David Hill

I like Europeans. Well, to be more precise, I like them as much as I like most Americans. I have been traveling in Europe (Switzerland, France, Germany and the Netherlands) over the past few weeks, and my experiences inform me that most ordinary West Europeans like Americans, too. Or, again to be precise, they like us as much as they like any other foreigners. In fact, if you believe cab drivers — and I have always believed they are the best living and breathing barometer of a local zeitgeist, almost the equivalent of a scientific poll — Americans are moving ahead of a lot of other competitors for Europeans’ affections. Looking to the future, I think that two trends could solidify bonds between Americans and Europeans: the growing visibility of Islam and influx of Muslims into Western Europe and the U.S., and the rise of China as a superpower.

Many Republicans vehemently champion accountability when it comes to measuring the performance of our governments at the national, state and local levels, but seem less enthusiastic about keeping score when it comes to our party’s own standing in the polls. That should change. Republicans need to choose some metrics that have relevance to our future electoral success and then follow the ups and downs of these measures. We need our own Nate Silver, Politico or pollster.com aggregator to gather and crunch the appropriate numbers so that we know every single month where we stand. 

We Republicans are meeting the enemy this year, and as a comic strip character once mused, the enemy might be us.

President Obama’s appointment of Ernest Moniz, an MIT scientist, to head the Department of Energy is stirring up the hornet’s nest known as fracking again. Moniz’s supposed enthusiasm for the natural-gas boom and the practice of hydraulic fracturing — fracking, for short — that fuels gas production is scaring the greenies. Ponder these widely circulating blogger quotes: “fracking is madness, a sign of a society gone completely insane and bent on self-destruction,” and “the more we learn about a gas-drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing — or ‘fracking’ — the more we see it as a zenith of violence and disconnect.” The incoming secretary, a physicist by training and vocation, might need a short course in social science and polling to manage the firestorm of controversy he is certain to face over the next year.

Since 2007, America has been mired in a financial quagmire. Austerity has functioned like a black hole, sucking every other issue into its dark recesses, allowing little or no light to shine on non-financial issues. That all changed Monday afternoon in Boston. 

The debate over the expansion of Medicaid, now raging in many states, illustrates the dangers of moving too quickly on some healthcare reforms linked to the Affordable Care Act. 

Both parties need a pick-me-up when it comes to their image. 

I enjoy reading a good poll like you or others may relish curling up with a good book.

Monday morning, the Republican National Committee made public the results of its Growth and Opportunity Project. The report presented the findings and recommendations of several small committees that explored the challenges facing our party in the wake of election setbacks of 2012. I was a member of the “mechanics” committee that studied myriad campaign tasks, from media buying and polling to old-school grassroots block-walking and new-age website cookie tracking. Everything went under the microscope. Consultants, operatives, technical experts were queried. Even a few Democrats and nonpartisan members of the new media establishment and some representatives of the corporate community were asked to weigh in. It was all confidential, and their names shall remain anonymous. The point is, no stone was left unturned. Our determined committee chairwoman, Sally Bradshaw, would hunt down every known critic of party campaigning strategies and tactics, asking them to come and speak with us or elaborate on their complaints with her privately if they couldn’t attend one of our sessions. There was no white wash to hide problems or failings. It was all out there for us to see, and the length and breadth of the recommendations attest to that.

Congress is in a bad place these days, and too many in Washington seem to ignore the institution’s image problem, seeing it as transitory or even a “normal” circumstance of our cynical society’s jaundiced view of politics. Congress’s terrible job approval ratings are not “normal,” as we will see. Rather, the current situation is extraordinary and profound when considered in historical context.