Columns, pieces and posts
Have you had your 2016 Moment? I think you probably have, or will. The Moment is that sliver of time in which you fully realize something epochal is happening in politics, that there has never been a presidential year like 2016, and suddenly you are aware of it in a new, true and personal way. […]
In Wisconsin and in the weeks leading up to it Donald Trump got wounded. Big animals get wounded and come back. The question is whether he’s a big animal or something smaller that skittered around the forest and finally picked the wrong fight. Wisconsin almost certainly foreclosed his chance to walk into Cleveland with enough […]
This is almost always true: A woman who aborts a child is operating within an emotional and spiritual context of fear, disappointment, confusion and sadness. If she receives an illegal abortion she should not be “punished” by the law. This is in line with long human tradition and is based on the simple wisdom that […]
These things are obvious after the Brussels bombings: In striking at the political heart of Europe, home of the European Union, the ISIS jihadists were delivering a message: They will not be stopped. What we are seeing now is not radical jihadist Islam versus the West but, increasingly, radical jihadist Islam versus the world. They […]
Super Tuesday II didn’t so much yield results as reveal continuing trends. Donald Trump up, Hillary Clinton up. This is what I hear from Washington’s Republican political leaders and operatives: Wait and see. There’s still time for Mr. Trump to self-destruct, for voters to start to see through him. In the meantime, get all the […]
The door has closed forever, said a friend, on a particular part of the past. Or to be more precise, first-person access to the Reagan era through one of its two most important figures has now, with the death of Nancy Reagan, ended. The era itself will never end—it is part of the history of […]
I’m interested in where we are. I think we are seeing a great political party shatter before our eyes. I’m not sure I see a way around or through. I said so on TV the other night and got a lot of responses on social media. They said: Good. They said, “They are corrupt,” and […]
We’re in a funny moment. Those who do politics for a living, some of them quite brilliant, are struggling to comprehend the central fact of the Republican primary race, while regular people have already absorbed what has happened and is happening. Journalists and politicos have been sharing schemes for how Marco parlays a victory out […]
What is happening in American politics? We’re in the midst of a rebellion. The bottom and middle are pushing against the top. It’s a throwing off of old claims and it’s been going on for a while, but we’re seeing it more sharply after New Hampshire. This is not politics as usual, which by its […]
The president has every right to nominate a successor to Justice Antonin Scalia. He shouldn’t, but he has the right by law and precedent. The reasons he shouldn’t spring from facts particular to the moment and having to do with what Justice Scalia symbolized. In a 50/50 country, one that suffers deep ideological divisions and […]