Michael Barone's Slant

What do they put in the water cooler at NPR? First, they fire Juan Williams in October for comments he made on Fox News Channel — and Vivian Schiller, the CEO of public radio, smilingly suggests he needs to have his head examined. This week, a sting video shows NPR Foundation president Ron Schill ..

The labor union movement is in deep trouble. Only 6 percent of private-sector employees are union members. Voters are beginning to realize, thanks to governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, that public-sector unions have negotiated unsustainable levels of pensions ..

I think that's significant, because back in the 1990s, when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich's Republicans and President Clinton failed to reach agreement and the government actually did shut down, "train wreck" was a common term. And, of course, a derogatory one. The implication was that a gover ..

It's not supposed to work out that way, say the political scientists and New Deal historians. Politics is supposed to be about who gets how much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as much from the rich as they can get. Moreover, as liberal economists and columnists point ..

As congressional Republicans mull whether to address the government's long-term fiscal problems -- House Republican leaders are being pushed by the 87 freshmen to do so, while some Senate Republicans are seeking some bipartisan accords with Democratic colleagues -- two Republican governors barreled ..

One way to judge the merits of the budget Barack Obama unveiled this week is by the comments of his political allies. "It's not enough to focus primarily on the non-security discretionary part of the budget," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad. "The president punted," began the editor ..

It looks like 2/11/11 will go down in history with 11/9/89, not 6/4/89. 6/4/89 is when the Chinese military obeyed orders to massacre protesters in Tiananmen Square; 11/9/89 is when East German leaders announced the opening of the Berlin Wall and declined to order border guards to shoot the Berliner ..

Most campaign rhetoric and political punditry is underpinned by an assumption that perfect solutions are possible, if only people would have the good sense to adopt the candidate’s or the pundit’s course of action. Alas, that is not always so. Case in point: the apparent revolution in Egypt. Mo ..

Barack Obama, like all American politicians, likes to portray himself as future-oriented and open to technological progress. Yet the vision he set out in his State of the Union address is oddly antique and disturbingly static. “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” he said. But Sputnik and ..

Numbers can tell a story. Looking back on Barack Obama’s second State of the Union message, and looking forward to the congressional session and the 2012 elections, they tell a story that should leave Democrats uneasy. Start off with the audience in the House chamber. Not all members of Congress ..

The steam seems to be going out of the move to “deftly pin this” — the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others — “on the tea partiers,” as one unidentified senior Democratic operative put it to Politico. It has become obvious that the murderer was crazy, the fo ..

The steam seems to be going out of the move to "deftly pin this" -- the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others -- "on the tea partiers," as one unidentified senior Democratic operative put it to Politico. It has become obvious that the murderer was crazy, the follower of no poli ..

"He possesses a deep understanding of how jobs are created and how to grow our economy." That's what Barack Obama said as he announced the appointment of his new chief of staff, William Daley, before a crowd of admiring White House staffers. It's not hard to understand Obama's reasons for choosin ..

Consider one conundrum in American politics. Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics. Yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it. Barack Obama may have been elected president after telling Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread the wealth around. But large ..

Back in June, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who many think would be an attractive 2012 presidential candidate, was quoted by Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard as saying the next president “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues.” That quickly attracted some harsh criti ..