In state after state, conservative social issues that once monopolized the conversation of Southern suburbs -- lower taxes, welfare reform, crackdowns on crime -- have been supplanted by a new agenda: managing growth and transportation, bringing in technology jobs and above all, improving education.
His first 100 days in office bore witness to sweeping reforms, crackdowns on government over-expenditures, and austerity measures put in place to minimize the country's ailing budget.
Such measures were part of welfare reform's crackdown on absent fathers who let taxpayers pay for their kids.
B. R. Myers, a North Korea expert at Dongseo University in South Korea, said at a forum in Seoul this week that the North's currency reform and crackdown on the markets might not be as unpopular as reported.
The case horrified Belgium for nearly a decade and led to judicial and police reforms, and crackdowns on child sex crimes.
While his eight years in office offered up a mixed bag of open government reforms and crackdowns on whistleblowers, the outgoing president does have an opportunity to finish strong.
In response to the recent crackdown, reform leaders had urged their supporters to be patient, promising that the new Parliament would overturn the press and social restrictions enacted by its predecessor.
The business lobby has already scored a string of wins in recent years: tax cuts on capital gains and dividends, bankruptcy reform and a crackdown on class-action litigation.
"The regime declared then that it was finishing off 'armed gangs.' What will it say now?" Since the uprising began, Mr. Assad has offered tentative reforms, but the crackdown, one of the bloodiest in the Arab revolts this year, has so far overshadowed them.
It is at least an arguable position that Mr. Brzezinski's formula of crackdown and reform, if it had worked, would have produced better long-term results for the rights of Iranians, as well as for international security.
