Upon entering office, one of Joe Biden’s first orders of foreign policy business will be to start the long process of repairing America’s standing abroad. Such an effort will begin with mending fences with allies and partners around the world. The good news for the Biden administration is that Americans […] Read more »
Americans’ Concern Grows About Government, National Discord
Americans are sizing up the nation’s greatest challenges a bit differently this month in the aftermath of a political insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump and the national rollout of the coronavirus vaccine. Amid this backdrop, the percentage of Americans citing governmental leaders […] Read more »
Restoring Confidence in American Institutions
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, was honored with the 2021 Franklin Founder Award during a virtual celebration of Benjamin Franklin’s 315th birthday. … In her acceptance speech, Jamieson spoke about the resilience […] Read more »
Why Biden’s bipartisanship hope is probably already lost
If there was one big message from President Joe Biden’s inaugural address, it was bipartisanship and unity. This theme wasn’t surprising given that inaugurations are often about coming together and Biden’s 2020 campaign emphasized unity over division. Still, the underlying political disagreements that have led to nastiness will almost certainly […] Read more »
The Trump approach to politics may have captured the GOP permanently
… Recent work by political scientists characterizes the struggles within conservative parties as key for democracy. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s book “Let Them Eat Tweets” addresses what they call “the conservative dilemma.” The core of this dilemma is that in modern democracies, the conservative party tends to be more […] Read more »
How many political parties in the U.S.? Numbers suggest four, not two.
A new president, a new Congress, and the same partisan divide, right? Already the familiar laments about the red/blue split in Washington have started, and there are many signs those left/right differences are still alive and well. But as both parties deal with internal tensions, that simple binary color code […] Read more »