Wednesday was the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death. It’s hard to spend too much time reflecting on Lincoln; I use the first thing he ever published, comparing two infrastructure projects in a local election campaign, as an example of policy analysis avant la lettre, and he just gets better and better from there. Even … Continue reading »
public discourse
State of the Union 2014: The cognitive power of the President
There are enough people guessing what the president will do. This is about what he almost certainly won’t do, but what I would like him to do. The president has material power without the Congress, and personally, I would like to see him use it. He could issue an executive order for the government to … Continue reading »
Words that don’t work
Progressives had some fun recently with Frank Luntz, who told the Republican Governors’ Association that he was scared to death of the Occupy movement and recommended language to combat what the movement had achieved. But the progressive critics mostly just laughed, said his language wouldn’t work, and assumed that if Luntz was scared, everything was … Continue reading »