Us politics

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Stop dreaming of Leo McGarry

The West Wing has an amazing hold over Fleet Street. The TV series has not only taught a generation of British reporters about US politics but even influenced the way that they see the workings of Westminster. Every time centre-right writers think David Cameron is seen as having made a mistake – mistreated his back-benchers, hired a personal photographer or made a foreign policy gaffe – they trot out the same refrain: No 10 needs a powerful Leo McGarry-type chief of staff who can bring the various parts of the operation together from Steve Hilton’s work to Andy Coulson’ operation. An enforcer, a puller-togetherer. I have three arguments against a

Peter Hoskin

Ten highlights from the Bush serialisation

Number 43 is back. And judging by his interview (£) with the Times editor James Harding – and that paper’s serialisation (£) of his memoirs – he is standing defiant. As Bush himself puts it to his critics, “I ask those people to read the book. I understand that the filter can be harsh. But I think people will see someone who deliberated carefully on key issues, someone who did not sell his soul for politics, that he was willing to stand on principle and people can draw their own conclusions.” “The book” is out tomorrow, so we will be able to draw our own conclusions then. But, in the

Monday

James Forsyth

Bush’s Indian legacy

It is appropriate that the US president will be in India on the day that President Bush’s memoirs are published. For President Bush transformed the relations between these two countries, making a strategic alliance possible. This will turn out to be one of Bush’s most important legacies. A strong US-India relationship is vital if this century is going to be one that sees democracy advance. An alliance between the US and India would act as an effective check on China’s attempts to assert its power in Asia. However, I suspect that, for obvious and understandable reasons, most of the coverage of Bush’s memoirs will focus on his comments on 9/11

Thursday

Matthew Elliott

Lessons from the midterms for the AV referendum

Amid all the excitement of the US midterms, a small, local ballot took place which has important lessons for the UK’s referendum on the Alternative Vote – due to take place six months on Friday. Like us, America uses the straightforward first-past-the-post voting system for its thousands of elected offices – from local school boards and sheriffs to races for governors’ mansions and the White House itself. Their well-established primary system also gives voters a direct say in who the candidates should be – taking power away from the parties and making politicians more responsive to the demands of their local electorate. Because US politics is dominated by two parties,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In this week’s Spectator

The latest edition of The Spectator is now out on iPad (click here for more info) and the newsagents (or £2, posted direct today). I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in a small selection of the goodies we have in store.   1.  Andrew Neil on the conservative comeback in America. He spent the summer shadowing the Tea Party, and gives the best analysis you’ll read on what just happened – and what lies ahead. (You can read it here.) The Sunday Times’ Christina Lamb travelled across Nevada and California with the Tea Partiers, and tells tales from the campaign bus (one being that they only serve coffee). And Daniel

Deroy Murdock

The rise of Marco Rubio

Of all the good news that the American Right is savouring at the moment, Marco Rubio’s victory must be near the top. Rubio won 49 percent of Florida’s vote, defeating Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek (20 percent) and (at 30 percent) Governor Charlie Crist, a frightfully ambitious former Republican, turned independent, who reportedly flirted with joining the Senate Democratic caucus, if elected. Rubio, a rising conservative star, promises to glow like the Sunshine State that he will represent.   For years, Republicans have been chided — rather unfairly — as the party of old, bald white men. Rubio undermines this accusation. Just 39 years old, Rubio exudes warmth and good humour.

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Obama’s Hurt Locker

The backlash that Barack Obama is now experiencing seemed almost impossible when the neophyte senator swept into the White House. It was, in fact, predicted by some. In 2007 when Barack Obama was but an ambitious Illinois senator, American defence expert Kori Shake penned an essay called the Coming Crisis of High Expectations. It was about how the EU and the US would inevitably slide apart – but its message was broader. Beware of exorbitant expectations, she seemed to be saying. Reality hurts. How much it hurts will become clear today. It looks like a House of Representatives-sized hurt but not a Senate-shaped one. Harry Reid clung on to his

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Republicans take control of the House, Democrats cling on in Senate

The Democrats have lost control of the House of Representatives. The Republican party looks to have picked up more than 60 seats in the lower house, slightly more than they were expected to, and they will have a comfortable majority there. The Democrats have lost six seats in the Senate but held onto their majority in the upper chamber. These results are a blow to President Obama. The loss of the Democratic majority in the House will force him to compromise to get things done.  The results do seem to be a rejection of his agenda, 56 percent of voters in the exit poll felt that government is now doing

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Early signs are that it will be a good night for the Republicans and an awful one for Obama and his agenda

It is early in the night but things are looking good for the Republicans. Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American son of a bartender, has won his Senate race in Florida at a canter and confirmed his status as a rising star in the party. Rand Paul, a committed libertarian, has won in Kentucky. While it looks like the Republicans have also won in the Senate races in Arkansas, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Although, it is worth noting that Christine O’Donnell—the eccentric Tea Party backed candidate—lost in Delaware in a contest that one would expect the Republicans to win in these circumstances. In the House, the Republicans seem almost certain to gain

Tuesday

Piotr Brzezinski

California Dreamin’

Amidst the Democrats’ doom and gloom over the US midterm elections, there is one race that will give Obama hope, and it is in the world’s 8th largest economy: California. The state’s once and would-be future Governor, Jerry Brown, looks set for a comfortable win over Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay. Recent polls have put Brown, a career Democratic politician, ahead by nearly double-digit figures.  Brown leads despite the broader anti-insider, anti-Democrat wave; despite Whitman’s $141m campaign spend; despite having earned the nickname ‘Governor Moonbeam’ when last running the state; and despite gaffes like accusing Bill Clinton of lying not long after he appeared at a pro-Brown rally; 

