Columns, pieces and posts
All the Northeast is covered in snow, and the sound and clamor of Washington is muffled. The federal government took a day off; the news is full of weather. Not a bad time to ponder why people do what they do—more specifically, why witnesses to history often take notes on what they see and hear, […]
Welcome to my obsession. It is electricity. It makes everything run—the phone, the web, the TV, the radio, all the ways we talk to each other and receive information. The tools and lights in the operating room—electricity. All our computers in a nation run by them, all our defense structures, installations and communications. The pumps […]
The State of the Union was a spectacle of delusion and self-congratulation in which a Congress nobody likes rose to cheer a president nobody really likes. It marked the continued degeneration of a great and useful tradition. Viewership was down, to the lowest level since 2000. This year’s innovation was the Parade of Hacks. It […]
So the president’s State of the Union address is Tuesday night, and it’s always such a promising moment, a chance to wake everyone up and say “This I believe” and “Here we stand.” The networks are focused and alert, waiting to be filled with a president’s excellence and depth. It’s a chance for the American […]
It is astonishing and cannot go unremarked that Mississippi’s Gov. Frank “Boo” Burnham, the conservative who won a 2011 landslide, gave an interview Friday in which he demonstrated all that is wrong in American politics—all its division, its intolerance, its ignorance and sickness. Burnham damned and removed from the rolls of the respectable everyone in […]
ometimes the most obvious thing is the most unnoticed. I find myself thinking this week about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life. This common failing is the source of such woe! Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe ; their views […]
Gov. Chris Christie acquitted himself well in his “Bridgegate” news conference, and emerged undead. He said he had “no knowledge or involvement” in the apparent scheme by his political operatives to take revenge on a New Jersey mayor who refused to back him in the 2013 election. He had “no involvement,” in the four-day-long traffic […]
Cities sometimes make swerves. That’s what New York did in November when it elected a left-wing Democrat, Bill de Blasio, as mayor. The city was saying, “Enough with the past, let’s try something new.” There’s no doubt they will get it. Mayors Rudy Giuliani (1994-2001) and Mike Bloomberg (2002-13) led a renaissance of the city, […]
A small thought on an essential fact as 2014 begins: The other day, after a column on the good and bad of 2013, I got a letter from a reader named Arthur Blair, who felt I’d left out something important. “I believe that just being alive is still the best thing of any year.” I […]
Washington Home, night, fireplace crackling. A long, good day followed by quiet, peace and a chance to reflect. The past year was not the most satisfying politically, not the most exalted or inspiring. Republicans suffered an unforced error with the shutdown. The Democrats suffered for insisting ObamaCare be implemented on schedule, as planned, which immediately […]