Clive Crook

Overall a good result, and a refreshingly intelligible rationale from Chief Justice Roberts More »

The Affordable Care Act isn't well-liked -- because, inexplicably, the administration has made no effort to sell it. More »

Chris Christie is impossible to dislike, and Bruce Springsteen owes him a beer. More »

I welcome Obama's decision on immigration. Pursuing and deporting illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as children is inhumane. If the US stands for something, it should never sink so low. Out and out lawlessness, Charles Krauthammer called the decision. America is supposed to be a nation of laws. Yes, when it chooses to be. A settled, intelligent and indisputably legitimate immigration policy is needed. But there's no sign of it. In the meantime,… More »

I would have been less disappointed with Obama's Cleveland speech if it hadn't been trailed so elaborately as a big event. More »

The proposal for eurobonds with conditions is no silver bullet, but still I think Europe's best way out of the present mess. More »

Democrats have two excuses: the Republicans' enormous money advantage, and the sense among many voters that the election should not have been called in the first place. More »

Speaking of snobbery and rednecks and so forth, I enjoyed this piece by Chris Pepus from In These Times: "What's the Matter with Bill Maher?" More »

He's backing Democrat Tom Barrett all the way. It could make all the difference. More »

Friday's jobs numbers and Bill Clinton's comment about Romney's "sterling" work in private equity don't cause me to revise my opinion that Obama is losing More »

I followed the link from Greg Mankiw to a new blog by University of Michigan professor Miles Kimball. It looks promising: The first few posts are really good, I think. But what struck me is the blog's title: Supply-Side Liberal. I love that. Why "supply-side liberal"? Kimball explains: Among the enduring dilemmas of economic policy the most important is the conflict between efficiency and equity. In calling myself a supply-sider I am saying that I believe the harm… More »

The Hill reports that the Obama campaign is struggling to come up with a good campaign theme. How about "The Audacity of Despair"? More »

Further to my previous post, here's a novel take on Greece's options by Jacob Funk Kirkegaard at the Peterson Institute. More »

European Union leaders are saying they want the new election in Greece scheduled for June 17th to be a referendum on whether the country will (a) remain part of the euro area, and (b) meet their conditions for EU support in that effort. All concerned will be lucky if the issue has not been resolved before then--by a disorderly Greek exit from the currency system, and what follows. This weekend may be the last chance to intervene to stop that disastrous outcome. If… More »

As always Bill Galston and John Cassidy are well worth reading. In interesting new commentaries on the election, both think Obama has the edge, while emphasizing that it might be a close thing and warning Democrats against complacency. I hesitate to put my instincts up against their careful analyses, but if the election were tomorrow and I was forced to put money on one of the candidates, I'd say Romney. I also feel that unless something new and dramatic… More »

Remembering a journalist whose ambition was to do his job as well as he could, without making a great fuss about it More »

For as long as I can remember (which is a long time), the alpha and omega of UK election analysis has been the Swingometer. This is a BBC graphic that translates the shift in the national two-party vote--the swing--into parliamentary seats won and lost: a pendulum that sweeps across a list of constituencies ordered by size of the two-party majority. So simple. I recall Peter Snow gyrating idiotically beside ever more elaborately animated versions of this concept,… More »

As a Brit from a working-class family, raised in a northern working-class town, who attended (at taxpayer expense) a fine quasi-private school and then went to Oxford, I'm interested in snobbery. It's a trait I despise. I've seen plenty of it in my time, though there's far less in Britain than there used to be. As a young man I aspired to live and work in the US because I wanted to be part of a thriving classless society. Of course that was naive. America is not a… More »

The continuing argument about plutocrats who want to be taxed more heavily is puzzling to me. It seems to cause confusion where there really shouldn't be any. There are those who say: If Warren Buffett wants to pay more tax, he should shut up and just send a check to the IRS. And there are those who find that idea ridiculous and irrelevant: Buffett's saying the tax code is unfair, and he can't put that right by sending in a donation. Two of The Economists' bloggers… More »

The McKinsey Global Institute has just published a memo on the changing character of global trade. Trading myths: Addressing misconceptions about trade, jobs and competitiveness. The misconceptions aren't straw men. The report dispels a lot of confusion about "offshoring" and is well worth reading. Myth 1: Mature economies are losing out to emerging markets in trade and thus facing increasing trade deficits. In fact the balance of trade between advanced and… More »