Over 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.

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.

The 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.

Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.

Obama 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.

The 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.

Obama's presidency hasn't been dedicated to achieving economic growth in the short term, or about creating jobs.