The Daily Beast

President Obama's budget speech was one part Obama, one part Clinton, one part China. The Obama part came at the end. It was a gesture toward recapturing the image he enjoyed between 2004 and 2008: As the guy who didn't hate and wasn't hated, the guy who could help red and blue America get along. "This sense of responsibility—to each other and to our country—this isn't a partisan feeling," Obama declared. "It isn't a Democratic or a Republican idea. It's patriotism."

A decade ago this August, veteran New York City cop Joseph Gray went to a Brooklyn strip club, drank himself silly, and then got into his burgundy van and accidentally smashed into and killed three people, including a pregnant 24-year-old woman and her 4-year-old son, Andy. Twelve hours later, the undelivered child had died, too. Gray pleaded with the judge for leniency, but in her words, barreling down the street drunk, in a thousand-pound van, was like "waving a loaded gun around a crowded room." Gray was given the maximum of five to 15 years for second-degree manslaughter.

During the cold war, conspiracy theorists would sometimes suggest that the American and Soviet militaries were secretly in cahoots. Each needed its civilian overlords to keep the money flowing, and to make that happen, each needed the other to appear menacing. "Hey Vasily, we've got a difficult budget vote coming up. Would you mind sending a sub into the Persian Gulf?" "No worries, Rick, and we're super-pumped about your big war game next spring." Or something like that.

With Barack Obama’s announcement that he’s running for reelection, the 2012 campaign has officially begun. I’m already bored.

Some commentators love the Libya war; others hate it. But most agree that it's profoundly unnatural that we were pushed into it by… France. Welcome to the post-American world. In the age we're entering, most of the time, the choice will no longer be between humanitarian interventions controlled by the United States and humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead. The choice will be between humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead and no humanitarian interventions at all.

Republicans like to claim that Democrats are the "European" party: the party that wants a big welfare state, believes in international law, and doesn't think America is an exceptional nation. But I've noticed a certain Europeanification of the GOP of late, as regard to Muslims. For years, Republicans have explained that their brand of patriotism has nothing to do with blood and soil.

The past few weeks have been clarifying. Ever since he took office, the press has been calling Barack Obama a ruthless realist who lacks the passion for democracy and liberty of his predecessor, George W. Bush. The fact that Bush's war on terror provided a pretext for all manner of tyrants to crack down on their political opponents or that the Bush administration itself tortured terror suspects rarely intruded on the narrative.

New governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and New York are making headlines by launching front assaults on public employee unions. They argue that there's no way to balance the budget without taking on government workers

California and its new governor appear to think differently.

Republicans love hallowing Ronald Reagan’s name. Too bad they know so little about the guy.

Last week in Hawaii, the Republican National Committee almost passed a resolution named after the Gipper. “Whereas President Ronald Reagan believed that the Republican Party should support and espouse conservative principles and public policies,” it declared, only candidates who complied with eight of 10 “Reaganite” principles would be eligible for party funds.

If there is any silver-lining from the inevitable fall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, it should be that so many of the so-called rules governing Western thinking about the Middle East can be jettisoned as well.