NCPA Commentaries by Pete du Pont

Governor Pete du Pont is a Board Member of the National Center for Policy Analysis. He writes a regular column for OpinionJournal.com, the online news service of The Wall Street Journal.

Pete du Pont has served as Governor of Delaware, U.S. Congressman (R-DE), and former candidate for President of the United States (1988). Gov. du Pont formerly hosted a nationally-syndicated radio commentary and appeared on several editions of the PBS Firing Line debates with William F. Buckley, Jr.

  • May 19, 2008

    Energy and the Executive

    This election is notable in many ways. For the first time since 1952, neither the president nor the vice president will be his party's presidential nominee. For the first time since 1960, a sitting U.S. senator will be elected president. And for the first time ever, if the Democrats win, the next president will be female or black.

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  • Apr 23, 2008

    Obama's America

    Nine months from now, the 44th president will be inaugurated. Looking at the debates, votes cast and money raised in this year's presidential primary races, the next president may not only be a Democrat, but Barack Obama, the most liberal of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate.

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  • Mar 26, 2008

    Protection Racket

    As the Democratic presidential campaign marches on, its most alarming public policy issue is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's antitrade advocacy.

    As liberal leaders, they are of course for higher income taxes, greater federal spending, and rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. But passionate protectionism illustrates the pro-government, anti-market philosophy that is the core of their beliefs, and it reflects the seriously wrong direction in which they will take America if one of them becomes our next president.

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  • Feb 23, 2008

    Markets and Medicare

    Rarely in Washington does the president get to propose legislation that Congress is required to fast track. Such an opportunity exists right now, and it pertains to the most serious domestic policy problem this country faces: the rising costs of Medicare.

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  • Feb 19, 2008

    How Right Is McCain?

    John McCain will be the Republican Party's presidential candidate in November. Most Republicans certainly know who John McCain is, but there still seems to be a question as to just what he is. President Bush said last week that there was "no doubt in my mind he is a true conservative." But is he a Ronald Reagan conservative, or more like a Bob Dole moderate? Or is he like Dwight Eisenhower, who claimed in the 1952 nomination battle that he was "just as conservative" as his opponent, Sen. Robert Taft?

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  • Jan 15, 2008

    Where They Stand

    Three states down (Iowa, Wyoming, and New Hampshire), and 47 to go. Seven candidates--from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain on top, to Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani in the middle and John Edwards at the bottom--are still in the race to become the next president of the United States.
  • Dec 19, 2007

    Bali Who?

    Ten years ago, as the 1997 Kyoto Agreement was about to be signed, the Senate on a 95-0 vote passed a resolution stating that the United States should not be a signatory to any Climate Change or Kyoto negotiations that "mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties"--then 37 industrial nations--"unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties."

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  • Nov 12, 2007

    Unions 2, Children 1

    One hundred eleven years ago, in 1896, the state of Utah joined the Union. Today its Legislature is focused on enacting sound policies that will help improve its education system. Its citizens, though, have a different view, for in Tuesday's referendum they voted down a very strong parental school choice bill.

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  • Oct 30, 2007

    Inconvenient Tax Truths

    Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore believes global warming is "an inconvenient truth." Here are some economic truths that America's liberal leadership finds too inconvenient to support.

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  • Sep 20, 2007

    Chill Pill

    There is both global warming and global cooling on the planet Earth. There always has been and there always will be, because temperature change is cyclical: The Earth's temperature oscillates up and down, ebbs and flows, over decades and centuries. Sometimes the earth warms, as it did in the Roman Warming period (200 B.C. to A.D. 600), the Medieval Warming period (900 to 1300) and in modern times from 1910 to 1940. And sometimes it cools, as it did in the Dark Ages (600 to 900); the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) and from 1940 to the late 1970s.

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