Category: Politics

  • In praise of disagreement

    It wasn’t always this way. Anyone old enough to remember the world before cable news knows that, although we’ve always had our political disagreements, we used to disagree with each other. That is, our politicians and pundits used to vehemently dispute each other’s premises in hopes of knocking down each other’s conclusions. But even a…

  • To tell the truth? Three Republicans, three approaches

    Against my better judgment, I’ve now written several posts about the current presidential election. For example, here’s the latest. The references to negotiation are just too good and too frequent to ignore! So why not keep going? The three remaining candidates for the Republication nomination—Kasich, Cruz, and Trump—embody three distinct ways of dealing with the…

  • Trump’s curious opening offers

    As anyone following politics is well-aware, Donald Trump has made a habit of staking out aggressive negotiating positions. Whether it’s insisting that Mexico will foot the entire cost of a wall or suggesting that he might entertain nuclear retaliation against ISIS, Trump seems unafraid of making the first offer, and making it aggressively. In that…