Newt Gingrich answered Senator Barack Obama's challenge for Americans to discuss, among other things, the failure of government to help the poor, especially poor African Americans. In a well-received speech on March 27, Gingrich warned about the destructive cost of bad government and bad culture--especially for the poor. On the April 6 edition of Meet the Press, host Tim Russert discussed the nationwide response to Obama's speech with Tom Brokaw and Andrew Young. Brokaw commented, "Newt Gingrich gave a very eloquent speech at the American Enterprise Institute just a week ago, saying it was a courageous speech that Obama made, and Republicans have to figure out how to respond to it."

DeWitt Wallace Fellow Nick Schulz

In April, Nick Schulz was named editor-in-chief of The American magazine and the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at AEI. A journalist of ideas who previously edited TCS Daily, Schulz often writes on the intersection of technology, economics, and public policy. According to Christopher DeMuth, Schulz "combines lively journalism with serious research and scholarship."

Steven F. Hayward was elected the thirty-first president of the Philadelphia Society at its annual meeting in April. Founded in 1964, the society sponsors the exchange of ideas in the service of "a free and ordered society." Hayward's predecessors include eminent conservatives like Russell Kirk, Henry Regnery, and Midge Decter.

The specter of the growing Medicare shortfall raises questions about how to make the program sustainable. In Markets Without Magic: How Competition Might Save Medicare (AEI Press, April 2008), Mark V. Pauly suggests a voucher system to enhance choice for consumers and limit the runaway growth of the program. Vouchers, he says, could provide full coverage for the poor and a minimum level of coverage for all seniors.

Shortly before General David Petraeus updated Congress in early April on the security situation in Iraq, Frederick W. Kagan released his phase IV report, Iraq: The Way Ahead. Kagan reports that the U.S. strategy has seen violence decline markedly. He also evaluates Iraqi government progress on political benchmarks and concludes that "planning now for additional reductions, given the realities of troop-to-task ratios in any of the most likely scenarios, is foolish. Promising such reductions or committing to them now would be completely irresponsible."

Significant amounts of Europe's natural gas and oil come from Russia, and the Kremlin is not afraid to cut supply. Just before the April NATO summit in Bucharest, Ida Garibaldi explored the Russian threat to European energy security. "Neglecting to ensure European energy security could be lethal to NATO's unity because it could split the alliance between vulnerable and invulnerable members," writes Garibaldi in a European Outlook.

Joseph Antos testified before the House Subcommittee on Health on April 3 about the Protecting the Medicaid Safety Net Act of 2008. The main problem with Medicaid, he said, is its financing structure, "which splits the costs between the federal government and the states in a way that promotes federal micromanagement." He recommended "sustainable long-term budgets" for federal entitlements to replace today's open-ended promises.

As President Bush sent the free trade agreement with Colombia to Congress for ratification, several AEI scholars commented. Norman J. Ornstein saw the pact as a test of the Democratic congressional leadership's willingness to accept the responsibilities of the majority. Philip I. Levy cast doubt on the claim that the pact would cost U.S. jobs, and Roger F. Noriega said Colombian president Álvaro Uribe's record on fighting terrorism and supporting the rule of law "speaks for itself."

AEI mourns the loss of Bruce Gardner, who died on March 14 of multiple myeloma. An agricultural economist at the University of Maryland who served as assistant secretary of agriculture for economics under President George H. W. Bush, Gardner was a codirector of AEI's Agricultural Policy Studies program. At AEI, he led the effort to analyze, critique, and propose reforms to the 2007 farm bill, culminating in a conference and monograph in May 2007.