Columns, pieces and posts
Easter, Passover, spring break, holiday weekend. Let us unfurrow the brow and look at something elevated. It’s a small thing, a half-hour television interview from 60 years ago, but it struck me this week as a kind of master class in how to be a public figure and how to talk about what matters. In […]
It takes a long time for candidates to get over losing the American presidency. Some never do. It’s not just personal anger—“I will not be denied my destiny!”—it’s something more poignant. It’s that the greatest prize was there, beautiful and within your grasp and then—dust. You’re holding nothing. You’re rocked, concussed, and as months pass […]
It’s two immovable forces that have to share the same country. Both sides are sincere and have reasons for where they stand. But this is a promising moment. Some give looks possible. What is needed to prepare the ground for progress? Squelch your own smugness. Stop needling, patronizing, misstating the other side’s position. Lay down […]
In just a few months, in June, it will be three years since Donald Trump announced for the presidency. It feels shorter ago and longer. I will never forget that day. I watched it live, at home, wondering where this circus act was going. But as soon as the speech was over the phone rang […]
We discuss motives, but isn’t it always the same motive? “I have murder in my heart.” Why do so many Americans have murder in their hearts? That is my question after the St. Valentine’s Day shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. We all know it is part of a continuing cultural […]
You know the miraculous life of Louis Zamperini, whose story was told in Laura Hillenbrand’s epic, lovely book, “Unbroken.” Louis was the delinquent, knockabout son of Italian immigrants in Torrance, Calif., who went on to run for America in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, then joined the Army Air Corps before Pearl Harbor. He crashed in […]
Traveling this week in California and Texas, I was struck again by how every political discussion is about Donald Trump. People who used to bring up state races—“We’ve got a hot election for governor going on here”—rarely mention them, and immediately revert to the national. Like no other president in my lifetime, he obsesses the […]
The State of the Union speech was good—spirited, pointed, with a credible warmth for the heroes in the balcony, who were well chosen. They were beautiful human beings, and their stories were rousing—the cop and his wife who adopted the baby, the hardy North Korean defector who triumphantly waved his crutches, the mourning, dignified parents […]
When I speak with young people beginning their careers I often tell them that in spite of the apparent formidableness of the adults around them—their mastery of office systems, their professional accomplishments, their sheer ability to last—almost everyone begins every day just trying to keep up their morale. Everyone’s trying to be hopeful about themselves […]
I used to think America needed a parent to help it behave. Now I think it needs a grandparent. Our culture has been so confused for so long on so many essentials, and has gotten so crosswise on the issue of men and women, that we need more than ever the wisdom of the aged. […]