Columns, pieces and posts
FROM: Charles Smith, an ambassador from the Obama-Biden era TO: Joe Biden Boss, happy Labor Day. Hope this finds you well. We’re still in Edgartown and fully recovered from the virus. Betty had it worse than me, but right now I’m hearing the fierce thwack of the ball as she plays doubles and I’m in […]
It was a real insane-a-thon. It was genuinely moving. It didn’t avoid big issues. It led with a lie. It was a success in that it will have pleased the base and done some degree of outreach to others. The parts of the Republican National Convention that were crazy included but were not limited to: […]
To be fair in critiquing certain public events you have to be like a judge in the Olympics and factor in degree of difficulty. No one had ever done a Zoom convention before, so no one knew how to do it. Should there be a host each night? Should it be an earnest actress? Does […]
Kamala Harris is a sitting U.S. senator who was vetted during the primaries, the daughter of immigrants and the first black woman and Indian-American on a major-party ticket. She thus satisfies the basic requirements of a vice-presidential choice: First do no harm, and second pick up what you can. Three salient points: She rose far […]
It’s August, high summer, and you’re trying to ease in and relax with family, and friends. You’ve imagined it for months. You’re at the beach with pails and shovels and towels and the short chairs, and you’re trying to sit back and do nothing after this unrelenting year of stress and effort and rolling with […]
Where did Donald Trump come from? Where is the GOP going? Should the whole thing be burned down? A lot had to go wrong before we got a President Trump. This fact, once broadly acknowledged, has gotten lost, as if a lot of people want it forgotten. Mr. Trump’s election came from two unwon wars, […]
Something shifted this month. Donald Trump’s hold on history loosened, and may be breaking. In some new way his limitations are being seen and acknowledged, and at a moment when people are worried about the continuance of their country and their own ability to continue within it. He hasn’t been equal to the multiple crises. […]
Summer begins and it may be a hard one. Lots of pain in this big place. The cultural upheaval continues, the plague marches on, a bitter election looms. This is a good time to think about something noble and inspiring, the life and work of Bob Dylan. He has an album out this week, his […]
I want to get back to the pandemic, which is not at the moment being seen for what it is. It is taking place within a very different context. It has been subsumed by the Upheaval, the culture-shaking event we are undergoing as a nation. States have begun to reopen, people are going out. Covid-19 […]
There’s so much to say but my mind keeps going back to New Year’s Eve, when we watched the ball come down and knew the story of 2020 was the presidential election and whatever stray harassments history throws our way. No one that night guessed—no one could have guessed—that in the next few months we’d […]