Bill Whalen

Palo Alto

Host at Matters of Policy & Politics

@HooverInst VA Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow. California politics/governing. @washingtonpost contributing columnist. Tweets reflect my view only.

Articles

Mayors . . . and Stalking Horses?

1 week ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at Hoover.org. In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests. Watch this video for an overview of MyHoover. Create Account
Getting On The California Ballot Can Be Murder

2 weeks ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at Hoover.org. In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests. Watch this video for an overview of MyHoover. Create Account
Duchess of Montecito . . . Duke of Sacramento?

4 weeks ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at Hoover.org. In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests. Watch this video for an overview of MyHoover. Create Account
Did the Governor Reidentify or Not?

1 month ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen |Charlie Kirk

While I’m not privy to every course that Gavin Newsom took in college, I suspect that at some point during his undergraduate days at Santa Clara University he stumbled across the works of William Shakespeare. How else to explain a recent media kerfuffle involving California’s governor that amounts to “much ado about nothing”?
The Big Speech

1 month ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

One oddity of American governance: New US presidents don’t deliver “State of the Union” addresses during their first weeks in office. Instead, a global audience gets the televised and streamed spectacle of a presidential “joint address” to Congress—the same venue (a packed House chamber) and purpose (laying out a policy agenda), albeit with a different descriptor. Here, the unorthodox Donald Trump is no different from his predecessors—including himself.
Is California Kamala’s for the Taking?

1 month ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

Major-league baseball’s regular season begins three weeks from now (in Tokyo, Japan, of all places), and the prohibitive favorite to win it all is Southern California’s blue colossus: the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
In the Hall of Presidents: Where Will Trump Stand?

2 months ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

One of the more annoying aspects of this week’s Presidents’ Day holiday (well, other than the notion that the February births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are somehow excuses for shopping bonanzas): historians’ insistence upon ranking the forty-five men who have served as commander in chief. One such example: this online survey from a year ago, by the Presidential Greatness Project, seeding America’s presidents from first to worst.
All Quiet on the Western Front?

2 months ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

I’ll confess: I have Mike Curb on the brain. For those not steeped in the history of post-Watergate California politics, Curb served one four-year term as the Golden State’s lieutenant governor, coinciding with Jerry Brown’s second term as governor, 1979–1983.
As the World Turns-and Burns-in California

2 months ago | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

A few weeks from now marks the 31st anniversary of the beginning of an ongoing soap opera in American politics: a game of one-upmanship between California’s elected leaders and the federal government. The initial installment in this drama: in April 1994, the reopening of the Santa Monica Freeway less than three months after the Northridge earthquake struck California’s Southland.
“I Shouldn’t Say This . . . ” or Should He?

Jan 22, 2025 | hoover.org | Bill Whalen

Credit Donald Trump with making history on Inauguration Day: he not only was the first modern president to begin a second non-consecutive term but also starred in arguably the first sanctioned political rally inside the US Capitol (frigid weather having relocated the outdoor ceremony to the Rotunda).