Columns, pieces and posts
I didn’t intend to write on Andrew Roberts’s biography of Winston Churchill, because so many smart people have written on it so well. Also, I don’t belong to the Churchill cult. He was a great man, arguably the greatest of the 20th century, and right on the central question of his age, the meaning of […]
Fox News’ year-end poll is interesting. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said they would vote today to re-elect President Trump, with 30% saying they definitely would. Thirty-nine percent say they expect him to be re-elected; 52% do not. At the same time, the president has a 46% job-approval rating, while 52% disapprove. So the president’s approval […]
I feel it needs to be said again: George Herbert Walker Bush should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership during the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was an epic moment in modern world history, and a close-run thing. “One mishap and much could unravel,” former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney […]
December marks the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. There are many recent retrospectives on the scandal that led to it, including former Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s mildly indignant “Contempt” and Alex Gibney’s superb documentary series “The Clinton Affair.” As I look back 20 years on, I’m more indignant about some aspects, less about others. […]
Since tradition is on our mind I’ll tell you of one that has been happening in a Manhattan home the past 20 years or more. A core of a few dozen old friends and relatives, enlivened by surprise guests—once we had an Indian maharajah in a turban—gather with their children for Thanksgiving. It’s a varied, […]
First lady of the United States is a hard job. It’s not formally defined yet entails many demands; it has an impact on history but no formal powers; it’s the focus of all eyes, but people like to make it clear nobody elected you. Its locus is the East Wing, which the West Wing considers […]
I don’t see it as everyone does. To me the headline is that for the first time since the election of the most polarizing president in modern memory, the American people yielded a national verdict on his first two years of his governance. And it was not a sweeping rebuke. A record 114 million Americans […]
We’re going to the polls and looking for leaders. What do we want? What a voter told Bret Baier a week ago, live from the campaign trail: someone she can cheer for. She was such an American, half hopeful, half wistful. When people have real leaders, there’s a feeling of security: Somebody reliable is in […]
The attempted bombing of political figures is domestic terrorism meant to disrupt and intimidate. That it came to light less than two weeks before an election whose outcomes may constitute a national rebuke to—or soft boost of—President Trump’s controversial leadership means that passions are high and will stay so. Things are feeling primal, tribal. There’s […]
This may seem small, but I don’t think it is. I know it will seem old-fashioned. It has to do with a great nation’s sense of its own stature on the world stage. In the days after the apparent murder of the Saudi activist and writer Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump was repeatedly pressed about the […]