John J. Pitney, Jr., is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College, in Claremont, California. He received his B.A. from Union College and his Ph.D. from Yale. He has been a New York State Senate Legislative Fellow, a Congressional Fellow, and deputy director of research at the Republican National Committee. He has written articles for National Review Online, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, among others. His scholarly works include The Art of Political Warfare, published in 2000 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

In an entry on his New York Times blog, Stanley Fish wonders whether autism is just another “difference” like race or sexual orientation. But to say that autism is just a difference is like saying lung cancer is just a different form of cell growth and that painful wheezing is just a different form of respiration.

Read on …

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Barack Obama sounds a bit like Richard Nixon.

No, he’s not deliberately cribbing from our 37th president. It’s hard to picture him telling his writers: “I need to fire up the liberal Democratic base – so go get me some Nixon language!” But …

» Read more of Richard Milhous Obama: How Obama Sounds Like Nixon

The memory of Ronald Reagan looms large in the current presidential race. But conservatives forget the friction between Reagan and his political base. President Reagan did much to advance their cause, but conservatives today do him no honor by airbrushing his many compromises.

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Researchers are seeing more and more cases of autism. A quarter-century ago, the best estimate was that only one child in 2,000 suffered from autism or related disorders (e.g., Asperger’s syndrome). In 2007, a Centers for Disease Control study study of six sites found a rate of one in 150. No one knows how much is a real increase, and how much stems from changes in how we identify and classify autism. What is clear, however, is that there could be a real political cost to ignoring the issue…

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Two Republican presidential candidates recently addressed the issue of religion in politics. Mitt Romney did himself some good by giving a thoughtful address with an historical perspective. Fred Thompson hurt himself by ignoring history and taking the matter too casually. The former is citing John Kennedy, while the latter is trying to seize the mantle of Ronald Reagan…

» Read more of Romney, Thompson, and God (Campaign 2008)

Issues reminiscent of the Campaign of 1992—concerning leadership abilities and management styles—are haunting the Campaign of 2008.

Senator Hillary Clinton has had to face questions about her toughness, while Mitt Romney has broached the subject of whether corporate management styles can be effective at the national level of government. They’re not the first candidates for president to face these issues …

» Read more of Ghosts of 1992: Management Styles and the ‘Toughness Issue’ (Campaign 2008)

On October 11 of this year, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution declaring the Turkish killings of Armenians to be a genocide. But just two weeks later, its sponsors acknowledged waning support. They announced a delay in their effort to bring it to the House floor. After so many years, why did the issue move so far in 2007? And why did prospects for the measure suddenly dim?

» Read more of The Politics of the Armenian Genocide

Reforms of the electoral process have often disappointed partisan hopes. Democrats thought that the 18-year-old-vote would sweep Nixon out of the White House. Instead, he carried 49 states. They had great expectations for the “motor voter” law in the 1990s, but the GOP kept control of Congress. In the first election after the latest campaign finance law, President Bush beat Senator Kerry.

» Read more of Electoral College Reform: Lessons From California