Democracy in America

WHEN, last week, Pat McCrory finally admitted defeat in North Carolina’s governor’s contest, belatedly abandoning his graceless demand for a recount, it looked as if Republican efforts to sway the state’s elections had finally been exhausted. A voter-ID rule, and other restrictions passed by Republican legislators, had been thrown out by a federal court that found they targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision”; still, say voting-rights activists, limited opportunities for early voting nevertheless suppressed black turnout in November.

WHEN he was running for president earlier this year, John Kasich held great appeal for moderate Republicans. The governor of Ohio is open to immigration reform, backs Common Core, a set of national educational standards, and expanded Medicaid, a health-care programme for the poor, in his state. One exception is his stance on abortion. During his governorship, he signed no fewer than 17 bills containing restrictions on abortions into law. 

On December 13th the governor approved another such bill. Senate bill 127 bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a point at which supporters of the bill say a fetus experiences pain, with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

DONALD TRUMP was once a staunch supporter of abortion rights, declaring in 1999 that he was “pro-choice in every respect”. But Mr Trump campaigned for president as an opponent of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion-rights ruling from 1973. (He had a change of heart when he observed that a child of a friend who “was going to be aborted” was instead brought to term and went on to become a “total superstar, a great, great child”.) In post-election interviews, the president-elect has repeated promises to name pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, starting with a replacement for Antonin Scalia, the justice who died in February.

BARACK OBAMA's art of war is not a phrase that rolls easily off the tongue. The 44th president leaves office with many believing that he is a coolly, even cold-bloodedly passive observer of a chaotic world, with little zeal for his job of commander-in-chief. Certainly that is a notion enthusiastically advanced by his Republican successor, Donald Trump, who scoffs that a soft and squeamish Obama administration has stupidly—and he has even hinted, treasonously—refused to take the fight to the fanatics of Islamic State (IS).

THE scene at NATO headquarters in Kabul on December 9th was enough to give President-elect Donald Trump a fit. In a dusty walled garden surrounded by high walls and watchtowers, American officers and civilians huddled in a blue-painted gazebo with a group of young Afghan girl scouts, making bracelets.

Mr Trump has to yet sketch out an Afghan policy in more than the broadest of strokes, but has made it clear what he dislikes.

LIKE so many governments blessed with reserves of fossil fuels, Louisiana has long been in thrall to the energy business. For the last century, oil has had such a powerful effect on the Pelican State’s generally tepid economy that politicians have been loath to challenge the industry. Indeed, Louisiana has offered generous (and unnecessary) subsidies to drillers that apply even in boom times, and its regulators have demonstrated a soft touch when it comes to enforcing environmental rules.

The rapid erosion of the state’s ragged coastline is in part a result of that bias. Louisiana loses about 20 square miles of wetlands to the Gulf of Mexico every year.

THERE are lots of excellent reasons why America should deepen its relations with Taiwan, the raucous, friendly and dynamic island of 25m people that shows that democracy and Chinese culture can co-exist, despite what apologists for one-party rule like to claim. There is one heartbreaking and serious reason why any process of deepening relations cannot include America moving to recognise Taiwan as an independent sovereign state—at least as long as mainland China is governed by its current authoritarian and fiercely nationalist (though nominally Communist) rulers.