Columns, pieces and posts
Sarah Palin’s public performances continue to be distinctive. Her endorsement of Donald Trump was less speech than podium jazz scat, with some early Elvis thrown in. “Trump’s candidacy, it has exposed not just that tragic, the ramifications of that betrayal of a transformation of our country, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both […]
This isn’t what the column’s about, but should be said: It was strange Tuesday night to see the Republican chosen to give the State of the Union response go after the front-runner in her party’s presidential primary. But then this is a strange year. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said that during “anxious times,” the […]
What everyone’s waiting for is the winnowing. New Hampshire and Iowa will force some Republican candidates out. When we know who’s still in we’ll have a surer sense of the contours of the race. It is still true that the party has never had a year like this, with the ground shifting beneath its feet. […]
In 2016—soon, in just about a month—we’ll find out if Donald Trump voters vote. They say they’re voters and not just rally-goers. In Iowa on Feb. 1 and New Hampshire on Feb. 9, we’ll know if it’s a movement or a moment. We are going to learn a lot pretty quickly. In the next few […]
A long time ago in a country far, far away, America had less of everything and holidays were easier and more modest. Only 50 and 60 years ago, well within human memory, Christmas was a plainer, simpler affair. Everyone—even the rich, but certainly the poor and in-between—had less. Because America had less. You’d get a […]
At a Christmas party in New York the other night an esteemed statesman stood to toast his friends. The bipartisan group leaned forward: His toasts are warm and witty and often capture the meaning of whatever is going on. He paused, looked out and began: “This time next year it will all be over.” There […]
As tribune of the base Donald Trump is successful and inadequate. You see it in the Muslim question. His strength is that he responds to and appears to share the concerns of those who are legitimately worried about whom we allow into the United States—our visa protocols, our vetting, our standards. This is a national-security […]
I mean this Thanksgiving column to go from a small fact to what I think a large truth. The small fact is that looking back now on an enjoyable book tour, a surprise was that a lot of people are interested in the specifics of how others work. Early on I was asked in an […]
After great pain, a formal feeling comes— The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs— In the days after Paris Emily Dickinson’s poem kept ringing through my mind as I tried to figure out what I felt—and, surprisingly, didn’t feel. I did not, as the facts emerged and the story took its full size, feel surprised. Nor […]
During a week of book-tour talks, meetings and conversations in New York, Southern California and Washington, a question consistently emerged: What is going on in the Republican Party? My thoughts as they evolved through seven days of thinking aloud: What is going on, and not only with Republicans, is that American voters are surveying the […]