Barack obama

Congressman Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin) has not courted much of a profile outside America, so I doubt many CoffeeHousers will be familiar with him. But rest assured: he is an excellent choice for vice-president. Here's why. The 42-year-old is not a neophyte, having served in the House of Representatives for 13 years. He has cross-party appeal: he represents a Democratic district that he nonetheless has won comfortably on seven occasions. Ryan knows how to listen to and speak to Democrats. This is a priceless skill for a Republican running for the second highest office in the land. Two traits define him: his striking command of public policy (especially on fiscal matters) and his eloquence. He can communicate free-market solutions with appeal and without jargon.

Tim Stanley says Mitt Romney's speech to the NAACP's annual convention was his campaign's first ‘moment of magic’. Up to a point. It's true, as Stanley observes, that Republicans once had a better record on civil rights than Democrats (it was once the Party of Lincoln after all). True too that Mitt's father George, governor of Michigan, was one of those northern Republicans who agitated for decency before it was popular or politically-expedient to do so. Romney has a story to tell here and it's not a bad tale either. The speech had two chief aims. First, Romney wins pundit-points for being ‘brave’ enough to speak to a largely-hostile audience. Secondly, when it comes to votes Romney wasn't really looking for black votes.

Barack Obama’s latest email appeal for campaign funds – entitled 'we could lose if this continues' - doesn’t seem altogether sincere. The president’s re-election team wants more money, of course – who doesn’t? – and they must be concerned by the fact that Romney and his plutocratic committees are beating them in the fund-raising stakes. As Obama says, 'we can win a race in which the other side spends more than we do. But not this much more'. Yet anyone with half a brain can see what Obama and his strategists are trying to say (again): Romney is a super-rich agent of the super-rich. He represents big business, not ordinary Americans. He is, as one White House adviser put it, trying to 'purchase the White House'. But, hang on.

Like the French Revolution it remains much too soon to say what the consequences of the United States Supreme Court's decision to uphold Obamacare will be. Except this: defeat would surely have been a catastrophe for Mr Obama. The more one considers John Roberts' pivotal argument, however, the more it seems as cunning as it is undoubtedly neat. There is something for everyone in his judgement and something for everyone to fear too. Roberts, who appears to have changed his mind, produced an elegant solution: the federal government lacks the power to force citizens to purchase health insurance but it may tax them if they don't. So Obamacare survives and American liberals (not to be confused with, you know, proper liberals) may postpose their jihad against the court.

The US Supreme Court's decision to uphold 'Obamacare' and the so-called 'individual mandate' will have brought a little relief to President Obama. If his administration's hardest-fought legislative victory had been struck down by the high court, the president's admirers would have started to wonder whether he had achieved anything at all. But Obama and the Democrats will know that their healthcare battle is far from won. Republicans have pledged to carry on trying to repeal 'Obamacare' in its entirety. And there are bound to be all sorts of complicated and tedious state-by-state legal challenges over various technicalities before the most of the law is brought into force in 2014.  And anyway, the ruling might have dire implications for Obama's re-election campaign.

In this week's issue, the great Robert Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. makes a bold prediction about the upcoming American presidential elections: ‘The Republican nominee will come out of the Republican convention in August with a full head of steam. Boosted by years of growing strength and aided by the independents' concern for Obama's huge deficits and slow growth, he will barrel through the autumn and on to victory in November. Obama will soon be back in Blue Island Illinois, creating his own presidential museum.’ Don't believe him? Look at the economy. Only a few months ago, America's financial health seemed to be improving. Team Obama was lecturing European conservatives about the limits of austerity. Not anymore. American unemployment is back up.

Bill Clinton — the man who was such a thorn in Barack Obama's side during the 2008 Democratic primaries — has become one of the current President's most important supporters this time around. All the more significant, then, that Clinton has added his name to the list of Democrats who have voiced concern at one of Team Obama's attacks on Mitt Romney. For a while now, the Obama campaign has been trying to make Romney's investment career at Bain Capital, which he founded, as a reason for voters not to back the presumptive Republican nominee. They've hit him with the stories of workers who lost their jobs at companies taken over by Bain — including this powerful video about steel workers in Kansas City.

When Obama brilliantly skewered Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last year, you might’ve thought the billionaire would slink off the political field. But, to the great glee of Team Obama, ‘The Donald’ is still keen to keep playing. Ever since Trump’s endorsement of Mitt Romney back in February, the Democrats have been attacking Romney by association (‘They both like firing people’, they said, tying Romney’s ‘I like being able to fire people’ gaffe to Trump’s famous Apprentice catchphrase).