Doyle McManus

Soon after the 1988 presidential election, pollsters asked Democrats whom they favored to be their party’s nominee in 1992. The strongest candidates were Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York. The governor of...

Soon after the 1988 presidential election, pollsters asked Democrats whom they favored to be their party's nominee in 1992. The strongest candidates were Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York. The governor of...

A new word defines the debate over Syria in Washington: endgame. Policymakers expect the regime in Damascus to fall soon, and their focus has shifted to what happens then.  In a cold-blooded, pragmatic sense, the United States and its allies don’t...

Are we about to go over a fiscal cliff? It’s looking more likely, but it may not be as alarming as it sounds.  Here are three things you need to know about the impending crisis over the so-called fiscal cliff, the combination of tax increases...

Are we about to go over a fiscal cliff? It's looking more likely, but it may not be as alarming as it sounds. Here are three things you need to know about the impending crisis over the so-called fiscal cliff, the combination of tax increases and...

Gen. David H. Petraeus, long the most famous overachiever in the U.S. Army, is already on his way to a new career distinction: breaking the land speed record for rehabilitation from a scandal.  It was only two weeks ago that Petraeus resigned from his...

Second terms have rarely been kind to American presidents.  Our last two-term leader, George W. Bush, ended his tenure with a financial crash so disastrous that his own party has tried to erase him from memory. Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, was...

There are two ways that Wednesday’s debate between President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, could change the course of the presidential campaign.  One would be for Romney to find an effective way to frame his pitch to...

Here's an important fact you haven't heard much about in the presidential campaign: The armed forces of the United States are at war in at least four countries, and that number could increase any day. About 87,000 Americans are still fighting in...

Politicians haven't always been allergic to gun control, not even Republicans. In 1968, after the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr., Congress — on a bipartisan vote — outlawed gun sales to felons and...

Politicians haven't always been allergic to gun control, not even Republicans. In 1968, after the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Congress - on a bipartisan vote - outlawed guns sales to felons and the...

When the Olympic Games began almost 30 centuries ago in ancient Greece, rulers of city-states proclaimed an "Olympic truce," a ban on warfare to allow athletes, poets and spectators to attend without getting speared. It would be nice to think that this...