Clive Crook

President Joe Biden is right that American democracy is under threat. Unfortunately, he seems not to know why, or what to do about it. The president’s prime-time speech on Thursday was a typical Biden performance — rambling repetition, theatrical intensity, all soul-baring emphasis and next to…

President Joe Biden’s student-debt plan is bad policy in too many ways to count. But is it also bad politics? Apparently he and his advisers think not, given that he announced this initiative just before the midterm elections. No disrespect to their expertise, but I wonder if they have…

President Joe Biden declares his loyalty to organized labor at every opportunity. His fiscal stimulus, infrastructure plan and numerous executive orders have delivered favors and accommodations. When Apple retail workers in Maryland voted recently to unionize, he said: “I am proud of them. Workers…

Diplomatic efforts to forestall Russia’s threatened attack on Ukraine still aren’t over — and it appears that discussing Ukraine’s future relationship with NATO isn’t quite as unthinkable as the US and its allies have maintained. That’s good. Making a success of any such approach won’t be easy but,…

Over years of following American politics, I’d come to regard Joe Biden as harmless — a back-slapper without strong conviction, given to exaggeration and the occasional outright lie, but no worse than average for a career politician and no threat to the republic. Lately I’ve been wondering if I…

The coronavirus crisis is terrifying not just for its potentially staggering scale, but also for its resistance to rational analysis. It’s forcing governments to make enormously consequential decisions without knowing what the results will be or how alternative courses of action might have played…

Nobody was surprised that the European Union's leaders refused to move the Brexit talks forward at last week's summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Council President Donald Tusk talked of progress and suggested there'd be more at the next gathering in December, but this speck of…