In this episode of The Director’s Chair, Michael Fullilove speaks with Jake Sullivan, the senior policy adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Joe Biden
In this episode of The Director’s Chair, Michael Fullilove speaks with Jake Sullivan, the senior policy adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. 
In a recent speech to the Sydney Institute, Australian Ambassador to the US Joe Hockey said that, just before last November's presidential election, he 'simply could not shake the feeling that the signs were pointing to an outcome that was...in no way ordinary.'
My congratulations to Ambassador
Most analysts of President Trump's inaugural address, especially those in the United States, have stressed its pointed preference for the strident, pungent messages he used to such devastating effect in his run for the Oval Office rather than the soaring oratory used by his predecessors, writes
As I facetiously said on a number of occasions during my recent abortive run for the Senate, you cannot have too many generals in parliament.
Looking at developments in the US presidential transition, there will be a fair few retired generals supporting President-elect Trump. These include the
I was really pleased to see this new essay in The Monthy by Andrew Charlton and Lachlan Harris, because it draws further attention to the decline in public support for our two major parties, a phenomenon which is gradually reshaping Australian politics (Peter Hartcher focused on it earlier this week
For many outside of the US, the country that is arguably the proudest of its democracy has a very odd way of electing its president. We can understand, just, why the founding fathers' obsession with the rights of individual states led to the Electoral College. Of course it seems strange that
Sometimes luck can be so timed as to give an impression of genius. So it seemed with Angela Merkel’s announcement last week that she would stand as the German Christian Democrat Chancellor candidate for a fourth time in 2017. The announcement itself was no surprise: Merkel’s apparent
With all the campaign blather, posturing and hyperbole, we don’t know much about the specifics of President-elect Trump’s economic policy. One thing is clear: it is not possible to satisfy the inchoate economic expectations of those who elected him.
Let’s focus on a couple of economic issues
One of the most influential writers on US foreign and security policy, G John Ikenberry, refers to American’s capacity to steer world order. This simple metaphor recognises that despite the actual and potential conflicts that exist among the members of international society, world order can be led
'An escalation of strategic rivalry between the US and China could be uncomfortable for Australia.'
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review. Photo: Department of Defence
Viewpoints on how Donald Trump’s historic victory will impact Australia have been plentiful, with most considering Trump’s victory inherently calamitous and then speculating as to whether the ANZUS alliance will ‘survive’ a Trump presidency.
This piece assumes that it's
Even with the precedent of Brexit (similar in terms of the political forces involved and the level of shock the result produced), it is forgivable that most analysts of US politics failed to see a Donald Trump presidency as the most likely result on 8 November. Absent the ability to personally
Contrary to Hugh White’s argument that we’re better off appeasing China than risk going to war with Donald Trump, we are likely to see a recalibrated version of US offshore balancing in Asia under Trump that will impose added burdens on allies, but will not mean either the careless provocation
'Donald Trump's election will ask hard questions of Australia's alliance with the United States.'
Originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald. Photo: Getty Images/Washington Post
Conventional political science wisdom since the 1950s has seen elections in America, and in other well-established democracies, as driven by the struggle for support of the 'median voter'. Well-oiled political party machines, arrayed not too far from the midpoint along a left-right spectrum, are
Among the first (and originally few) world leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on winning the White House was Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But was Putin also the first to call it?
After months of speculation about Russian meddling, nobody is now saying that Putin 'threw' the election
By John Gooding, Digital Editor at the Lowy Institute and Associate Editor at The Interpreter.
This week saw Donald Trump clinch the US presidency by flipping Florida and several Great Lakes states. Given his erratic personality, the long-term consequences of Trump’s victory are very much
Here's a good run-down of how the US election played out on social media and how social networks influenced the electoral process. The Wall Street Journal’s graphic project ‘Blue Feed, Red Feed’, a collation of conservative vs liberal Facebook posts, is still live The
Our first thoughts should be for Americans, and the damage that has been done to their institutions, their society and their national self-respect. But there is nothing to say about this American tragedy that has not been said far better by Americans themselves. So let’s leave it at that.
Our
This is the first of a series of posts on the 2016 election outcome. This post explains why Trump won and provides some reflections on my own journey. The next piece will be prospective on Trump’s foreign policy generally and then one directed towards the Australian government specifically. Over
Like all American envoys, the US Ambassador to India Rich Verma has had a difficult job in the past forty-eight hours, as New Delhi gets to grips with the election of Donald Trump. US-India ties, he argued, transcended the ‘friendship of the American President and the Indian Prime Minister’,
As we wait to hear how Michigan has voted, a state that may decide the next president of the United States, let’s hear from two who have knocked on doors in recent days to get people to vote for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Jay Tener is a Cleveland businessman who works in
Spirits are high at the Cuyahoga County Republican watch party in Cleveland City. The House of Representatives is set to remain in control of the GOP and Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has seen off a challenge from former Democratic governor Ted Strickland, meaning the Democratic party is going
The presidency is just the beginning; making sure no authority is foisted upon the people is the American way, which means said people face a very long list of choices at the polling booth. County Boards of Elections exercise considerable ingenuity in the design of multi-page ballots that
For all the unique and strange precedents set by this election, few could have foreseen that a new stage in cyber conflict would be one of them.
