It’s telling that when American diplomats and technocrats help to set up new democracies abroad, they almost always model them on European-style parl… - Max Fisher

The entire world opposes Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Populism is a path that, at its outset, can look and feel democratic. But, followed to its logical conclusion, it can lead to democratic backsliding or even outright authoritarianism.

Americans are intimately familiar with the image of a federal government paralyzed by the chief executive's unpopularity. Presidents Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, George W. Bush after the 2006 midterm election, and perhaps even Barack Obama in the first months after the 2010 midterm election. In one case in late 1995 and early 1996, the American government was literally shut down as Republicans attempted to overpower the unpopular Clinton in a federal budget dispute. But in none of these cases did the president, though his unpopularity had clearly incumbered the functioning of the state, offer to resign. And few Americans honestly expected resignation, even at the president's least popular moment.