,” Podesta wrote in a scathing op-ed on drone warfare published in ...
Why Papal and Presidential Elections Can Be Hellishly Depressing
March 11, 2013 The papal conclave is a gripping political story, and not just because reform-minded cardinals are pitted against old-guard “Romans.” The white-smoke watch resonates beyond the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics because the Vatican is emblematic of a 21st-century ill: the failure of social institutions to adapt to the times, and the ...
How Washington Looks to Sun Tzu for Leadership
March 8, 2013 President Obama has reversed course to adopt a Leadership 101 tactic that he and his advisers ruthlessly mocked: Get to know the opposition. The president extended a rare invitation Wednesday night for Republican lawmakers to join him for dinner at a restaurant near the White House. He ate lunch Thursday ...
Adult Leadership Required to Clean Up the Mess in Washington
March 5, 2013 Funny what our leaders could learn by sweeping the stairs. This thought occurred to me the other day while I was morosely mulling the state of politics in Washington, and found an analogy in my living room. Actually, my wife found it -- clumps of dirt on the steps, tracked ...
