Columns, pieces and posts
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump will be going on CNN next week, for a live Town Hall, for several reasons: To mix it up, like the old days. To be the dramatic focus of attention in a potentially sparky environment, like the old days. To remind people of positive things they experienced during his administration. […]
Look at people’s faces when you say, “Looks like it’ll be Biden and Trump.” Those faces tell you everything—the soft wince, the shake of the head, the sigh. Those are the emblems of the 2024 campaign right now. Seventy percent of his own party doesn’t want Joe Biden to run. More than half his party […]
The dawn of the internet age was so exciting. I took my grade-school son, enthralled by Apple computers, to see Steve Jobs speak at a raucous convention in New York almost a quarter-century ago. What fervor there was. At a seminar out West 30 years ago I attended a lecture by young, wild-haired Nathan Myhrvold, […]
Thinking over here about the free press. What an ideal, what a human achievement. You know the hallowed stories. The first investigative newspaper series is generally credited to W.T. Stead, whose “The Maiden Tribute of Babylon,” caused a sensation in 19th-century England. Stead was a rascally man and born crusader. In 1885, while editor of […]
We need a palate cleanser. It is Easter (whose theme is resurrection and salvation), Passover (freedom and remembering) and Ramadan (devotion). So let us go back to affectionate days and men of stature. It has been noted that the first and only previous American president to be arrested was Ulysses S. Grant. He was arrested […]
Artificial intelligence is unreservedly advanced by the stupid (there’s nothing to fear, you’re being paranoid), the preening (buddy, you don’t know your GPT-3.4 from your fine-tuned LLM), and the greedy (there is huge wealth at stake in the world-changing technology, and so huge power). Everyone else has reservations and should. It is being developed with […]
Two topics, both having to do with presidencies. The New York Times last week recounted the memories of Ben Barnes, 84, who traveled to the Mideast in the summer of 1980, at the height of the U.S. presidential election, with his political mentor, Texas political powerhouse John Connally. There, Mr. Barnes said, Connally urged heads […]
The first GOP presidential debate is five months away, in August. Primaries begin about six months after. This thing is on. Some observations on Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor is definitely running. Every sign is there: donors, a growing and increasingly professional organization, a book that is part memoir, part platform and debuted this week […]
Government finagling and misdirecting, especially in crises, are destructive to the long-term public good. And in the end they’re always destructive to personal reputations. The Journal last Sunday upended an old debate with a big exclusive: The Energy Department has told the White House it believes a lab leak was the most likely source of […]
I’ve been meaning for the longest time to write about Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech, long derided by history and cited to explain his landslide drubbing by Ronald Reagan 16 months later. It was, in fact, a good speech—brave, original and pertinent to the moment. It failed because he was exactly the man who couldn’t give […]