The Opinion Blog

Back to basics the key to government repair

From the morning email ... Lee Hamilon says fixing government is simple; return to constitutional principles:

By Lee H. Hamilton

We are at a profoundly unsettled time in our nation's history, with more than two-thirds of Americans professing in surveys that they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. They are partly reflecting concerns of the moment -- the Iraq war, high gas prices, our economic travails -- but polling also shows a more deep-seated dismay at the track our political system has taken.

Our politics is fragmented and often mean-spirited. Americans are disappointed by a sense that we lack unity and national purpose. They are disillusioned by a political leadership that has failed to instill these things, and many believe they and their concerns are unrepresented in the halls of power. Faith in our system is ailing.

Tony Snow restored Bush administration's credibility

From the afternoon e-mail ... Paul Kengor offers a tribute to former Bush administration press secretary Tony Snow, who died of cancer last week:

By Paul Kengor

The first time I encountered Tony Snow was through his columns for the Detroit News in the 1980s, when I was an undergraduate subscribing to a forgotten but quite good publication called Conservative Chronicle. His articles were like his later work for Fox News: a combination of reliable research and lively commentary, with the latter grounded in the former, making his arguments cogent and convincing.

When you read Tony Snow's op-ed pieces, you were engaged and learned something; you came away with the assurance that the case you just heard was rational and reasoned. He advanced his particular point and, usually, the larger conservative cause.

The U.S. is calling? What do they want NOW?

Ripped from the wires ... Forget the argument over which dictators our next president should talk to. Columnist Tom Friedman says the next president may be surprised at how few heads of state want to talk to us:

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There has been much debate in this campaign about which of our enemies the next U.S. president should deign to talk to. The real story, the next president may discover, though, is how few countries are waiting around for us to call. It is hard to remember a time when more shifts in the global balance of power are happening at once -- with so few in America's favor.

Let's start with the most profound one: More and more, I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned on this administration is not the failure to make Iraq work, as devastating as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power implications -- the failure after 9/11 to put in place an effective energy policy.

We owe our national politicians bigger salaries

Ripped from the wires ... Leonard Pitts Jr. explains why George W. Bush and members of Congress should receive fat pay raises.

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

I think George W. Bush deserves a raise.

You're waiting for the punchline, I know. You're figuring with a setup like that, about a president whose popularity lives down where moles and earthworms do, the payoff's got to be a doozy.

Sorry, but there is no punchline because that wasn't a setup. I think the president should get a raise. Congress, too. And yes, I know Congress' approval ratings are similarly subterranean.

But see, the argument I'm making has nothing to do with this individual president or Congress. It is, rather, about us, about what we want and deserve in our leadership. Here's the short version:

You get what you pay for.