(This appeared in USA Today on August 17, 2011) The time is now: Barack Obama needs to demonstrate a new style of leadership. The president is a basketball player. He knows that sharp elbows can hurt people when they are swung. But they also open up scoring opportunities. America faces two major problems that have […]
By Lanny Davis – 8/4/2011 – Now that the national debt-ceiling deal is done — and liberals like me are unhappy and conservatives, deservedly, have more to cheer about — Thanksgiving 2011 will be about more than good turkey. This is the deadline for the so-called “super” congressional committee of six Democrats and six Republicans […]
By Lanny Davis – 7/27/2011 – A famous 1950 Japanese movie, “Rashomon,” describes a murder from the perspectives of four main characters who were involved in it — including the medium speaking for the murdered man. All four versions differ as to who is the real murderer. The director was asked by the actors: Who […]
By Lanny Davis – 7/13/2011 – The headline in the left-hand lead of The New York Times on Tuesday read: “Obama Grasping Centrist Banner in Debt Impasse.” Wait a minute. Isn’t this the same president the Republican Tea Partiers decried as “socialist”? How could he possibly find himself described as a centrist? Wasn’t that the […]
By Lanny Davis – 07/06/11 – Read the June 27 Newsweek cover story, with a smiling Bill Clinton filling the cover, and the headline “14 Ways to Save America’s Jobs,” and you will be reminded why and how Clinton began his first term as president with a $300 billion deficit and a stagnant economy emerging from […]
By Lanny Davis – 06/29/11 – For several years in the late 1990s, I worked for the government of Pakistan, mostly when the late Benazir Bhutto, an inspiring small-“d” democrat and charismatic populist leader, was prime minister of Pakistan. I made lots of Pakistani friends, in Pakistan and among the large Pakistani-American community here.
By Lanny Davis – 06/22/11 – A remarkable purple moment has occurred regarding the president’s legal decision to define “hostilities” as not having taken place in the U.S. operations in Libya, and thus declaring that there was no need to seek congressional authorization under the War Powers Act. Conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats don’t agree on […]
By Lanny Davis – 06/15/11 – It was the summer before the presidential year to come, more than seven months before the New Hampshire primary. All of the Republican presidential candidate’s top campaign staff had quit; he was virtually out of money. All the pundit class declared him politically dead, mocking his campaign. “It is about […]
By Lanny Davis – 06/08/11 – At first blush, the decision to indict former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) for conspiracy to accept illegal campaign contributions, given the facts and circumstances, seems like a stretch, to say the least. The definition of “campaign contributions” has never to date been used to apply in this particular fact pattern […]
By Lanny Davis – 06/01/11 – As a liberal Democrat, I was happy with the results of the New York 26th congressional district special election, in which Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin by emphasizing her opposition to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget proposal and her Republican opponent’s support of that plan. The fact […]