Above the Fold. President Obama got himself into hot water this week when he was overhead telling Russian president Dmitri Medvedev he would have “more flexibility” on issues like missile defense after the November election and that incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin should give him “space.” The incident added to a long list of presidential and vice presidential “open mic” gaffes. During a sound-check before a 1984 radio interview, Ronald Reagan warmed up by saying,  “My fellow Americans, I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” That got people’s hearts pounding. Vice President Biden famously called the signing of Obama’s health-care bill in 2010 “a big f***ing deal.” Parents of young children were not pleased. Read more »

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the United States’ upcoming presidency of the UN Security Council; World Bank president nominee Dr. Jim Yong Kim’s world “listening tour;” and Myanmar’s by-elections. Read more »

Above the Fold. Washington, DC, owes a huge debt of gratitude to Tokyo. It was one hundred years ago next Tuesday that Japan’s largest city gave our nation’s capital 3,000 cherry trees to plant along the banks of the Tidal Basin. (No, George Washington did not plant them, and no, he did not cut down any cherry trees. That story was invented by Parson Mason Weems who wrote a not-quite-accurate biography of Washington shortly after America’s greatest president died.) First lady Helen Taft and Viscountess Chinda, the wife of the Japanese Ambassador, planted the first two trees. Thanks to the splendid caretaking of the National Park Service, the trees have thrived. Seeing them in full bloom brings to mind the lovely words that Henry Wadworth Longfellow wrote long ago: Read more »

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the Arab League summit in Baghdad; President Obama’s visit to the Denuclearized Military Zone (DMZ) on the Korean Peninsula as part of his visit to the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul; the presidential election run-off in Senegal; and the Pope’s trip to Cuba. Read more »

I had the great pleasure to spend the past two days at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  (Oskee Wow Wow!) To walk the Illinois campus is to see American education at its best. Whether it’s the work being done at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on electronic nanostructures, or the high-end software being developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, or the efforts by the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Program to turn biomass into fuel, to name just a few outstanding research initiatives underway at Illinois, it’s easy to see how education improves our lives, creates jobs, and keeps the United States competitive. Read more »

Above the Fold.  The tragic news that a U.S. Army sergeant slaughtered sixteen Afghans this week has scrambled the debate over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Afghan president Hamid Karzai has demanded that the United States agree to pull back its troops to bases in Afghanistan by next year. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have discovered doubts about the wisdom of staying the course in Afghanistan.The public’s dissatisfaction with the war has hardened. A Gallup poll out this week found that 50 percent of Americans want Washington to speed up its withdrawal from Afghanistan; only 21 percent say stay the course. Read more »

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the UN Security Council debates on Iran and Afghanistan, as well as where Greece stands after receiving another bailout. Read more »