Columns

Whether she likes it or not, Michelle Obama now serves as a public figure for the administration. Should the first lady get a salary for her work?

Bush kept choices about taxes separate from questions of services. Progressives have turned the tables.

Just as the economy faltered, so it will recover. There’s a reason it’s called the “business cycle.”

Obama’s real economic challenge is to minimize exotic securitization and to regulate the shadow banking system.

Reflexive conservative ideology remains a powerful factor in national debate. So it’s crucial–if not for Obama, then for others–to continue to press the case that our present problems have ideological roots.

Though initially tasked with rescuing politics, Barack Obama must transform the economy as well.

Obama will be forced to decide whether reproductive health care is an essential service or merely a political chess piece.

Like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Barack Obama is capable of being a pragmatic progressive.

Consumer spending is unlikely to return to the levels it once reached, and so the economy will not recover until the government finds ways to invest in the common goods we all share.

The president must begin reaching out to Congress to build support on key social issues right away.