Columns, pieces and posts
How much can one speech do? When you’re a president in a hole (approval numbers stubbornly stuck below 40%, a re-election campaign under way) a big speech can help a lot or a little, be a wow or a mess. You know fairly quickly when the speech didn’t work: People start making jokes and the […]
A man on CNN is reporting live from outside a polling place in suburban South Carolina and recounts a small story. An 18-year-old man had just voted, and the election clerk called out, “Ladies and gentlemen we have a first-time voter.” The room burst into applause. “They say that’s a tradition here,” the reporter said. […]
You know that look everybody gets when a long, bad Zoom meeting ends and you’ve said goodbye and you’re searching for the Leave Meeting button while keeping a determinedly pleasant look on your face? That’s how I’m feeling about our national political life! Or that tingly feeling you get when the novocaine starts to wear […]
The only time Democrats get excited now is when the subject is Donald Trump. Then they get marvelously worked up. An official of the administration called to let off steam. “Trump says NATO doesn’t pay its bills—has anyone noticed the irony? Donald Trump is the biggest deadbeat in history. How many hundreds of contractors did […]
How should the press cover a presumable Trump-Biden presidential rematch? More pointedly, how should it cover Donald Trump? The history that precedes that question is well known. In 2015-16 the media, having discovered that Mr. Trump was a walking talking ratings bump and being honestly fascinated by his rise, turned the airwaves over to him […]
It was the first time I felt hope. Then I felt irritated with myself for feeling hope. But it was a heck of a hearing. (Was it what used to be called boob bait for Bubba, Bubba being American parents?) It was Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee grilling of the heads of social-media companies—Meta, TikTok, X, […]
This shouldn’t even be a question. A great party is trying to produce its presidential nominee. Donald Trump is the leader in the contest so far, and looks likely to be the victor. But the cycle has just started (61 delegates allocated, 2,368 to go) and the party isn’t united, it’s split, roughly 50/50 pro-Trump […]
He got 51% of a modest turnout in a small state, but a win’s a win and a 30-point win is a landslide. Still, part of what we saw in Iowa was Donald Trump’s continual losing battle with himself. His Des Moines victory speech was unusually gracious and statesmanlike. The strategy was to reassure moderates […]
Finally we vote. Iowa is Monday, New Hampshire a week from Tuesday. I refuse to see the story as over. “Nothing is written.” Both big parties look set on making a mistake, but there’s time to turn it around. Democrats on the ground are making a mistake in not rebelling against the inevitability of Joe […]
Thoughts arising from the incident at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and the extraordinary exit: On Tuesday Japan Airlines Flight 516, carrying 367 passengers, many of them revelers returning from the New Year’s holiday, collided on landing with a Japanese coast-guard plane that was carrying supplies for earthquake survivors of the Noto Peninsula. Five of the six […]