Columns, pieces and posts
“How did things ever get so far? I don’t know. It was so unfortunate, so unnecessary.” —Don Corleone, “The Godfather” I keep thinking about the dynamics the past few years between the president and what used to be called official Washington. That relationship is ugly and broken, but it could have been otherwise. Trump supporters […]
A few small observations on the fire at Notre Dame: It’s interesting where your thoughts go as you watch a disaster, live. Friends kept saying they were feeling some of what they’d felt on 9/11, and this was true of me too. No one thought it the same, but the flames and smoke evoked similar […]
Don’t do it, Joe. Don’t run for president. It won’t work, you won’t get the nomination, your loss will cause pain and not only for you. And your defeat will be worse than sudden, it will be poignant. Right now operatives for the other candidates are trying to scare you out of jumping in. We […]
Sometimes you write about the most obvious thing in the world because it is the most important thing. Reaction to the outcome of Robert Mueller’s investigation shows Americans again how divided we are. If you are more or less of the left, you experienced the probe as a search for truth that would restore the […]
We’re in a time of absorbed but subtle and not fully noticed shifts. Old-time liberals and conservatives seem to understand each other more deeply, more generously than they did in the past: In some new way they see the other’s basic political decency. On the other hand the parties they’ve been aligned with offer constant […]
A few thoughts on the college admissions scandal in which wealthy and accomplished parents allegedly lied, cheated and bribed to get their kids admitted to elite universities. I bet your reaction was like mine: An electric sense of “I didn’t know that was going on!” followed by an immediate “Of course that was going on!” […]
The Chinese Cultural Revolution was a bitter thing, a catastrophe comparable in its societal effects, and similar in its historical feel, to the terrors of Stalin and the French Revolution. No one knows how many died; historians say up to two million. But what I find myself thinking of these days is the ritual humiliations, […]
Michael Cohen is, famously, a lowlife and screwball who’s made his living as an enforcer, liar and thug. He is going to prison essentially for these things. He has taken to implying his turning on Donald Trump is linked to an inner moral conversion, which may be true but is conveniently timed: He has nothing […]
A last word on Amazon and New York City. The story’s over but it doesn’t stop hurting. Twenty-five thousand jobs lost, maybe 40,000 when all is said and done, and of all kinds—high-tech, management, white-collar, blue. All the construction, and the signs and symbols of a coming affluence: the streets lit bright, the sidewalks busy, […]
Let’s think about the broader, less immediate meaning of our political era. This is how I read it and have read it for some time: The Democratic Party is going hard left. There will be stops and starts but it’s the general trajectory and will be for the foreseeable future. Pew Research sees the party […]