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review of Two Presidents Are Better Than One

May 27, 2013  •  The Weekly Standard

There is no doubt that the American presidency is an imperfect institution and that it has been inhabited by imperfect people. Given these incontrovertible facts, political scientists have long sought ways to improve the presidency. Some want to make it more powerful, others less. Some want us to pursue a parliamentary-style system, while others have argued for allowing more to be done by executive fiat. Professor David Orentlicher of Indiana University has come up with an original but almost certainly unworkable approach: He wants to split the presidency in half.

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Fielding an All-Star Political Baseball Team

May 2013  •  Washingtonian

As we enjoy another baseball season, we do so with the knowledge that our city lacks the baseball history—and championships—of places such as New York, Boston, and St. Louis. Yet Washington has had its share of politicians with links to the national pastime. Herewith, an all-Washington All-Star team.

George W. Bush was seen as a comparative ne'er-do-well in his illustrious family until he put together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers and build them a new stadium. The transaction made Bush independently wealthy — he put in $606,302 and later sold his stake for $14.9 million. In his retirement, Bush can still be seen sitting in the front row of Rangers home games.

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The Changing Bird Flu Threat

April 26, 2013  •  The Wall Street Journal

The outbreak of avian flu in China has killed at least 22 people and infected more than 108—including a man in Taiwan who had traveled in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou. For two months airline stocks have been buffeted and officials have raised concerns about a possible pandemic. So why does the American public seem so unconcerned?

There are some good and some bad reasons for the relatively blasé reaction. Most obvious is that the disease seems far away. In addition, talk of pandemics is often overblown. The 2009 swine flu was bad but nowhere near the disaster that some experts feared.

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Measuring the Drapes

Spring 2013  •  National Affairs

For decades, one common cliché of American campaign rhetoric has been the criticism that presidential aspirants are "measuring the drapes." When news leaks that a candidate is contemplating his future cabinet, or readying a policy agenda for the first 100 days of his administration, such advance preparation is typically exploited by his opponent as evidence of unbecoming hubris. Our presidential contenders have thus had to tread very carefully, caught between two unpleasant choices: entering the Oval Office underprepared, or risking criticism for seeming to presume a victory not yet won.

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Can Republicans Close the Pop Culture Gap?

March 21, 2013  •  Real Clear Politics

The Republican Party has just come out with a new strategy, and number 13 on its list of demographic outreach priorities is to "Expand our presence on more pop culture oriented outlets to ensure our message is reaching all voters." This finding may be surprising, and atypical for a political party's strategy, but it recognizes an important fact: The area where President Obama most out-competed Mitt Romney in 2012 was in the sphere of pop culture fluency.

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Books by Tevi Troy