Columns, pieces and posts
This extended moment of history reminds me of Washington in the years before and during the Civil War. There was a kind of hysterical intensity among our political class in those days, on all sides. The instability was so dramatic—Rep. Preston Brooks caning Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate in 1856, poor […]
John Hay had a warm mind and a cool heart. The secretary of state to presidents William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt (1898-1905) had two baseline gifts necessary for diplomatic achievement but not always seen together, a quick apprehension of the size and meaning of events and a subtlety and sympathy in the reading of human […]
I’m thinking of the astounding events of the past three weeks—how history throws its curves and you watch stunning new factors emerge and at some point you feel grateful to feel humble. This ol’ world can still surprise. It can confound every expectation. One surprise, the central one. No one knew the people of Ukraine […]
It is good to be moved. It feels good to admire without ambivalence. The West is united, suddenly and surprisingly, and that feels good too. Volodymyr Zelensky stirred the world not only by what he said but what he did. He has put it all on the line, including his life. Early on he told […]
It wasn’t geopolitics or ideology that determined world reaction to what happened in Ukraine this week, it was normal human feeling. An army of tanks and troops violently invades a border country populated by its cousins—a country a third its size with a tenth its might—and people watched and thought: That’s not right. If it […]
It is ugly and will get uglier. Vladimir Putin isn’t going to stop anytime soon. You don’t launch a full-scale military assault on another nation and two days later say, “Oh, I think I’ve made my point,” and go home. He was never interested in negotiations, he was never open to argument, he set this […]
It was a landslide. That’s the important fact of San Francisco’s school-board recall election: There was nothing mixed or ambivalent about the outcome. Three members were resoundingly ejected from their jobs: 79% voted to oust Alison Collins, 75% to fire Gabriela López, the board president, and 72% to remove Faauuga Moliga, the vice president. This […]
Simi Valley, Calif. The Reagan Foundation and Institute inaugurated a series of speeches last spring on the future of the Republican Party. It is called “A Time for Choosing” and has been a great and lively success, with speakers from all corners of the party. Monday night I spoke, at the Reagan Library, and this […]
I don’t know what’s coming in Ukraine or what the U.S. should do beyond think first of its national interests. The trick is defining those interests for this moment and with these players. We have to get it right and the stakes feel high, but there seems a paucity of new thinking. I find myself […]
The long news conference wasn’t a success, though it was daring (almost two hours, live) and probably worth the dare (nothing else is working). President Biden came out swinging, pushed back on critics, made big claims—it’s been “a year of enormous progress.” The White House seemed to want to show him thinking aloud, being reflective, […]