Peter Wehner

Given legitimate concerns about the vetting process, how badly President Obama has handled this issue (flippantly dismissing those concerns, mocking those who see things differently than he does, refusing to negotiate) and how wary the public is about accepting Syrian refugees, the plan put forward by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is prudent and sensible.

The debate over the Syrian refugee crisis illustrates why President Obama has been as polarizing as any president in the history of modern polling.

We all know people of towering arrogance and we all know people of staggering incompetence, but Barack Obama is quite possibly the perfect package.

By many accounts, orthodox Christians have lost the culture wars. How they can live well—not vanish—in a time of retreat.

Paul Ryan’s first remarks as Speaker of the House showed a much deeper and truer understanding of the nature of politics than we often hear, doing away with the mirage that our disagreements will evaporate if only legislators did their job well; that our political conflicts are simply based on cynical partisanship.

Rhetorical recklessness damages our political culture as well as conservatism, a philosophy that should be grounded in prudence, moderation and self-restraint.

Every two months, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center will publish a set of short memos offering historical perspective and assessing some of the biggest contemporary challenges the next president will face. In his contribution to the first issue, Peter Wehner offers the next president advice on a range of matters.

The struggle within the Republican Party right now centers on those who, figuratively speaking, want to rebuild the village and those who want to burn it down.

Will ratiocination, which is supposed to guide politics, prevail in the party of Lincoln?

Donald Trump, if he were to win the nomination, would do catastrophic damage to the Republican Party. But the Democratic Party, if it were to nominate Hillary Clinton, would be inviting a different kind of disaster.

With the FBI driving the extraordinary investigation into her private email server, things may get a whole lot less pretty for Hillary Clinton.

How the public face of Christianity is in some respects quite at odds with the less well-known – and I would argue the much more prevalent and authentic — face of Christianity.