Columns, pieces and posts
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 […]
In a year when Republicans are operating in such an enviable political environment, why aren’t their U.S. Senate candidates holding big and impressive leads? Why does it look close? Why are party professionals getting worried? The Democratic president is unpopular. What progress can be claimed in the economy is tentative, uneven, feels temporary. True unemployment […]
At this dramatic time, with a world on fire, we look at the president and ponder again who he is. Mr. Obama himself mocked how people see him, according to a remarkable piece this week by Peter Baker in the New York Times. NYT +1.10% “Oh, it’s a shame when you have a wan, diffident, […]
President Obama would have been rocked the past few months by five things. One is the building criticism from left and right about his high need for relaxation—playing golf while the world burns. Another is that he misread the significance and public power of the beheadings of American journalists. Third, he has been way out […]
There was nobody like her. Some people are knockoffs or imitations of other, stronger, more vivid figures, but there was never another Joan Rivers before her or while she lived. She was a seriously wonderful, self-invented woman. She was completely open and immediately accessible. She had the warmth of a person who found others keenly […]