Columns, pieces and posts
Let’s start shallow and try to end deeper. The shallow thought is about campaign theatrics, or, better, the mood with which candidates present themselves to the public. Part of how Donald Trump connects with his audience, those in the hall and those watching at home, is that he tells them how he experiences things. It […]
The leaders of the world aren’t a very impressive group right now. There’s a sense with some of them of playing out a historical or cultural string, that they’re placeholders in some way. Many are young, yet so much around them feels tired. Which has me thinking, again, of the concept of the genius cluster. […]
It was at dinner a month ago in a Manhattan restaurant. Old friends who live far apart had come together on a leisurely spring night. But it turned testy fast. I note here that the style of anti-Trumpers is often highhanded and manipulative, while the style of pro-Trumpers can be brutalist and patronizing. One couple, […]
London Quickly on the presidential race, then to Brexit. Hillary Clinton has been given a great gift by Donald Trump. She hadn’t been able to explain the purpose or meaning of her candidacy. She tried out various themes and slogans, but nothing ever took or seemed real. Everything came down to I’m Hillary and I […]
This first month of summer I see movement and no-movement. No movement: Donald Trump. He’s like someone caught in the first act who lurches into a second act—a solid, prepared speech, a subdued interview—then scrambles back to first-act antics. It’s easy to guess he’s surrounded by friends and supporters who know more is needed than […]
The most interesting thing Donald Trump has said recently isn’t his taunting of Hillary Clinton, it’s his comment to Bloomberg’s Joshua Green. Mr. Green writes: “Many politicians, Trump told me, had privately confessed to being amazed that his policies, and his lacerating criticism of party leaders, had proved such potent electoral medicine.” Mr. Trump seemed […]
Let’s begin with a prophecy: It is not only the Republican Party that is breaking and perhaps re-forming. The Democratic Party is also starting to come apart. We’re seeing the first signs of it now. A significant part of the base is going left. Bernie Sanders took off because they want a socialist. The party […]
What is needed among Republicans in Washington now is patience, soberness of thought, and a kind of heroic fairness. Reflection and humility wouldn’t hurt either. One of our two great parties is either shattering or reconstituting itself. It is not united and has not been since the George W. Bush era. As the pollster Kellyanne […]
God bless our beloved country as it again undergoes one of its quiet upheavals. Donald Trump will receive the Republican nomination for the presidency and nothing will be the same. How we do politics in America is changed and will not be going back. The usual standards and expectations have been turned on their head, […]
The wind is at Donald Trump’s back, and it’s the kind that doesn’t lessen but build. Last week he won the New York primary with an astounding 60% of the vote to John Kasich’s 25% and Ted Cruz’s 15%. This week he swept the five-state Northeast regional primaries with numbers that neared or surpassed the […]