Come here for America in all its glory - my take on the twist and turns of the presidency, electoral races and life beyond Washington
03:57 UK time, Thursday, 15 September 2011
You might think President Obama has enough on his plate without worrying about the European crisis. But you'd be wrong.
The White House may not really care too much about the fate of the euro itself, but it does care about European banks and the sense of impending economic doom.
15:31 UK time, Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Maybe we have a new political rule: never photograph yourself in underpants lest it leads to the questioning of your leaders' foreign policy. Maybe not.
Still, the Democrats got a thumping in the New York by-election in the seat left vacant when Congressman Anthony Weiner resigned after THAT photo went viral.
23:42 UK time, Tuesday, 13 September 2011
In his speech to Congress the other day, President Obama sounded like an old-time preacher with his thumping refrain "pass this bill". Today, in Ohio, his call got a response.
"Pass this bill," chanted the crowd right on cue.
09:13 UK time, Sunday, 11 September 2011
It is the first time I have seen the Memorial Fountains at Ground Zero working. They are pretty impressive. The footprints of where the towers once stood have been turned into square pools, dark and huge, a waterfall on each side. All around the edges are engraved the names of those who died in the buildings.
But looking out of the window as I write, part of the area is still a building site, a huge square of churned-up mud. Five giant diggers squat, for the moment idle, the area scattered with concrete cylinders and metal parts.
18:24 UK time, Friday, 9 September 2011
There are so many searing images from 9/11. Just as iconic, just as memorable, is one that is not of death and destruction but a psychologically revealing moment. It is the moment when President George W Bush was told the news of the attack.
He was at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida on a routine trip to promote his educational ideas.
01:59 UK time, Friday, 9 September 2011
US President Barack Obama has made a fiercely clever, even somewhat sly, speech.
He passionately scorned those playing at partisan politics while positioning himself in a very political way.
06:19 UK time, Thursday, 8 September 2011
It is President Obama's big speech on jobs tonight.
Big? Many commentators are convinced there will be nothing new in it.
03:54 UK time, Thursday, 8 September 2011
Mark added analysis to:
Rick Perry said he felt like the pinata at the party: the box of goodies that kids beat with a stick until it breaks, disgorging sweets.
No wonder, as the new front-runner, that all the others were keen on bashing him. He didn't break, but what tumbled out was not pure gold. His answer on climate change was clumsy and hesitant. He compared those who question man-made climate change with Galileo.
02:44 UK time, Tuesday, 6 September 2011
As the world's economy looks ever more precarious, all eyes will be on Obama this week. He's making his big pitch to Congress on Thursday. He'll be setting out how to get America back to work. My guess is that there'll be a lot more politics than economics. He may well believe the measures he'll suggest are the right ones. But it's a dime to a dollar the Republican House will reject most of them.
Why ? The president made it pretty clear in a Labor Day speech in Detroit that he's looking for some sort of new stimulus package. He said:
00:21 UK time, Saturday, 3 September 2011
It is nearly 10 years since the 9/11 attacks, a horrific day that changed the world as well as America.
In a country with a reverence for its constitution, debates about practical questions often end up as arguments about first principles.
16:38 UK time, Friday, 2 September 2011
At one tip of Cuba, rough green hills are covered in large cacti and palm trees. Iguanas stand stock still by the roadside. Turkey buzzards wheel overhead.
Then, camps surrounded by high fences, topped with rolls of barbed wire, overlooked by watch towers, incongruously nestled up against the sparkling tropical sea.
14:59 UK time, Thursday, 1 September 2011
Just imagine you're not getting on as well as you should with your partner.
You can never agree on anything. So you suggest a date night, a chance out to mull things over.
21:42 UK time, Monday, 29 August 2011
Do you want to know whether female-only rock bands command higher or lower ticket prices, whether poverty creates terrorists, or what makes for daily misery?*
I know the right man.
22:27 UK time, Sunday, 28 August 2011
We have, with no regrets, waved goodbye to Irene. Very sadly, lives were lost. Little matters more than that. But the feared devastation did not happen. Neither buildings nor reputations were toppled.
Here on the outskirts of Washington DC it is now a perfect day, with blue skies and cooling winds. But last night we hunkered down, head torches and bottled water at the ready, favourite films transferred to the laptop to watch when the power went out.
23:49 UK time, Thursday, 25 August 2011
Down below me, the Texas miracle is made manifest.
The helicopter swoops over the many sights that make up Alliance Texas, outside Dallas and Fort Worth. It is a project that has created 30,000 new jobs - 2,400 of them last year.
21:11 UK time, Monday, 22 August 2011
US President Barack Obama, making a statement from Martha's Vineyard, where he is on holiday, says the situation in Libya is very fluid.
He didn't really add a lot to his written statement from last night, beyond more praise for the Libyan people and the Nato alliance.
18:08 UK time, Friday, 19 August 2011
To me, any industrial process is a sort of miracle. At Pratt Industries, one of the largest paper and packaging companies in the US, sleek flat conveyer belts move stacks of cardboard around, as tough recycled brown paper is converted into cardboard boxes with the help of a little corn starch and heat.
But I am looking for a different sort of miracle, the type of economic miracle that Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry touts.
19:12 UK time, Wednesday, 17 August 2011
As the Republican primaries heat up I can predict one thing: We'll have plenty of headlines about "gaffes".
It is a word I treat with some caution. Not that politicians don't make "social or diplomatic blunders" or "noticeable mistakes". But often the blunder is in the eye of the beholder.
20:52 UK time, Monday, 15 August 2011
In British elections we're used to what we call "battle buses", cheerfully painted wagons, festooned with party slogans and colours.
US President Barack Obama has embarked on his first bus tour in office.
12:42 UK time, Monday, 15 August 2011
The Republican race has moved a little closer to the finishing line while I've been taking a few days' break on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Bad timing, but it reinforced some of my views about next year's election. More on that in a moment. What did I miss?
Tim Pawlenty has taken a hint from his own campaign slogan, "results not rhetoric" after being beaten in the Iowa straw poll. He's bowed out. Michele Bachmann won the contest and, were that all that happened, would be very strongly placed to be the conservative champion. But Texas Governor Rick Perry is now in. He too will be vying for the votes of the right of the party.
Covered British politics from the fall of Thatcher to Blair’s last election victory as political correspondent, Newsnight Political editor, BBC Chief Political Correspondent and diarist for This Week.
The BBC’s first Europe editor covering the impact of EU laws on people in and beyond the European Union’s 27 countries, from illegal immigration to Poland to environmental change in Spain.
Grew up in Surrey, educated at Kent University in Canterbury, worked in commercial radio on Teesside Leeds and London before joining the BBC.
Maggie Shiels
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The technology, people and places inside Silicon Valley
Gavin Hewitt
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The arguments over Europe, its politics and personalities
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