Columns, pieces and posts
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 […]
Washington This week in Trump: We are living through big history and no one here knows where it’s going or how this period ends. Everyone, left, right and center, feels the earth is unsteady under their feet. Too much is happening. Democratic senators boycott confirmation hearings, Iran tests ballistic missiles, President Trump has testy phone […]
To see Week One of the Trump administration clearly, you have to do two things. First, put to one side the incendiary comments, which now feel like small and daily data points within a greater cloud of crazy. Put aside the president’s preoccupations with crowd size, popularity, illegal voters—all the things he says that hurt […]
Last week’s column was on the inauguration. This week’s, up tomorrow night, will be a look at President Trump’s first days in office. Here I mention smaller things I saw or thought in Washington last week, as the Trump administration geared up to begin. Every new administration begins awkwardly. New White Houses are always herky-jerky, […]
Washington I was more moved than I expected. Then more startled. The old forms and traditions, the bands and bunting, endured. I thought, as I watched the inauguration: It continues. There were pomp and splendor, happy, cheering crowds; and for all the confounding nature of the past 18 months, and all the trauma, it came […]
This week was hail and farewell. Thursday morning William Cohen, the former Republican senator who became Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense, introduced and endorsed Gen. James N. Mattis,Donald Trump’s nominee as defense chief, to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “He has the nickname of ‘Mad Dog’—it’s a misnomer,” Mr. Cohen said. “It should be Braveheart.” […]
At just after noon on Friday, Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be sworn in as 45th president of the United States. He will stand on the west steps of the Capitol with Chief Justice John Roberts, who will hold a Bible, possibly two. (If the Bible is open it will likely be turned to a […]
I want to end this dramatic year writing of a man whose great and constructive work I discovered in 2016. He is the photojournalist Chris Arnade. I follow him on Twitter, where he issues great tweet-storms containing pictures and commentary about America. (His work has also appeared in the Guardian and the Atlantic.) He has […]