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1. Has President Obama failed to monitor and build the infrastructure of the Democratic Party during his tenure in office?
2. Is cheap oil maintaining U.S. economic growth?
3. Should more U.S. schools move to a 1:1 model?
4. Can Bill Clinton help Hillary Clinton win back lower class white voters?
5. How will Roger Ailes departure from Fox News affect the channel’s future?
6. Should the Commission on Presidential Debates lower the threshold of support that third party candidates need to acquire to participate?
7. If the Republicans keep the House in 2016, will Paul Ryan win another term as Speaker of the House?
8. Should the EPA issue new regulations on the natural gas industry?
9. Would a Donald Trump presidency significantly alter American foreign policy toward Russia?
10. Will Pennsylvania be the state that decides the 2016 presidential election?
Although Americans enjoy a privilege that billions of people in the world do not currently enjoy, a sizable number of them decide not to exercise it each year. This privilege is voting. Since 1828 Americans have had the opportunity to directly influence the outcome of the presidential election and popular participation in elections had been a hallmark of American history since the colonial period (although the economic, racial, and gender groups that could partake in voting has been expanded since that time). In 2012, 55% of Americans cast ballots, but this is well short of 1960s numbers where more than 60% of eligible Americans cast ballots. When it comes to midterm and off-year elections, even fewer Americans participate. For example, in 2014 only 36.4% of voters participated, which was the lowest turnout for a midterm election in seventy years. Finding a lasting solution to voter apathy, which appears to be on the rise as a Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump presidential campaign is taking shape, will likely be easier said than done, but there are some creative ideas for fixing American attitudes about the political process.
Extempers that have had any introduction to American history are aware that the United States and Vietnam have had a strained relationship since American troops attempted to prevent Vietnam from becoming a communist country during the Cold War. For eight year, American troops had a sizeable presence in Vietnam, culminating in a phased-down withdrawal in 1973 that eventually contributed to the downfall of the West-aligned South Vietnamese government. Since the 1990s the United States had moved to repair its relationship with Vietnam, which remains a communist country, but issues relating to the whereabouts of unaccounted for prisoners of war (POW) and human rights have complicated such efforts. This week, President Barack Obama traveled to Vietnam, becoming the third U.S. president to do so. During that visit he said that the U.S. would ends its decades-long arms embargo against Vietnam on the condition that the Vietnamese government respect human rights. Observers wonder whether America’s move is part of a way to counter China, which is currently engaged in several territorial disputes with Vietnam in the South China Sea.
Last week the Commerce Department announced that the U.S. economy grew by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2015. This was below the number that economists had projected and it was below the 1.4% growth rate that the economy registered during the fourth quarter of 2014. The numbers were quickly seized on by critics of the Obama administration, who argued that they proved that the President has failed to generate significant economic momentum under his watch. Defenders of the administration argue that first quarter numbers can typically be stubborn as weather factors can inhibit economic growth in some seasonal industries such as construction or agriculture. Either way, the numbers are likely to temper the attitude of some members of the Federal Reserve Board for another interest rate hike and they could change the dynamic of the presidential race as a weak economy would favor Republicans in the fall.