Presidential ‘fast starts’ come with electoral risk

“President Donald Trump is off to a fast start,” I wrote in a Jan. 30, 2017, column for Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, before warning that the same “aggressiveness could produce the same sort of reaction that Barack Obama’s fast start did in 2009: It could lead to a […] Read more »

Biden’s plea for masks will fail. Blame political polarization.

Among the immediate measures to combat a fourth wave of coronavirus cases, wearing masks should be considered the least controversial. … Yet President Biden’s recent plea for people to wear masks — at least until the ongoing vaccination drive results in herd immunity — is likely to be ignored by […] Read more »

Why Biden is making more progress on economic than social issues

The magnitude of the economic proposals that President Joe Biden may pass through Congress this year is drawing legitimate comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. But Biden simultaneously faces the prospect that almost all of his legislative initiatives revolving around social, cultural and […] Read more »