Politics

The Limits of Presidential Power

Category: 

In my operational risk seminar this spring, students ranked and then restacked and ranked the top operational risks present in our world.  No one was especially pleased with the results, and the top three risks – cyber-threats, global uncertainty, and terrorism – seemed nearly interchangeable, depending upon the month. As we came to the end of the quarter – particularly with the terrorism acts in Manchester, London, and Tehran -- “global uncertainty” seemed to encapsulate the other two risks, particularly when the elections in France and Great Britain are taken into account along with the performance of the U.S. president on his first diplomatic trip abroad. 

read more..

Latest Posts in Politics

Building Back Better: The National Endowment for the Arts

The pandemic has hit the cultural sector hard. Barbara McMichael’s new monthly column examines the history of The National Endowment of the Arts and the possibility that the arts would once again be elevated in the Biden administration


A More Perfect Union

 

It has been a difficult first week back to teach online. As has been my practice for about a year, I begin each course at the University of Washington with a single slide that encapsulates the latest information I have on the pandemic. To that, I added an introduction to the SolarWinds data breach for my emerging cyber topics course on Monday.  On Thursday, I created several slides on the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January...


Building Back Better: The Department of Justice

This month Barbara Lloyd McMichael writes about the evolving history of the Department of Justice and past Attorneys General, from Warren G. Harding’s AG, Harry M. Daugherty, to Donald Trump’s AG, William Barr.  From hereon, Barbara will write a monthly column, Building Back Better, that focuses on what our leaders are doing to restore the soul and conscience of America. 


The Big Lie Strategy for Grabbing Political Power

The big lie shaking this nation for the past seven weeks is that Trump won the election by a landslide. It is a lie. President Donald Trump and his many lawyers have not produced even a shred of evidence to support that claim before our judicial system. 


We Need to Have a Demagogue Detector

To avoid future threats to our democracy, we should develop something like an earthquake early warning system.  Donald Trump could serve as our model. We have seen this movie several times before.   If we can learn to pick up the plotline from seeing the previews, maybe we can avoid having to watch this movie unfold again. Once upon a time, we were taught to be wary of snake oil salesmen, traveling medicine men, card sharks, and other charlatans.  We need to revive the lost art of distrust.