Columns, pieces and posts
The other day I experienced a flash of alarm. There was a claim from an Argentine journalist that when the president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, phoned Donald Trump to congratulate him on his election victory, the talk turned to permits for the building of a Trump skyscraper in Buenos Aires. Mr. Macri’s press officer quickly […]
Eight points and two anecdotes as we continue to digest this astounding election. You don’t know a tree is hollow until you push hard against it and it falls. The establishments of both parties did not know, a year ago, that they were hollow trees. They thought themselves strong because they always had been, and […]
Sometimes there comes a crack in Time itself. Sometimes the earth is torn by something blind. . . . Call it the mores, call it God or Fate . . . That force exists and moves. And when it moves It will employ a hard and actual stone To batter into bits an actual wall […]
Thinking about Election Day I realized how much I miss the majesty of the old voting procedures. You used to go into a tall booth and stand alone and no one could see you vote. The booth was enclosed by dark curtains. You entered and pulled a big metal lever and it closed the curtain […]
I didn’t include last week what I thought was the most vexing question of 2016. I cut it for space, thinking it was a little off point, or at least not pressing, and could be explored down the road. I had asserted that Donald Trump was a nut but that a sane Trump could have […]
It is quite dreadful and a showing of the gravest disrespect that, if U.S. intelligence agencies are correct, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has inserted himself into America’s presidential election. And it could not have deeper implications. If Russia is indeed behind the leaks of the emails of Democratic Party operatives Mr. Putin may have many reasons, […]
Look, he’s a nut and you know he’s a nut. I go to battleground states and talk to anyone, everyone. They all know Donald Trump’s a nut. Some will vote for him anyway. Many are in madman-versus-criminal mode, living with (or making) their final decision. They got the blues. Everyone does. They’re worried about the […]
We are unsettled. The big thing looms and so many are still groping toward a decision. We would all like it to be over. I think of the farmer who treed a coon and then climbed up to shake it out of the branches. The coon turned out to be a wild lynx, which bit […]
What impact has the modern media environment had on the 2016 campaign? I know that’s a boring sentence, but journalists and politicians talk about it a lot, journalists uneasily and politicians with frustration. The 24/7 news cycle and the million multiplying platforms with their escalating demands—for pictures, video, sound, the immediate hot take—exhaust politicians and […]
The signature sentence of this election begins with the words “In a country of 320 million . . .” I hear it everywhere. It ends with “how’d it come down to these two?” or “why’d we get them?” Another sentence is a now a common greeting among Republicans who haven’t seen each other in a […]