Columns, pieces and posts
My late friend Bill Safire, the tough and joyous New York Times columnist, once gave me good advice. I was not then a newspaper columnist, but he’d apparently decided I would be. This is what he said: Never join a pile-on, always hit ’em when they’re up. Don’t criticize the person who’s already being attacked. […]
I want to think aloud about the American dream. People have been saying for a while that it’s dead. It’s not, but it needs strengthening. We should start by saying what it means, which is something we’ve gotten mixed up about. I know its definition because I grew up in the heart of it and […]
Washington What politicians, those hardy folk, don’t understand about health care is how anxious it makes their constituents. Not suspicious, not obstinate, but anxious. Because unlike such policy questions as tax reform, health care can be an immediate life-or-death issue for you. It has to do with whether, when, and where you can get the […]
Near the end of the campaign I wrote a column called “Imagine a Sane Donald Trump,” lamenting that I believed he was crazy, and too bad. Too bad because his broad policy assertions, or impulses, suggested he understood that 2008 and the years just after (the crash and the weak recovery) had changed everything in […]
All the emphasis seems to be on cutting. We will cut CPB, NPR, NEA. Why aren’t we talking about growing and building and knocking down barriers? Why aren’t we talking about jobs and a boom and reforming regulation and taxes so people can build and invest? Is cutting the absolute No. 1 priority right now? […]
Washington It is challenging for important Republicans on Capitol Hill now. They are leading their party at a time when it is changing and the country has changed. There are fissures in terms of what they believe and what they want. There is no shared, overarching sense of the meaning and purpose of the Republican […]
The president’s speech has been broadly, justly praised. Here, a look at particular aspects of the joint session address, and why it had power. First, the baseline accomplishment. Much has been said in the press about the sin of normalizing Donald Trump, but with this speech—by being there at the podium in the august House […]
Washington If Democrats have a brain in their head, they’ll let Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch sail through the Senate. He’s too attractive. He has been frank and respectful in his meetings with them. He’s been candid about the man who nominated him, Donald Trump, to the reported irritation of the president. He is a […]
Most people don’t live near Washington. They’re not connected to it. They see a new White House on screens—computer, TV. They don’t listen to all the chatter but sometimes turn the sound up. Over weeks you get a general picture. It yields an impression. The impression lasts. One month in, what impression would people be […]
Let’s step back from the daily chaos and look at a big, pressing question. Last fall at a defense forum a significant military figure was asked: If you could wave a magic wand, what is the one big thing you’d give the U.S. military right now? We’d all been talking about the effects of the […]