By Lanny Davis – 10/19/11 – In the 1960s, the late New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (D) used conservative, market-based, competitive forces to renew and create new jobs in the inner-city wasteland of the minority neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. A cynical New York City reporter (a redundant expression) was heard to mutter, […]
By Lanny Davis – 10/12/11 – If ever there were an example of hyper-partisanship, the recent personal attacks challenging the honesty and competence of Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the ATF’s errors in its “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking program should be Exhibit A.
By Lanny Davis – 10/05/11 – I like and respect Grover Norquist. Despite the many matters on which I disagree with him, I respect his consistent, deeply held belief in limited government, which leads him to oppose higher taxes as an enforcement mechanism. Norquist genuinely believes that government is a barrier to helping the poor and […]
By Lanny Davis – 9/21/2011 – It is a mystery: Why do so many Jewish Americans wherever I go express grave concerns about President Obama’s commitment to the Jewish state of Israel? The shocking loss of the Democratic congressional candidate last week in New York’s 9th district — the first time a Republican has won […]
By Lanny Davis – 09/14/11 – On Sept. 6, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz published a letter to “Fellow Citizens” in The New York Times challenging the leadership of both parties in Washington, the president and the Congress, to “put an end to partisan gridlock and, in its place, to set in motion an upward spiral […]
(This appeared in USA Today on August 17, 2011) The time is now: Barack Obama needs to demonstrate a new style of leadership. The president is a basketball player. He knows that sharp elbows can hurt people when they are swung. But they also open up scoring opportunities. America faces two major problems that have […]
By Lanny Davis – 8/4/2011 – Now that the national debt-ceiling deal is done — and liberals like me are unhappy and conservatives, deservedly, have more to cheer about — Thanksgiving 2011 will be about more than good turkey. This is the deadline for the so-called “super” congressional committee of six Democrats and six Republicans […]
By Lanny Davis – 7/27/2011 – A famous 1950 Japanese movie, “Rashomon,” describes a murder from the perspectives of four main characters who were involved in it — including the medium speaking for the murdered man. All four versions differ as to who is the real murderer. The director was asked by the actors: Who […]
By Lanny Davis – 7/13/2011 – The headline in the left-hand lead of The New York Times on Tuesday read: “Obama Grasping Centrist Banner in Debt Impasse.” Wait a minute. Isn’t this the same president the Republican Tea Partiers decried as “socialist”? How could he possibly find himself described as a centrist? Wasn’t that the […]
By Lanny Davis – 07/06/11 – Read the June 27 Newsweek cover story, with a smiling Bill Clinton filling the cover, and the headline “14 Ways to Save America’s Jobs,” and you will be reminded why and how Clinton began his first term as president with a $300 billion deficit and a stagnant economy emerging from […]