In the lead-up to election day in the US, officials are scrambling to signpost that any cyber attack that affects the election could result in
Ross Douthat at the New York Times and others have raised the notion of ‘pundit accountability’: at turning points or on crucial issues, commentators should make plain their preferences and predictions, and why. US presidential elections are obviously such a moment, and this one more than any in
'After 18 months of a campaign that is universally described to have been the weirdest and one of the ugliest in living memory, folks are desperate for it all to be over.'
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review. Photo: Getty Images/Brooks Kraft
US Vice President Joe Biden is sick of foreign leaders looking him in the eye and asking whether he can deliver.
In a speech delivered to keep the party faithful knocking on doors, checking on friends and family and generally doing whatever they can to get out the vote ahead of polls closing
From his vantage point at Duke University, North Carolina, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy Peter D Feaver says exaggerated fears have elbowed out meaningful foreign policy debate during this race to the White House, and that this will make the job of the next president
Recent developments in the US Presidential race should put to rest any lingering doubt that one nation’s information warfare capabilities can fundamentally affect the politics of another.
At the third US presidential debate in Las Vegas, Hillary Clinton accused the Russian government of aiding
In Utah the independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin - who only entered the race in August - is polling well enough to make both Democrats and Republicans sit up and take notice. He is now a real chance to win the State and, in a remote but still possible outcome, the White House. McMullin
Would you jump off a roller coaster ride as the car picked up speed downhill?
Probably not.
But that's just what dozens of Republican candidates did over the weekend as Donald Trump's presidential campaign seemingly imploded over a decade-old audio tape.
The details of Trump's 'locker room'
This week the Lowy Institute published a new Analysis by Thomas Wright: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Crisis of US Foreign Policy. In this, Wright drills down into Donald Trump's world view and how the world might react to a Trump presidency. Importantly, given the GOP candidate's slide in
A good pitch for the next Hillary Clinton advertising campaign might be to highlight the relative ease with which she could approach negotiations with Washington’s fiercest political opponents. She has certainly gained valuable experience from taking on the combative and wildly unconventional
With the US presidential election just under a month away, northeast Asia faces two very different possibilities over the next four years. Hillary Clinton basically promises the status quo regarding the US role in the region. True, she has backpedalled on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade
I recently spent a month travelling in the US and the word on the street is that Donald Trump could be the next president.
Before the EU referendum earlier this year, I wrote about public opinion in the UK. At the time, most political pundits were predicting a remain result but there was a
A leaked audio recording of Hillary Clinton talking frankly earlier this year about Bernie Sanders' younger supporters as 'the children of the great recession' has been seized upon by her opponents. Here's conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt addressing those who were the subject of Clinton's
It’s hard to imagine either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump made many converts with their performances Monday evening at Hofstra University, despite over 80 million Americans tuning in. But the debate did its job in getting Americans talking about the candidates and the issues.
By most
The first of three presidential debates offered a lot of fireworks, but little to change the state of the race.
Trump trounced Clinton during the first third of the debate when discussing the economy and trade. Had this continued it would have become a rout. As it was, Clinton'
The first thing to note is that, despite the avalanche of media coverage and articles such as this one, presidential debates may not matter very much. At the very least, the evidence is mixed. The second thing is that what the candidates say is probably secondary to how they look, and how they react
When Donald Trump ran a distant second to Ohio governor John Kasich in the Republican primary, few would have imagined that six months on Trump looks an even chance to win the Buckeye State in the presidential election. Sure, Kasich lost his bid to be the GOP presidential nominee but it's not as if
So what do we take away from the leaked emails of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell?
Leaving aside the fact the emails were leaked on a site linked to the Russian government, and the consequences (don't type anything you don't want on Twitter), the revelations fall into two camps: what we
Not sure how much rest she is going to get. As we all now know, Hillary Clinton, diagnosed with pneumonia, is taking two days off the campaign trail after having a spell at a 9/11 ceremony that was captured by onlookers and broadcast to the world. While Clinton attempts to recuperate at home, the
While US election campaigns are rarely conducive to the making of coherent foreign and national-security policy, the febrile state of America's political environment today seems especially fatal to the endeavour. In circumstances where electoral imperatives privilege point-scoring over policy and
Yes, you read that correctly.
Among the political cognoscenti a tendency has emerged to discuss a 'post-Trump United States', as if the election is already over and a Clinton presidency is a forgone conclusion. This sentiment, while partly a self-protecting delusion, at least has a defendable
With Hillary Clinton's lead narrowing, there is plenty of discussion going on about media tactics in particular. The Clinton campaign has invested heavily in direct communication with voters via social media, podcasts and posting its own news stories. Not surprisingly, all of this has left
The nightly Olympic Games distraction is over.
The hamburgers and macaroni salad are on order for the Labor Day weekend cookout.
Soon, the old school political scientists tell us, it will be time for undecided American voters to really tune in to the presidential campaigns and weigh the issues