Politics

Victor Davis Hanson says removing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is a good idea not worth going through. (National Review)

Room for Debate asks: What role will the Hispanic vote have in this presidential election? What are Obama and Romney’s strengths and weaknesses among Latino voters, and how can they secure that vote? (New York Times)

Michael Barone argues that if you live in a political cocoon, it’s so much harder for conservatives: But cocooning has an asymmetrical effect on liberals and conservatives. Even in a cocoon, conservatives cannot avoid liberal mainstream media, liberal Hollywood entertainment, and, these days, the liberal Obama administration. (National Review)

Raising national fuel-efficiency standards to an average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 could spur economic growth, help American families, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and protect our national security, writes Bipartisan Policy Center’s Sherwood Boehlert. (Politico)

Brookings’ E.J. Dionne: The battle among Catholic bishops. (Washington Post)

Just prior to the historic 2012 Egyptian presidential elections, Shibley Telhami, a Brookings Institution fellow, University of Maryland professor and pollster released the results of the 2012 Public Opinion Survey in Egypt. In it, Telhami assesses which candidate is most favored by respondents, the issues driving voter preferences, what role they want religion to play in politics and attitudes toward the United States.

A few key points of interest in the poll:

•Most of the votes are intended for two candidates: Abdel-Men’em Abul-Fotouh led with 32%, followed by Amr Mousa with 28%, followed by Ahmed Shafiq with 14%, and Mohamed Morsi and Hamdeen Sabahi with 8% each.

•The feeling of trust in the candidate is the most important quality respondents cited.

•The majority of respondents, 71%, said that the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to field their own presidential candidates after they said that they would not was a mistake.

•Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate garnered only 8% support.

On attitudes, there are a few other items to note:

•In the 2012 U.S. presidential elections, 73% of respondents said they want Mitt Romney to be president and only 25% hope for President Obama’s re-election.

•When asked about how they feel toward the U.S., 68% said “very unfavorable,” 17% “unfavorable” and 14% “favorable.”

The Asia Society has announced that Vishakha N. Desai will step down on Sept. 1 following her eight-year tenure as president.

Desai’s 22 year career at Asia Society began as museum director in 1990. She subsequently became senior vice president and then president and CEO.

In her time as president, Desai oversaw the establishment of new offices in India and South Korea and the opening of two multi-million-dollar centers with gallery exhibition space in Houston and Hong Kong.

The new deal with Iran:”Exit question: What happens when Iran doesn’t close the deal? Answer: America will offer more. Just watch,” writes AEI’s Danielle Pletka. (AEI)

“Wednesday’s meeting on Iran’s nuclear program will be a competition of fears. Who is sufficiently terrified of an atom bomb in Iranian hands to credibly threaten military action? Who fears the immediate economic consequences of Persian petroleum coming off the market more than the longer-term menace of a nuclear-armed state that supports terrorism? Who dreads above all else an Israeli preemptive strike?” write Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz. (Washington Post)

CFR’s Peter Orszag on the budget: History shows U.S. can stimulate now, cut later. (Bloomberg)

“If Republicans are such great budget cutters, how come we continue to spend more, run more deficits, and accumulate more debt?” asks Cato’s Michael Tanner. (National Review)

“Congress and the White House cannot agree on anything budget-related -- not even on the question of whether the president’s 2013 proposed budget will raise or lower the deficit. The White House calculates its 2013 budget will reduce the deficit by $4 trillion, whereas the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the same budget will raise the deficit by $3.5 trillion,” writes Manhattan Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth. (Washington Examiner)

“Team Romney should have seen this coming. If Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were willing to rip Romney for being too capitalistic in the Republican primary, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to expect that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden would happily do the same in the general election,” writes AEI’s Jonah Goldberg. (National Review)

Victor Davis Hanson says that coolness gives people like Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg an exemption to the rules everybody else abides by. (National Review)

Room for Debate asks: Can Euro bonds save the union? (New York Times)

Heritage’s Peter Brookes: A pathetic pact for safety on the seas. (New York Post)

Manhattan Institute’s James Copland: Justice Department may be in the next cubicle. (Bloomberg)

Washington Post colleague Erik Wemple reports on the ongoing scrutiny of Arnaud de Borchgrave, the prominent foreign correspondent who is accused of plagiarizing parts of many of his recent columns for the Washington Times and United Press International.

Arnaud de Borchgrave (Harry Naltchayan - The Washington Post) But the claims hit the think tank world, too.

De Borchgrave, director and senior adviser of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote an introduction to a 2007 report (“Force Multiplier for Intelligence”) that has a striking resemblance to a BBC news report published earlier that year. Other CSIS reports by de Borchgrave have similar problems.

To their credit, CSIS has taken a stand against plagiarism and promises a review, as Wemple reports:

CSIS, on the other hand, examined evidence of literary overlaps and declared that it would look into the matter. “We do have in our guidelines that plagiarism is not something that’s tolerated here,” said H. Andrew Schwartz, CSIS’s senior vice president for external relations. “We’ve never had to discipline anybody for anything like this, so I think the consequences of plagiarism could vary depending on the context. They could include serious penalties.”