There’s good reason to believe the relationship between Romney and the Tea Party-driven congressional Republicans will be exceptional only in the severity of its uneasiness. This is not an example of passionate matrimony, but a mere wedding of convenience—and it’s safe to say the honeymoon won’t last long.

Let’s start with the stark reality: Second presidential terms rarely result in major accomplishments. Presidents have few new ideas that have not been posed in their first two years, and already met with success or failure. And second-term presidents face even more obduracy from the opposition, bitter at a second loss of the big prize. 

"Elections” of this sort are never just about the outcomes.

Imagine if Montgomery and Helderman's editor had demanded that they deliberately slant a story to benefit an advertiser, and they and the rest of the reporting staff responded by walking out and shutting down the paper in protest. Would it be accurate to say that Washington Post reporters picked a fight?

With an economy seemingly on the precipice of a renewed recession, an angry conservative movement, and a disillusioned liberal base disappointed in his first term, Barack Obama's bid for reelection next year will, by all indications, be a tough, maybe even uphill fight. But the President can at least take some solace in a precedent from 64 years ago: Harry Truman's campaign for reelection in 1948.

There is in fact a powerful reason to scrutinize the psychology field: we are in the midst of a mental illness epidemic. Office visits by children and adolescents treated for the condition jumped forty-fold from 1994 to 2003.

When a divided Supreme Court issued its highly controversial Citizens United decision allowing corporations free rein to use their dollars to intervene in elections, there was one seemingly shining light, an area where broad consensus existed and that was endorsed by eight of the nine justices: the value of disclosure.