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My column in the current National Journal discusses some of the lessons that Europe has for the Obama administration [the link expires in two weeks].

During PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer last Friday, the program's resident pundits, David Brooks and Mark Shields, had an interesting exchange about President Obama's first budget. They agreed that the administration aimed to be "transformative" -- and Brooks conceded, "I think we all want that." The real question, he said, is how transformative.

Brooks: "The debate will be over the nature of it. If it's a transformative relationship that basically keeps the American model with repair, you'll get a lot of people in the center for it. If it's a transformative relationship that turns us into France, with a consumption tax and a much bigger federal government, you will not."

Shields: "That's a straw man, turning it into France. That's not the case."

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