Ask any pollster. Distrust of the government in Washington stands at unprecedentedly high levels. Between three-quarters (Pew) and four-fifths (Gallup) of Americans now instinctively question the veracity of promises from politicians and government agencies. Their frustration with all things governmental, in fact, has reached the boiling point. According to one recent…

There was a time when President Obama felt the need to hide behind Ronald Reagan's view of the proper role of government. "I've never believed," he said repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2010, "that government has all the answers to our problems." Nor is it the government's role "to create jobs or prosperity." Rather, it is "the drive and ingenuity of our entrepreneurs"…

What is it about the Head Start program that prevents presumably responsible adults from doing what’s best for poor children? What prompts this question is the reaction to a scientifically rigorous evaluation of Head Start released last month. Conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, the study demonstrates (once again) that this Great Society program just…

Congress and the president handled the "fiscal cliff" negotiations with equal parts histrionics and ham-fistedness. But that doesn't prove that Washington is now haplessly dysfunctional. Rather, it was the entirely predictable consequence of this moment in history. What's unique about our time is our nation's unprecedented fiscal imbalance — the product of an…

The 2012 election, we were told, would provide clarity. One side or the other would emerge with a mandate. The losers would have to accept the voters’ judgment and back down. Soon, legislative gridlock would give way to constructive deal-making, and progress would be made on the great issues of the day. Well, the results are (largely) in, and Washington finds itself…

Last week, the Gallup Organization provided more fodder for the debate over whether this year’s polls are skewed due to a systematic over-representation of Democrats in the samples. If Gallup has it right, Governor Romney’s lead may be several percentage points greater than the most recent round of polls suggests. Gallup reviewed all of its interviews with “likely…

In a Wall Street Journal column, Phil Gramm and Mike Solon ask whether the recent rapid expansion of the welfare state has altered the “old metrics” for assessing how the economy affects elections. Specifically, they raise three pointed questions: Do the tens of millions of Americans who use one or more of the 80 federal welfare programs “feel the same level of…

Why, the perplexed talk-show host asked last week, would the Democrats expunge all references to God from their party platform? And why reverse the party’s position that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel? How, he wondered, could this ever have happened? Good questions. To help answer them, I turned to the Pew Research Center’s American Values Survey, one of the best…

Does our $927-billion-per-year welfare state discourage the poor from seeking work? Does it cause them to shun pay hikes? Does it, in short, create dependency? This may be the most intractable problem afflicting the welfare state. With a renewed interest in the Clinton-era welfare reform and President Obama’s recent announcement that he would ignore its famously…

“I want every man to have the chance . . . in which he can better his condition; when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterwards, and finally to hire men to work for him. That is the true system.”  — Abraham Lincoln How better to encourage Lincoln’s “true system” of upward mobility than by allowing…

It’s one of the clearest, easiest-to-understand provisions in the Constitution. And Harry Reid’s Senate flouts it routinely. The Origination Clause in Article I, Section 7 states: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” In addition to clarity, this…

Our national-security capabilities are set to implode next January. That’s when tens of billions of dollars in across-the-board cuts will take effect, hitting every Pentagon account with an immediate 10 percent cut. In the words of the Obama White House, these cuts will be “devastating” and “undermine our national security.” The nation’s top military leaders agree.…