Clive Crook

Illiberal democracy seems to be catching on, and Venezuela now looks like a classic case. More »

I've criticized Romney for failing to move the center, but perhaps there's more to his strategy than meets the eye. More »

So much for "a Biden-class knack for sounding stupid," as I remarked about Romney a few hours ago. More »

Why talk about real, big, adult issues when you can deploy canned jokes instead? More »

Contra Jonathan Rauch, I'm pretty sure most progressives don't want to put "class warfare" behind them -- nor should they. More »

Thinking through the moral and strategic implications of the Obama Administration's favorite weapon More »

Scott Sumner helps me to see that he and I are (even) closer on monetary policy than I'd thought. He agrees with a point I made here, that it would be difficult to adopt a level target for NGDP all at once and right now. Crook...points out that level targeting of NGDP might lack credibility in the current environment. I think he's partly right, but I don't see it as a problem, because he's actually considering a hypothetical that is both unlikely to occur, and too… More »

The Republican candidate isn't just politically foolish -- he's wrong on substance, too. More »

The decision to embark on QE3 was right, in my view, if overdue. But perhaps I'm not the only one who's uncertain which way the Fed's strategy is evolving. Is it guided by a coherent account of how monetary policy should be conducted, and if so what exactly is that account? Scott Sumner, the indispensable scholar-blogger who's been campaigning for nominal GDP targeting, sees the Fed's move as a step in that direction. My Atlantic colleague Derek Thompson, getting a… More »

If the president had a stronger challenger, he'd be in deep trouble. As is, it's too soon to tell who will come out of this crisis ahead. More »

Democrats fall easily into talking about public spending as though it's virtuous in its own right -- as though it's something to celebrate. This makes taxpayers nervous. More »

Neither candidate in this race gains points from real policy proposals. More »

The former president scolded Republicans for refusing to compromise with Barack Obama, but they didn't say his party should quit trying. More »

The "fact-checkers" sure didn't start it, but they've made themselves part of the problem in American politics today. More »

In which I chronicle my conversion to binary thinking, maximal indignation, and zero-tolerance for "nuance," civility," or the pretensions of "fact checking." More »

The reintroduction of Mitt Romney was going so well -- until Clint Eastwood stepped on stage. More »

I don't know how much honesty I expected from Paul Ryan's convention speech, but there was less than I'd hoped. More »

Is it better for a politician -- a candidate for the presidency, let's say -- to be liked or respected? Either can work under the right circumstances. In Britain, I remember, Margaret Thatcher was never much liked, but for a long time she was widely respected and that was good enough to keep winning elections. For a long time, until he was despised, Tony Blair (also known as Tony Blur and Phony Tony) was better liked, but precisely because he was so ingratiatin'… More »

Reflecting on Neil Armstrong and the American mission to put a man on the moon, it occurs to me that this astonishing achievement probably altered the course of my life. More »

The big thing Ryan brings to the Romney campaign is a Medicare plan voters don't like -- but his arrival hasn't hurt Romney's prospects. More »