Columns, pieces and posts
Who’s that battered old man making his way down shuttered streets, facemask hanging from an ear, IV pole dragging at his side. A poignant figure. Didn’t he used to be someone? But wait, look. He’s not walking, he’s marching. Like he’s got his old strut back. As if he just remembered who he is. That […]
I want to stick with Margaret Chase Smith this week, in part because I can’t get my mind off her and in part because we have a new Congress coming in, the 117th, to be sworn in on Jan. 3, and its members could benefit from Smith’s rules of the road. She was the first […]
History can sometimes help us through current moments by showing what’s needed and providing inspiration. This year marks the 70th anniversary of a great act by a great lady. Margaret Chase Smith was a U.S. representative from 1940-49 and a senator from 1949-73. Her name is always followed by “the first”—the first woman to serve […]
It’s been a fairly gruesome year—pandemic, lockdowns, economic woe, death and illness. We’ve done a column in past years asking friends and acquaintances what they’re thankful for. This year we emailed a dozen people whom we respect and who know a lot, asking what they’d seen, experienced or realized this annus horribilis that left them […]
No hard evidence of widespread fraud, no success in the courts or prospect of it. You can have a theory that a bad thing was done, but only facts will establish it. You need to do more than what Rudy Giuliani did at his news conference Thursday, which was throw out huge, barely comprehensible allegations […]
Where are we? Waiting, as the process plays out. In a week of talking to Republican political leaders, all by nature competitive, most veterans of tough races, I haven’t found one who believes Donald Trump won. All believe that there was fraud in the vote, and that this year’s semicrazy pandemic rules made clear the […]
Divided nation, divided outcome. Votes are still being counted, nothing is certain, but it looks as if Joe Biden will win the presidency, closely. The Republicans will hold the Senate, closely, and pick up some seats in the House. A moderate outcome: divided government. Or so it seems. It’s all so close. The aftermath could […]
I find myself going back, as I review these years, to a crisp, dark evening in December 2016, in Manhattan, where I’d joined a visiting friend, a Catholic activist, for a drink. She had been ardently anti-Trump, was heartbroken at his election and struggling to come to terms, to find some higher meaning. “Maybe this […]
The hour and a half between 9 and 10:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 23, at Belmont University in Nashville was the last chance Donald Trump had to turn it all around. Did he? Could he? It’s late in the game, most peoples’ minds are set, and more than 40 million have already voted. But […]
Everyone’s insane now. I mean everyone in Washington. The great challenge of the era is to maintain your intellectual poise under pressure. Washington this week looked like a vast system fail. Tuesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on CNN, let it be known she won’t countenance pushback. At issue was the stalled stimulus deal. Anchor Wolf Blitzer […]