Columns, pieces and posts
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 […]
We’ll begin with what went wrong with the Republican debate in Boulder, Colo., then look at what went wrong with Jeb Bush. CNBC’s debate moderators have famously come under fire for questions, statements and a tone that were obnoxious. They were. The moderators seemed intent on trivializing the field. When you say, “Candidate A, you […]
An interesting question for history is who was the real leader of the West the past half-dozen years, Angela Merkel of Germany or Canada’s Stephen Harper, voted out this week after almost 10 years as prime minister. His great success was in helping bring his country through and past the global meltdown of 2008. He […]
Something big happened at the Democratic debate. It didn’t have to do with Hillary Clinton besting Bernie Sanders or Jim Webb. What she had to do, after the long, battering summer, was show she is up to the battle, ready for it, capable—that she can do this. She did. She was crisp, lively, a presence. […]
Thoughts on two strongmen: Donald Trump has entered his second act. His polls, sometimes characterized as weakening, are in fact strong. As Bloomberg’s John Heilemann said on “Morning Joe,” if Jeb Bush had Mr. Trump’s numbers everyone would declare the race over. This week Quinnipiac had Mr. Trump solidly leading his GOP rivals in Florida, […]
It’s been a week of shocks, failures and gaffes, different in severity but all revealing. In Washington Rep. Kevin McCarthy, presumed successor to Speaker John Boehner, seemed to be acting out what he understands to be the anger and aggression of the GOP base. He’s grim-visaged, stern. He says “frustrated” a lot. I guess when […]