Columns, pieces and posts
Seven years ago I was talking to a longtime Democratic operative on Capitol Hill about a politician who was in trouble. The pol was likely finished, he said. I was surprised. Can’t he change things and dig himself out? No. “People do what they know how to do.” Politicians don’t have a vast repertoire. When […]
The drubbin’, thumpin’, poundin’ was a two-part wave, a significant Republican rise in the U.S. Senate and a Democratic collapse in the governorships. It was one of those nights neither party ever forgets. Republicans won not only because of a favorable map. In solid Democratic states, they won big or came close. Nor were the […]
If the president’s party loses big on Tuesday, as appears likely, much of the loss will be due to 3 C’s—competence, coherence and credibility. Competence: The administration has shown little talent for or focused interest in running the federal government well, and has managed the executive agencies very poorly. Coherence: The administration has been unable […]
On a bookshelf in my home in a glass-and-brass frame I keep my great-aunt’s Ellis Island health card. It’s cardboard, about as big as your hand. She wore it on her coat during her nine-day journey from Ireland. Every day the ship’s surgeon (possibly brusquely, probably officiously) examined her for signs of acute or long-term […]
He made women look beautiful. That is, among other things, a gracious thing for a man to do. He was an elegant man, which you’d expect—his job was elegance—but he was also an example of great personal dignity and, I hope, a carrier of it. He was sick for many years before his death and […]
Saturday morning I was thinking of Pascal, as who was not. He had a mordant observation about the physicians of his time. Doctors in those days dressed fancy—long robes, tall hats. From memory: Why do doctors wear tall hats? Because they can’t cure you. Why do public health officials speak in public as they do, […]
The administration’s handling of the Ebola crisis continues to be marked by double talk, runaround and gobbledygook. And its logic is worse than its language. In many of its actions, especially its public pronouncements, the government is functioning not as a soother of public anxiety but the cause of it. An example this week came […]
There’s the sense of an absence where the president should be. Decisions are made—by someone, or some agency—on matters of great consequence, Ebola, for instance. The virus has swept three nations of West Africa; a Liberian visitor has just died in Dallas. The Centers for Disease Control says it is tracking more than 50 people […]
We’re all used to a certain amount of doublespeak and bureaucratese in government hearings. That’s as old as forever. But in the past year of listening to testimony from government officials, there is something different about the boredom and indifference with which government testifiers skirt, dodge and withhold the truth. They don’t seem furtive or […]
Three questions for Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, testifying this day before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee regarding recent breaches of White House security: Ms. Pierson, let’s try to lift this story beyond immediate incidents. Just about every establishment and institution in America has seen its public reputation lowered, its standing diminished in […]