Malaise is back. President Barack Obama's situation is getting perilously close to President Jimmy Carter's in 1979.
Americans see little evidence of an economic recovery, more and more workers are giving up hope of ever finding a job, the burden of student loan debt — now larger than credit-card debt — is crushing the hopes of young people, ...

President Barack Obama is in a funk. Americans are coming to see the president as ineffectual. That is a dangerous perception.
Obama's job approval rating is at risk of dropping below 40 percent. Democrats may lose their majority in the Senate this fall. It may be difficult for the president to accomplish anything during his last two years.
In ...

“Washington is broken,” Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, said in September 2008. “My whole campaign has been premised from the start on the idea that we have to fundamentally change how Washington works.”
There are three ways that Washington works: compromise, crisis and clout. Compromise is the way Washington is supposed ...

Can states' rights work for liberals? It has always been a conservative cause. Conservatives use states' rights to resist federal policies that protect civil rights, voting rights and abortion rights. Today, however, federal action is often blocked. So progressive states are passing laws that bypass gridlocked Washington and advance the ...