Our top five reads of the day:
- Khaled Elgindy calls for more attention to the internal Palestinian division and the regional dimension of the peace process: “For the peace process to be truly comprehensive, however, it must also address the need for a unified Palestinian polity as well as allow for progress on the regional level. Such a “grand bargain” is admittedly an ambitious undertaking—requiring not only that all key actors get something but that each has a stake in the others getting something as well—and may in fact be too difficult to achieve.”
- David Leonhardt examines whether to make teacher performance metrics public, as the Los Angeles Times did: “Some teachers, no doubt, are being done a disservice. Then again, so were a whole lot of students.”
- Jean Pisani-Ferry warns of the dangers of historical analogizing in charting a path to economic recovery: “History can be an essential compass when past experience provides unambiguous headings. But an undisciplined appeal to history risks becoming a confusing way to express opinions. Governance by analogy can easily lead to muddled governance.”
- Mark Muro and Sarah Rahman (.pdf) call for the federal government to begin constructing and funding an Intermountain West network energy research and innovation centers: “Organized around existing capacities in a hub-spoke structure that links fundamental science with innovation and commercialization, these research centers would engage universities, industries and labs to work around specific energy themes to rapidly deploy new technologies to the marketplace, build the region’s knowledge-base, and stimulate economic development.”
- E.J. Dionne Jr. hopes Obama can turn the page after the Iraq speech: “the real test of whether Obama succeeded will not be the reception of this single address but whether it becomes the prelude to an invigorated presidency that uses the end of combat operations in Iraq to rekindle the aspirations for change that won him power in the first place.”
