Needed: A Little Give and a Lot of Integrity In this pandemic, some local officials have been too officious, and federal ones too deceptive.

It looks at the moment as if coronavirus wasn’t a huge tsunami wave that was going to knock down skyscrapers but a big, welling wave that came, filled the city, changed the waterline, will recede somewhat and well upward again. Maybe it’s not a curve but a curve within a roller coaster. Testimony from those […]

A Holy Week Amid a National Tribulation ‘Hardship generally makes people stronger,’ a social psychologist observes. What will we learn?

It is Holy Week. Easter is coming, Passover here. We are perhaps halfway through the big pause and fully conscious we are living big history. We’ve never experienced a time like this before—a global pandemic, a national shutdown—and may never again. When it’s over most of us will look back on it as a life-changing […]

Trump Isn’t Easing Coronavirus Forebodings If it hits America hard, a lot will change—the national mood, cultural habits, the economy.

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 […]

The Best Democratic Debate in Years

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 […]

Mike Bloomberg Could Pull It Off Biden’s collapse created a vacuum in the center, and the former mayor has the money and will to fill it.

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 […]