Columns, pieces and posts
From a speech last month at the Al Smith Dinner at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Words of thanks to someone I knew well as a child: I had an old great-aunt. She was my grandfather’s sister. Her name was Mary Jane Byrne but we called her Jane Jane. When I first encountered […]
Chris Christie got a standing ovation from the Republican Governors Association this week after delivering fiery words that captured the inner views of audience members, including GOP officeholders from 50 states, donors, party figures and operatives. The former New Jersey governor told them voters in the midterms “rejected crazy.” We spoke by phone after Donald […]
It is rude of Arizona and Nevada to keep the country waiting to know the composition of its Senate. Why, days after the election, don’t we know which party controls the House? Why can’t the late-reporting states get their act together on vote counting? It’s the increase in mail-in ballots? So what? You roll with […]
William F. Buckley once received a postelection letter from an elderly liberal saying that she wished it were not only the number of votes counted but the weight and worthiness of each. Surely the votes of the thoughtful and informed should be counted more heavily than those of the frivolous and knee-jerk. If we did […]
I think we all have a sense of where this is going. People are alarmed at the cost of things. They are afraid of crime. They don’t like what they see of the schools. These are personal, intimate issues. They have to do with how you live your life. You don’t want to be the […]
Half a century ago William F. Buckley wrote a small gem of a book called “Cruising Speed,” about a single action-packed week in his life as an editor and writer. I’ve just had a Buckley-like week—at Purdue University in Indiana to speak with students, then back to New York to interview Henry Kissinger for the […]
Public pronouncements aren’t commensurate with the gravity of the Ukraine situation. They’ve gotten too informal, off-the-cuff and shallow. Russia continues its missile barrage against Ukrainian cities. The Crimean bridge was daringly taken out, delivering Vladimir Putin a real blow, and within hours Ukraine was tauntingly unveiling a postage stamp depicting the ruined span. The Nord […]
If you have been observing the Georgia U.S. Senate campaign closely and you are unusually straightforward and eloquent you would say of Herschel Walker what John Ellis said Wednesday in his newsletter: “Walker shouldn’t be a candidate for the United States Senate. He’s not qualified. He won’t know what to do when (and if) he […]
In October it will be 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis, which has been called the most dangerous crisis in recorded history. The Soviet Union had secretly placed missiles in a base in Cuba; the U.S. discovered them through secret aerial photographs. What would President John F. Kennedy do, less than two years into […]
Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine must be received soberly, if for no other reason than that leaders occasionally do what they say they’ll do. There are reasons beyond that. He has lost hardware, soldiers, ground and face. He is cornered and escalating, increasing the odds of mistake and miscalculation. Great care […]