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EXCERPT A former senior Bush aide, chief speechwriter Michael Gerson, told POLITICO last night that he supports Obama's decision. "An enormously complex and emotional issue -- but ultimately the right thing to do," Gerson said. "A president is president for every citizen, including every Muslim citizen. Obama is correct that the way to marginalize radicalism is to respect the best traditions of Islam and protect the religious liberty of Muslim Americans. It is radicals who imagine an American war on Islam. But our conflict is with the radicals alone."

<p>WASHINGTON -- Following the passage of Democratic health care reform legislation, President Obama assured the country that it was a "middle-of-the-road, centrist approach" instead of an intrusive, government power grab. But the government seems incapable of resisting the nannying impulse that undermines this claim.</p>

Attorney General Eric Holder is controversial on the left for preserving much of the Bush administration's legal structure for conducting the war on terror. He is controversial on the right for overturning portions of that structure in ways that seem both clueless and reckless. But Holder is the most endangered member of the Obama Cabinet for a different reason: Just about everything he has touched has backfired. The list is oddly impressive. First, there was the decision to release Bush-era interrogation memos and reopen the investigation of CIA interrogators after they had been cleared by career prosecutors. Holder assumed these...

WASHINGTON -- The final outcome of the health care reform debate is uncertain -- who can predict where a writhing eel will land? -- but we have learned a few things already. First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not persuade a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan -- and have largely ceased to try. As of this writing, a president who seems willing to interrupt prime-time programming on the slightest pretext has not scheduled a speech from the Oval Office to make his final health reform appeal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi...

The final outcome of the health-care-reform debate is uncertain -- who can predict where a writhing eel will land? -- but we have learned a few things already. First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not persuade a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan -- and have largely ceased to try.

WASHINGTON -- Just 20 years ago, pro-life and anti-homosexual rights views seemed to overlap entirely. They appeared to be expressions of the same traditionalist moral framework, destined to succeed or fail together as twin pillars of the culture war. But in the years since, the fortunes of these two social stands have dramatically diverged. A May 2009 Gallup poll found that more Americans, for the first time, describe themselves as "pro-life" than "pro-choice." A February 2010 CNN/Time poll found that half of Americans, for the first time, believe that homosexuality is "not a moral issue." This divergence says something about...

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- It is the oddest of unintended airport stopovers -- a short stay at Guantanamo Bay. Helicopter flights for the ship I was trying to reach off the coast of Haiti had been canceled. So I slept in an Air Force tent at Camp Freedom, an arrow's shot from where 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed is imprisoned -- his stay now extended longer than the Obama administration would wish. "Guantanamo" has become a synonym for "prison." Actually, it is a 45-square-mile U.S. Navy base, complete with a McDonald's and a Subway. The Guantanamo Bay Children and Youth...

WASHINGTON -- Former community organizer Barack Obama once seemed to recognize the important role of community institutions. It was among his few credible claims to ideological outreach. On the eve of his inauguration, cameras in tow, Obama took a paint roller to the walls of a D.C. homeless shelter. He retained the White House office that promotes community and faith-based charities. In June, during a speech saluting nonprofits, he said, "Solutions to America's challenges are being developed every day at the grass roots. And government shouldn't be supplanting those efforts, it should be supporting those efforts." But alliteration carries little...

So, a Republican has convincingly won Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat. After opposing health reform. And supporting the waterboarding of terrorists. And appearing as a nude centerfold. In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one. And where Republicans haven’t won a Senate election since 1972. After a high-profile visit by President Obama. Who won the state by 26 points last year. But who now carries no political weight in the bluest state in the country. With vicious, public recriminations starting among Democrats even before election day. Following major losses in Virginia and New Jersey. It means that...

Brit Hume's Tiger Woods Remarks Shine Light On True intolerance By Michael Gerson January 8, 2010 After urging Tiger Woods to accept the "forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith" -- and comparing Buddhism unfavorably to that hope -- journalist Brit Hume insisted he was not proselytizing. In this, he is wrong. His words exemplify proselytization. For this, Hume has been savaged. Post media critic Tom Shales put him in the category of a "sanctimonious busybody" engaged in "telling people what religious beliefs they ought to have." Blogger Andrew Sullivan criticized Hume's "pure sectarianism," which helps abolish...

