For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.
John PodhoretzThe 2004 presidential election that saw George W. Bush win with 51 percent of the vote was the last one Republicans will ever win with the overwhelmingly white and male coalition they have now.
John PodhoretzThe sad truth is that you can have peace processes all you like, but if one side is committed to war, then it's war.
John PodhoretzThe most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.
John PodhoretzObama's explanation for the slowdown in economic growth is that the public sector is hurting, and that's where Washington must step in and act.
John PodhoretzNewt Gingrich has a restless and outsized intelligence that is tragically unleavened by any kind of critical sensibility.
John PodhoretzThe thing is, Obama is right that it would be a calamity for the government to default on its debt by not meeting its obligations. Such a thing has never happened and can't be allowed to happen.
John PodhoretzMany people crave security and stability rather than risk-taking, and that doesn't make them any less American. They are the workers rather than the job creators, and all societies need both.
John PodhoretzInsulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president.
John PodhoretzMaking recess appointments when the Senate isn't in recess is neither rational nor moderate. It's a raw misuse of executive power by a president whose love of government is his most vulnerable spot with the electorate.
John PodhoretzEvery great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.
John PodhoretzShe needs to seem tough, and whatever Hillary's weaknesses, tough is a pretty good word to describe her.
John PodhoretzThe classic rule of thumb is that if you are an intellectual ideological magazine, you do better in opposition than you do if your views are reflected by people in power.
John PodhoretzBy keeping most tax rates at present levels, Obama and the Democrats will claim that they have championed tax cuts for the middle class.
John PodhoretzOver the next decade, cities and states across America will be compelled to tighten their belts as the really big bills - the pension bills they cannot afford - come due. They'll have to go after existing contracts with current workers.
John PodhoretzFor the record, I am not an admitted homosexual, nor am I a homosexual, though I do know the lyrics to every show tune ever written, which might perhaps account for the confusion.
John PodhoretzThe real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001.
John PodhoretzSome candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.
John PodhoretzObama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them - even if their employees have it right.
John PodhoretzAs a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.
John PodhoretzThere's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.
John PodhoretzIt has never made any sense to argue that, unique among the people of the world, Arabs are more concerned on a day-to-day basis about the treatment of people they don't know than they are about how they're going to put food on their own tables, or whether their sons will ever find a job.
John PodhoretzThat distinctive presidential conduct is now gone forever, banished to the snows of yesteryear by Barack Obama. From the beginning of his presidency to the present, he has spoken specifically and in unprecedented fashion of Republicans as his rivals, his stumbling blocks, the primary cause of his troubles.
John PodhoretzElectoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.
John PodhoretzComedians and impressionists used to be two different showbiz animals entirely, but now there's no such thing as a comedian who doesn't do impressions.
John PodhoretzNixon in 1968, unlike Obama 2008, was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet, in 1972, he won what, in some measures, was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.
John PodhoretzI look at 'The New York Review of Books.' It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.
John PodhoretzYou know, you just know, that after the president goes out there and announces he wants to make community college free for all Americans - as though anything government does is 'free' - or is unilaterally and unconstitutionally legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants, he comes back to the offices, pulls out the presidential BlackBerry, and gleefully follows along as the Right goes completely ape over these wild policy decisions.
John PodhoretzRomney is right that the Obama vision is too centered on government. But his is too centered on the promotion of business and wealth creation at the expense of everything else.
John PodhoretzHurtling the Pentagon into an unprecedented budgetary meltdown is horrifically irresponsible. Obama doesn't care. This is war - not against the Taliban, but war against the GOP. He has Republicans on the ropes, and that's a victory he savors and desires - unlike Afghanistan, where he seems only to want to turn tail.
John PodhoretzThe Middle East Media Research Institute has spent decades detailing the diseased messages emanating from Palestinian TV and textbooks, instructing children in the glories of suicide terrorism against innocent Israelis.
John PodhoretzImagine his delight after it 'leaked' that he will propose raising taxes on the wealthy by $320 billion over the next 10 years, including increases to the capital gains and inheritance taxes.
John PodhoretzIn 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the US โ almost all killed by black civilians.
John PodhoretzThe problem is that borrowing money to pay back more borrowed money that will oblige you in the future to borrow even more money doesn't sound kosher. Because it isn't.
John PodhoretzThis has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.
John PodhoretzIs victory sweet because your side wins - or is it really because the other side loses?
John PodhoretzWhat people adore about superhero movies is the signal quality of the Christopher Nolan films - their complete lack of irony when it comes to the portrayal of heroism and the need for heroes to confront evil.
John PodhoretzThis, of course, has no chance of passing. But then Tuesday night'ยยs State of the Union address could be the first one in history deliberately designed solely to generate a Pavlovian rage response in members of the opposing party.
John PodhoretzI was wholeheartedly attracted to the conservative atmosphere that permeated the city of Washington.
John PodhoretzI think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion.
John PodhoretzOur compulsive hunger always to know first, speak first and decide first has only been amplified by the fact that we can now all participate instantly in a virtual version of a national cocktail-party conversation on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.
John Podhoretz