Monday

James Forsyth

A conservative revival in the States

Election night two years ago was not a good night for the GOP. Not only had it lost the White House but also all those predictions about how social trends and demographics were making America more Democrat appeared to be coming true.  In the south, Virginia and North Carolina shifted to the Democratic column. In the mid-West, Indiana went for the Democratic candidates for the first time since 1964. I was watching the results come in that night with an informal adviser to the McCain campaign and that evening it was hard to see how the Republicans could get to 270 in future with the upper south moving into swing

Saturday

James Forsyth

Reading the Tea Party

Copyright BBC Tea Party America with Andrew Neil, Renegade Pictures for the BBC This Tuesday we will find out the electoral strength of the Tea Party, the insurgent political movement that has already toppled several favourites of the Republican Establishment. From this side of the Atlantic, it has been hard to get a handle on the Tea Party. Does it represent a right turn in US politics or is it just a rag-tag group whose policies and candidates are just too extreme to be electable? To answer this question, Andrew Neil headed to the States this summer; travelling to the states where the Tea Party has made the most impact.

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Barack Obama: suspicious packages contained explosives

The terror scare surrounding two planes in the UK’s East Midlands Airport and Dubai is now, officially, serious. In a statement this evening, Barack Obama has confirmed that packages on both aircraft contained explosive devices. The packages were sent from Yemen, and were headed for synagogues in Chicago. As Obama put it, this is a “credible terrorist threat” against the US. There is little detail yet, although the Yemeni connection suggests that this is an al-Qaeda plot. And the White House is not ruling out the grim possibility that there are more packages out there. Sadly, Islamist terror is casting its shadow across the West once again.

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: The Cuban Missile Crisis

48 years ago this week, the Cuban Missile Crisis came to an end. Here are the two Spectator leading articles that bookended our coverage of those thirteen momentous days in October: Trial of strength, The Spectator, 26 October, 1962 The West faces a grave situation. It would be absurd to think that the showdown on Cuba is only a Soviet-American affair. Rather it is the testing-ground of the determination of the freedom-loving peoples to defend themselves – one selected by Russia with a view to causing as much confusion as possible in the countries of the Atlantic Alliance and the uncommitted States. We notice one crucial point at once. The

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Eat your heart out, Fukuyama

Russia and Nato are now allies, or birds of a feather at least. The Independent reports that the twentieth century’s opposed spheres will work together for stability in Afghanistan. The attendant irony is blissful. Two years ago, machismo raged between Nato and Russia over Georgia. Why the sudden accord? There are two schools of thought, both relating to the East’s inexorable rise. Russia can no longer determine Central Asia of its own accord: China co-opted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a long-time pillar of Russian power in Asia, to condemn Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – a sign, to Russian eyes at least, of China’s creeping influence in Central

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’

David Cameron’s cuts agenda is winning him some unusual praise from the American hard Right — from the sort of people the British political class considers beyond the pale. For instance, Pat Buchanan, the former presidential candidate and hardliner extraordinaire, is so impressed by Britain’s austerity measures that he has affectionately labelled Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’. He writes, ‘Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes — government-induced deficits are the right remedy for recessions — Cameron has bet his own and his party’s future on the new austerity. He is making Maggie Thatcher look like Tip O’Neill.’ I wonder how Steve Hilton would feel about this particular bit of

Saturday

David Blackburn

The insidious fingers of Iran are all over Iraq

Wikileaks is the story of the day. The Guardian has extensive coverage of unsubstantiated allegations made by unnamed Iraqis. That is not to prejudge the revelations, just to provide balance against the sensational headlines before proper investigations called for by the UN. In addition to the alleged atrocities and cover-ups, Wikileaks’ disclosures support what Blair and Bush said and maintain: Iran incited dissidence to exploit instability. In fact, it is still doing so, despite the Obama administration’s protests to the contrary. The New York Times has eviscerated Biden and Obama this morning. The Telegraph’s Toby Harnden has the best summary of the unfolding debate: ‘It seems to me that the

Thursday

James Forsyth

Obama 2.0

The piece in the New York Times magazine this weekend on the Obama presidency illustrates how far he has fallen. A large chunk of it is devoted to whether or not he can win re-election, something that most of his supporters used to take for granted.  Significantly, the Obama White House itself is admitting that things could have been done better: “While proud of his record, Obama has already begun thinking about what went wrong — and what he needs to do to change course for the next two years. He has spent what one aide called “a lot of time talking about Obama 2.0” with his new interim chief

Saturday

David Blackburn

The X-Factor

Bob Woodwood could write a cookbook and it would be a bestseller, but Obama’s Wars, his latest book, will wreak quiet havoc beyond bookshops because Afghanistan already lours over Obama’s presidency. 9 years into the conflict and the limits of victory have been re-defined in the Taliban’s favour. The spat between the White Hosue and Stanley McCrystal has been replaced by further controversy with Petraeus over the withdrawal strategy. Woodward’s book is impartial, but he has given an acidic interview to the Sunday Telegraph where he implies that, when it comes to war, Obama doesn’t have the ‘x-factor’. The inherent contradiction between America’s current full engagement and proclaimed imminent withdrawal

Tuesday

David Blackburn

‘It’s a bit of a riddle’

Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld was right: the Coalition should not have gone for the ‘hard slog’ in Afghanistan (or Iraq). Hindsight suggests that Rumsfeld had foresight in his desire that a shock and awe campaign be followed by a light presence and eventual withdrawal – the blood baths that have ensued from intense deployment might have been avoided.  I hope the two times Secretary for Defence Secrte addresses those issues in his memoir, Known and Unknown, due to be published in January three months after Bush’s. Another thing I wouldn’t mind clearing up, is what the hell he meant by this: