Columns, pieces and posts
On Monday night you deliver the last big speech of your presidency. Or rather the last big political speech in front of a huge crowd, with the whole country listening. There is in truth one other big speech after Monday night, your farewell address, in December. That, by tradition, is a sober address from the […]
Imagine him running around the huge circular Olympic track, jumping hurdle after hurdle. And at each one the crowd makes a noise as if they are exhaling, which they are, because they’ve been holding their breath. He’s a good runner but he’s not really known as a guy who makes it over hurdles with ease; […]
The choice of Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as Al Gore’s running mate is so smart, so clever, so good, so satisfying, so striking that it just may turn this election a bit on its head for a while. Certainly its most immediate effect is going to be a successful Democratic convention next week in Los […]
George W. Bush’s speech was good, and a success. It did what it had to do with verve and persuasive power; it was more full of policy content than had been signaled by the campaign; and the policy was solid Bushian conservatism: pro-missile defense, for tax cuts, for abolishing the death tax and banning partial […]
And so it begins. Everything up to now has been winning the nomination and meeting America. Next week the campaign proper starts. Just about every voter in the country will, even if just for a moment, tune in to watch your big speech Thursday night at the convention. It’s been on your mind in a […]
“I’m feeling like a president.” George W. Bush was standing greeting New Yorkers before a speech 12 days ago in Manhattan. He was tanned, smiling, looked like he’d been getting his jogging in. A sinus infection that had left him gobbling Advil from New Hampshire through South Carolina was finally gone. He was feeling good. […]
From the beginning it was a story marked by the miraculous. It was a miracle a six-year-old boy survived the storm at sea and floated safely in an inner tube for two days and nights toward shore; a miracle that when he tired and began to slip, the dolphins who surrounded him like a contingent […]
It is, of course, all that Republicans are talking about: So what do you think of John McCain? What do you think of what’s happened? A lot of them seem not only surprised but delighted. Unexpected history is happening, and politics is fun again. It is tempting to see in the political contest between George […]
New York’s Central Park, 6:43 a.m. on a Thursday in late September, a morning dark, cool and rich with something latent. I walked along head down, lost in thought, trying to understand how a brilliant man could write, would write, such a base botch of a book. If only I were with him and could […]
Hand it to her. Hillary Clinton had a spectacular day yesterday as she stood on the edge of a rolling field on Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s upstate farm and announced that she may announce. It was as deft and clever a political presentation as I’ve seen, a marvel of spin and more. She was poised, […]