John McCain Channels Reagan: Both the Good and the Troubling

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John McCain said tonight: “America doesn’t hide from history. America makes its history.” This perhaps is the truest statement in McCain’s genteel, polite, and fairly unambitious speech tonight. America has in its past focused on major problems and figured out strategies to overcome them.

Can Turkey Serve as Europe’s Bridge to the Muslim World?

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The question of whether to integrate Turkey into the European Union requires a balancing of costs and benefits across Europe’s entire portfolio of political, economic, and security interests. Expanding the Union to include a state that would be among its largest, poorest, and furthest to the East would clearly have a wide range of consequences….

Saint Sarah Beats Expectations in Saint Paul

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Dividing a presidential convention between two cities — Minneapolis and Saint Paul — that are a half hour cab ride apart is a very good way to deflate enthusiasm and raw political energy, but tonight. . .finally. . .

Views on Afghanistan from Across the Atlantic

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Author’s note: some of the links in this article are in French, apologies. This is the view out my window in Paris of the Hotel des Invalides, where French President Nicholas Sarkozy gave a moving tribute to the 10 French soldiers killed in Afghanistan on August 18th.

Greetings from the Republican National Convention

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(photo credit: James Dyett) Actually, this picture is of me in a sky box at Invesco Stadium listening to Democratic Vice President candidate Joe Biden on August 28th in Denver. But I’ve arrived in St. Paul and am on my way to see about my credentials now. More soon.