Articles filed under Gerson, Michael

• When healers are the targets Dec 27, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: In June, a Taliban warlord declared, "Polio drops will be banned in North Waziristan" until American drone strikes cease. It is a strategy both cruel and typical: the intentional infliction of paralysis on Pakistani children as a negotiating ploy.
  

   

• Step 1: Declare we will not accept this Dec 20, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: It is the primary purpose of government to protect the innocent from the evil. At Newtown, Conn., none could be more innocent; none could be more evil.
  

   

• Dispelling the second-term blues Dec 16, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Our politics moves from budget showdown to cultural conflict to trivial controversy while carefully avoiding the greatest single threat to the unity of America: the vast, increasing segregation of young, African-American men and boys from the promise of their country.
  

   

• The awkward conversation Dec 12, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Part of the art of the deal is giving your opponent a soft place to land. Seeing no soft places, Republicans are increasingly concluding that Obama doesn't want a deal.
  

   

• President Obama’s dangerous overreach Dec 5, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: President Obama, prone to overestimate his own capacity at communication, is now on the verge of serious overreach in two areas.
  

   

• Austerity and morality Dec 2, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The ultimate challenge of austerity politics is to reduce the size of the government without dishonoring the values of the nation.
  

   

• Politics with a purpose Nov 28, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The union would be well served today by herding all 535 of its legislators into a darkened theater for a screening of "Lincoln." The issues they face — from public debt to immigration — are less momentous than slavery, but momentous enough for discomfort.
  

   

• Making capitalism work for all Nov 21, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The traditional, Republican, pro-business agenda is necessary, but it is does not adequately grapple with these human needs — the prerequisites for personal prosperity.
  

   

• The toxic alliance Nov 18, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The Catholic Church — a politically and ethnically sprawling institution — has no natural home on the American ideological spectrum. Neither major party combines moral conservatism with a passion for social justice.
  

   

• Reconstructing the GOP Nov 12, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: This is the conservative task over the next few years: Not the preservation of a rigid ideology but the reconstruction of a political appeal along improved but principled lines.
  

   

• A campaign scenario vindicated Nov 5, 2012 12:00 AM
  Colunist Michael Gerson: Obama win — with an assist by Ohio — would vindicate the president's campaign game plan. But the Schoen/Caddell prediction still holds: Obama will have left the nation divided, disillusioned and less governable.
  

   

• An appeal to America’s heart Oct 29, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Paul Ryan's recent speech at Cleveland State University was an important part of the Romney campaign's "go large" strategy — a presentation on political philosophy amid the normal stump speeches. Following a Republican primary season heavy on Tea Party rhetoric and a GOP convention light on substance, Ryan outlined a conservative vision of the common good.
  

   

• Relentlessly reassuring Romney Oct 23, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: "The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull," said Dean Acheson. During the final presidential debate, Mitt Romney was every bit the statesman.
  

   

• Liberalism’s shrinking agenda Oct 19, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: As a conservative, I can't endorse every policy of the Great Society — some were essential, others counterproductive. But America was better off because liberals called attention to those in the dawn, the twilight and the shadows of life. And American politics is worse off because liberalism has become a shadow of its former self.
  

   

• At war with no leader Oct 15, 2012 12:00 AM
  By Michael Gerson: This is an administration that instinctively turns to any artifice — any desperate, dubious claim — rather than talk about an ongoing, escalating global conflict with radical Islamist groups.
  

   

• Romney: Still dominating the debate Oct 10, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Mitt Romney's stump speech now features populist themes. Romney has discovered his inner centrist.
  

   

• Going for exceptional Oct 4, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Mitt Romney prepared for the debate intensely, and it showed — which means it didn’t show. President Obama had not debated in years, and it also showed.
  

   

• Still leaving our kids behind Oct 1, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The new movie “Won’t Back Down” is to public education what Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was to the meatpacking industry — a needed spotlight, but not for the squeamish.
  

   

• Missing an opening Sep 26, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The Republican embrace of one portion of the conservative movement — immigration opponents — will eventually deprive every other element of conservatism (pro-defense, pro-life, pro-business) of national influence.
  

   

• Standing up for teachers Sep 19, 2012 12:00 AM
  Columnist Eugene Robinson: Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it's time to stop demonizing them.