E.J. Dionne Jr.

SAN ANTONIO – Julian Castro is a politician in not too much of a hurry. This does not mean he lacks ambition.

The question is not intended to discourage the healthy debate being pushed by Rand Paul and his allies over whether Republicans in the George W. Bush years were too eager to deploy our country's armed forces overseas.

In winning election as Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio defied the papal pundits, even though they should have seen him coming. His rise marks the decisive shift within Roman Catholicism toward Latin America and the developing world.

Just when our politics seemed destined to freeze into a brain-dead brand of partisanship, party lines started cracking up.

What do the Roman Catholic Church and the American political system have in common? Both are divided into factions that neither trust nor understand each other, and both confront a crisis of governance.

A not-so-small miracle is unfolding before our eyes. After nearly two decades in which established opinion insisted that it would never again be possible to pass sensible regulations of firearms, the unthinkable is on the verge of happening.

We interrupt this highly partisan and ideological moment with some contrarian news: President Barack Obama is not the only politician who thinks that expanding access to pre-kindergarten is a good investment.

I disagreed with former President George W. Bush on many things. But on one issue, I admired him greatly: He was wise enough to marry a teacher and a librarian.

America's Big Religious War ended Friday. Or at least it ought to.

We are about to have a major foreign policy debate in the guise of a confirmation battle over Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense and the related argument over how long American troops should stay in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama should use this opportunity to stand up for his broader vision of how American power can be sustained and used, even if that doesn't come naturally to a pragmatist who likes making decisions one at a time.

To be deemed a serious analyst at the moment seems to require a lot of hand-wringing and sneering over how awful Congress looked over the last few days as it rushed a "fiscal cliff" deal into law.