Recent Blog Posts

Shortly after being declared the winner, the next president will claim a mandate to govern.   His supporters will demand that his mandate be honored.  Both misread American politics and the Constitution.   

Much of our discourse as a nation seems to be the language of not falling, in a dangerous world without a safety net.  But we may find that trying to prevent disaster may serve us less well than trying to imagine success.

Every candidate insists that he or she “represents the people.” Why, then, is there such a disconnect between what elected representatives do and what Americans who are polled say they expect of government?

The notion of geographically isolated election districts, each with its own interests and a representative chosen freely by the people, was central to the republican model created by the Constitution.  It is worth asking if some of the core assumptions of that model, especially the idea that large concentrations of wealth could not control public policy, still hold.

The Tea Party is on to something in America, and that this something is important to understand.  The Tea Party may just be the canary in the coal mine, the harbinger of a looming explosion. 

In our lives, the political differences that separated Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton still survive. Though both their philosophies shape how we govern ourselves, they exist as uneasy, conjoined twins. We should be thankful.