Outside the Beltway

MSNBC’s Krystal Ball isn’t being hypocritical in trusting Obama to decide which Americans to kill even though she wouldn’t have trusted Bush. But she’s being short-sighted.

Andrew Bacevich bemoans the social impact of the all-volunteer force.

A potentially significant ruling on Separation Of Powers.

Some proposed reforms just need to be ignored.

Despite some tough questions, Congressional Republicans didn’t land a glove on Secretary of State Clinton.

Congress is historically polarized.

The notion that guns prevent tyranny is based on fantasy and movies, not reality.

(As well as party behavior).

For the New Year, how about challenging your ideas just a little bit?

Representative democracy is a process of delegation of power to agents who act on behalf of citizens. The process of delegation matters.

There are factions of the American right that really need to understand this.

Six weeks ago, we held a non-binding referendum asking Americans who they’d like for president. Yesterday, the real election was held.

Conor Friedersdorf contends “The U.S. Already Had a Conversation About Guns—and the Pro Side Won.”

Richard Lugar puts in a word for compromise and good governance on his way out of the Senate.

Democrats are approaching an “Electoral College lock.” Republicans are trying to pick it.

My first piece for the New York Daily News, “A Drone Strike on Democracy,” has posted.

Elections put the players in office. They don’t dictate the outcome of the game.

The Republican Party needs a new message on foreign policy that is true to the conservative principles of the base and yet has a broad appeal to the American public.

A quick post on a pet peeve.

Fareed Zakaria declares “America’s election process an international embarrassment.” He’s right.

Republicans are starting to talk about immigration reform, but do they really mean it?

The impact of outside spending on the election turned out to be far less consequential than many had feared.

Without question, Barack Obama won the foreign policy debate in the 2012 campaign.

President Obama is likely to win re-election while overwhelmingly losing the white vote. Does it matter?

The analyst actually wants to understand and be correct far more than he or she wants their preferences to prevail in the analysis

How Obama can have a 75 percent chance of winning an election despite being essentially tied in the polls:

David Brooks tries to “describe what being a moderate means” in a way that most Americans would find puzzling.

There are several circumstances under which we may not know who won the 2012 election for some time after November 6th

The arguments in favor of major changes in the way we elect our President are unpersuasive.

The candidate’s meet for one last time tonight to talk about some of the most important issues in the world.

John Sides argues that, contrary to popular conception, undecided voters are neither morons nor non-partisan.

My latest for The National Interest, “Why NATO Should Have Won the Nobel,” is out.

Looking to Federalist 68.

Of course, these voters are walled off from the process, so they don’t matter.

Will conservatives freak out if Romney loses? That’s pretty much guaranteed.

Yet another in a long line of critiques of the electoral college.

Not surprisingly, television and reality don’t really coincide.