Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

Hurtling 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.

Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.

Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.

I've worked as someone's deputy, and now it's time for me to run something. It's time for me to run my own shop.

This, of course, has no chance of passing. But then Tuesday night'€™s 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.

It 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.