President Obama, the master of pandering to a political base, could learn a thing or two from Yasuhiro Sonoda! The battle cry of the Obama administration leading into the 2012 presidential election is to do anything and say everything that the leadership feels might appeal to their quickly vanishing political base. Whether it is political or legislative trickery that allows them to invoke the phra...

Obama announces U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan Pandering to your political base during an election cycle is one helluva way to run a war and risk American lives! How Europe and I interpret the President's speech While taking a swipe at former President Bush and the war in Iraq, President Obama announced the politically expedient withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan who had bee...

Barack Obama, US president, has lost control of the political narrative and needs to make more use of his cabinet in order to regain it, says John Podesta, the man who headed the president's transition team

Last night I watched most of a discussion programme "chaired" (I'll get to that) by Kirsty Wark on BBC2 television, about President Obama and how he is doing. It was something called The Review Show. Three things struck me about this show. First, the BBC is finally acknowledging that President Obama is in some political trouble. This is refreshing. But second, the dominant explanations of why...

The Meanings of Victory [col. writ. 11/04/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal The count has been called and Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. has become the 44th President of the United States of America. But, in truth, history will record him as #1 - the first African-American president. It is undeniable that this is a singular political achievement, a work of impressive political skill, and (we must admit)...

President Obama just finished speaking at West Point..and now it's time to look at what he actually had to say. The first part of the speech,predictably,was political partisan boiler plate. It dealt with Obama's familiar tactic of blaming the Bush Administration for concentrating resources on Iraq and excusing President Obama's own time lag in dealing with Afghanistan. This in itsel...

By Sally McNamara In terms of heavyweight battles, political bouts come no bigger than former US Vice President Dick Cheney taking on President Barack Obama in Washington last week, with regard to national security issues. In a piece or pure...

Heading into today's Florida Primary, the picture below depicts President Obama reflecting on his potential opponents in the 2012 presidential election! And, for all of you political scientists out there, this is a perfect although not very timely lesson in what two flawed candidates should not be doing! In what can only be described as a disgusting display of me-first politics, Mitt Romney a...

Civilized people have been shocked to see President Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his partisan thugs murder the political opposition, threaten and beat journalists, and drive white farmers off their own land. But that kind of political thuggery may not be quite so foreign as many think. In what is coming to be known as "dealergate," many are beginning to suspect that anti-Obama political contributions pl...

Over the last few days much has been of the fact that President Obama may be doing too much, with senior Republicans, billionaire investor Warren Buffet, political commentator and veteran presidential adviser David Gergen all crying out that the President should be making the economy his priority. It’s been fifty days since Barack Obama became the