The Warden

Hence the basic irony inherent in the Obama presidency: He campaigned as a post-partisan, but his most lasting accomplishments will be those of a partisan.

So let’s get the facts straight. Elections are rarely mandates. Brendan said this in 2004. I said it in 2008. Nolan said it yesterday. I’ll say it again. Voters don’t make choices by first formulating views on all sorts of issues, then figuring out where the candidates stand on these issues, and then choosing the candidate whose views best represent their own. In fact, often that story runs in reverse: they choose a candidate based on party or whatever, and then line up their views on issues to match the candidates.

Last night, President Obama accused Mitt Romney of saying Russia is the “biggest geopolitical threat facing America”? According to Politifact, this charge was true. According to FactCheck.org it was false. So each campaign can cite a “neutral” fact-checking organization in defense of their candidate. Who’s right? Decide for yourself. Here’s the transcript of the CNN interview in which the initial comment was made.

“It may seem incredible,” D’Souza wrote, “to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States.”

True enough: That theory wasn’t remotely credible when D’Souza advanced it in Forbes, and it’s even more ludicrous on the silver screen.

Here is the problem: The health-care system can’t possibly deliver on the huge increase in demand for primary-care services. The original ObamaCare bill actually had a line item for increased doctor training. But this provision was zeroed out before passage, probably to keep down the cost of health reform. The result will be gridlock.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., bowing to an unusual demand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, made official the backpedaling of the past few days over remarks by President Obama about the Supreme Court’s coming ruling on the constitutionality of his health care overhaul. Mr. Obama said on Monday that it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the court to overturn the law.

But Nate Silver isn’t so sure.

Allan Lichtman, the American University professor whose election formula has correctly called every president since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election, has a belated birthday present for Barack Obama: Rest easy, your re-election is in the bag.

At the tail end of an NYT story there is a bit of news for those interested in the debate over the constitutionality of the debt ceiling and whether the President could issue debt unilaterally if the ceiling is not raised. President Obama addressed the question at a town hall meeting at the University of Maryland this morning