As someone who teaches and writes about international politics, I can confidently say that last week was one of the strangest in memory, from the G-20 circus in my backyard (Pittsburgh) to the political zoo at the United Nations. President Obama, of course, was front and center, including with a major speech at the United... Continue Reading

Count me among the cynics when it comes to G-7, G-8, and now G-20 meetings. They seem to involve little more than photo ops and platforms for politicians to bore us with platitudinous pronouncements—at great expense to the taxpayers in the host country and city, I might add. As usual, nothing earth-shaking happened at the... Continue Reading

Many of us are cynical about promises made by politicians. “Campaign promises are made to be broken” is a venerable truism of American politics. There are “truth-in-advertising” laws against misrepresentation by private businesses, but no such protections apply to political speech. Why do politicians so often deny, stretch, obscure, evade or mutilate truth? In brief,... Continue Reading