Columns, pieces and posts
Some presidents have come from families of property and high renown—or notoriety. Think only of the Roosevelts and Kennedys. And other presidents come from humble circumstances, sometimes very humble. Ronald Reagan belongs to the second group. His family moved from one rented apartment to another as his alcoholic, shoe-salesman father struggled to hold a job. […]
My friends, this is the kind of column I used to do now and then before the world changed. I tell you what I’ve been doing and thinking and if you’re interested you get a cup of coffee and sit down and read along, and if you’re not you can go back to OpinionJournal’s main […]
For America for Christmas this year there’s only one gift, a history book. And we should all get busy writing it. Today is the 60th anniversary of “the day that will live in infamy,” the sneak attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. We know a lot about what happened on Dec. 7, 1941, […]
I flew this week. It was A-OK. I flew from LaGuardia airport in New York to Chicago’s O’Hare and then back, and it was good. In New York, scene of three air disasters in six weeks, everyone asks everyone else, “Have you flown yet?” They don’t have to say, “since Sept. 11.” Up till today […]
“We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing,” the old hymn says and children still sing. This Thanksgiving some of us have felt a greater than usual desire to gather, and ask. Our first big national coming together since the attacks on America has taken on a heightened feel. There’s a lot of tenderness out […]
He walked into history an obscure, flat footed, bantamy little fellow in a light gray suit, the inhabitant of an eloquence-free zone who gave boring speeches in a flat voice. He was not compelling. This was more obvious because he followed a charismatic leader who did big things and filled the screen. He was quickly […]
That was an interesting speech President Bush gave last night in Georgia. Its subject was homeland security, and in terms of content, style and tone it seemed to be, essentially, nothing new. And yet by the end and after reading it, I thought: He’s telling us a great deal here. The terrorists “want to kill […]
On Halloween I had one of those days that veered from scene to scene. In the morning, in the waiting room of a Manhattan eye doctor’s office, I watched and listened as a young secretary who was dressed for the day in a Morticia costume—all in black, white powdered face, black eye makeup, black pointy […]
I found the words on a yellow Post-It I’d stuck on the side of the bookcase in my office about a year ago. It had gotten covered up by phone numbers and pictures and doctor’s appointment cards, and yesterday, looking for a number, I found it—a piece of yellow paper with the words “His delicious […]
It was Sept. 14 at 9 p.m., and I was on Fifth Avenue, directly across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I was standing, that is, directly in front of the statue of Atlas holding up the world, at the entrance of Rockefeller Center. I was with my 14-year-old son. We were waiting for friends […]