WASHINGTON -- Like the nearby Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Newseum -- Washington's museum dedicated to journalism -- displays dinosaurs. On a long wall near the entrance, the front pages of newspapers from around the country are electronically posted each morning -- the artifacts of a declining industry. Inside, the high-tech exhibits are nostalgic for a lower-tech time when banner headlines and network news summarized the emotions and exposed the scandals of the nation. Lindbergh Lands Safely. One Small Step. Nixon Resigns. Cronkite removes his glasses to announce President Kennedy's death at 1 p.m., Central Standard Time. Behind...

Today, national Democrats are trying their best to dismiss missing limbs as flesh wounds. It is their job. But they are in deep trouble if they believe their own spin. Compared to 12 months ago, 24 percent more Virginians voted Republican at the top of the ticket. Independents broke decisively against Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey. If this is not a backlash against Democrats, then who, exactly, was being lashed? These losses, for the most part, don’t seem to be a personal repudiation of the president. But they highlight a political fact -- the political fact of the last...

R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, seems poised to lose the jewel in President Obama's political crown. In November 2008, Obama was the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to win the electoral votes of the Commonwealth. Obama's victory was a case study in how he might transform American politics, building an alliance of new voters and suburban Southerners to defeat Republicans at the heart of their power. A year later, the Virginia governor's race displays a Democratic promise gone crusty and stale. The Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell, threatens to turn a lead into a rout. Democratic leaders,...

LANDOVER, Md. – The evangelical movement is at a “head-snapping” generational change with younger evangelicals “revolting” against the tone of the Christian Right, says a prominent religious scholar. Across the nation, young evangelicals are naming Rick Warren or Bono as their role model for social engagement, rather than a Christian Right leader, says Michael Gerson, senior research fellow in the Center on Faith & International Affairs at the Institute for Global Engagement. Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forrest, Calif., is known for mobilizing evangelical churches in the battle against HIV/AID in Africa, while U2 frontman Bono is one...

<p>I’ve refrained from commenting on President Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly because the speech made me angry.</p> <p>But this address grows more disturbing on further reading. Some major presidential speeches deserve to be remembered, quoted and celebrated. Some deserve to be forgotten. A few deserve to be remembered and criticized, because they dishonor the history of presidential rhetoric.</p>

If history is a guide, presidents who devote a joint session of Congress to a single domestic issue gain a bump. The drama of taking the center stage of American politics increases both attention and support. President Carter’s 1977 energy speech resulted in a nine-point rise in the percentage of Americans who thought the nation had a serious energy problem. After President Clinton delivered his health care joint session in 1993, 79 percent of Americans agreed that the health care system needed fundamental changes or should be “completely rebuilt.” Neither speech, however, changed the fundamental political dynamic in Congress. And...

WASHINGTON -- President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It's our system. I like it." Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride. But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic...

President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It's our system. I like it." Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride. But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic issue is...

WASHINGTON -- We are seeing the stirrings of a cross-ideological revolt against American military involvement in Afghanistan. On the right, some who accepted the Cold War as a great moral cause view the war on terror as a bother -- even as a dangerous excuse for global social engineering. Such tinkering, the argument goes, is particularly doomed in Afghanistan, brimming with warlords both primitive and invincible. And because Afghanistan is now Barack Obama's war, no partisan motive remains to support it. On the left, some view every conceivable war as a "war of choice" that should never be chosen. With...

The late-night hotel desk clerk in Salem, Va., -- after my long drive from Washington down the Shenandoah Valley -- wanted to talk political philosophy. He intended to support Republican Bob McDonnell for governor in November on Madisonian grounds. "I vote both parties, but I don't want anyone having all the control." Obama, in his view, needed to be checked and balanced. This is the durable tendency of Virginia politics. Since 1977, the political party that has won the presidency has, in every case, lost the Virginia governorship in the next election. This pattern of cussedness is holding, at least...