Columns, pieces and posts
This coronavirus is new to our species—it is “novel.” It spreads more easily than the flu—“exponentially,” as we now say—and is estimated to be at least 10 times as lethal. Testing in the U.S. has been wholly inadequate; history may come to see this as the great scandal of the epidemic. “Anybody that needs a […]
No one has seen anything like it. It will live in our political lore. There’ll be some bright 32-year-old kid running a campaign in 2056 and his guy will be down three in a row and the elders will take him to the Marriott bar and tell him, “Ya gotta get out, handwriting’s on the […]
Punditry 101: It’s bad when you don’t write about what you’re thinking about. All week I was taking notes knowing I’d be looking at South Carolina, Super Tuesday and this week’s debate. I was thinking about polls and Rep. Jim Clyburn’s beautiful remarks in support of Joe Biden. They were beautiful because they were highly […]
If you love national politics and follow it closely, there’s always the debate you imagine in your head and the one that later happens on the screen. Before Wednesday’s Democratic debate I made a list of the bare, bottom-line message I thought each candidate had to deliver. Mike Bloomberg: You can stomach me. Bernie Sanders […]
You have to start here: We are immersed in a freakish and confounding political era. Anything can happen. Surprise is built in. Guy on a lark takes an escalator ride down to a rally and the system is changed forever. “Expect the unexpected.” That is the context. Within it, consider this: We are misreading Mike […]
Democrats, when they’re feeling alarmed or mischievous, will often say that Ronald Reagan would not recognize the current Republican Party. I usually respond that John F. Kennedy would not recognize the current Democratic Party, and would never succeed in it. Both men represented different political eras but it’s forgotten that they were contemporaries, of the […]
Here is something small but big that happened this week and speaks of a generation gap within journalism. I write from the perspective of having worked the overnight shift at CBS News when I started out, choosing stories off the wires to lead hourly newscasts. I was young, and I sometimes got it wrong in […]
We must take our satisfactions where we can. It is not terrible for the young that they witness a certain gravity emanating from Congress. There’s a lot to be learned and reminded of when we speak of the genius of the Founders and quote Hamilton, Madison and the others as they created the political arrangements […]
Impeachment is moving forward and going nowhere. There is new information but it doesn’t really tell those who’ve paid attention anything they didn’t know. Putative administration operative Lev Parnas said on “The Rachel Maddow Show” Wednesday that the president knew everything about efforts to lean on Ukraine. But this was clear in testimony throughout the […]
So far our recent encounter with Iran looks as if it ended pretty well, or as well as it could have. At the moment it looks like we’re more or less where we were before Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani was killed, only he’s gone and that’s good. There is no particular reason to believe Iran […]