Columns, pieces and posts
The president’s problem right now is that people think he’s smart. They think he’s in command, aware of pitfalls and complexities. That’s his reputation: He’s risen far on his brains. They think he is sophisticated. That is his problem in the health insurance debacle. People have seen their prices go up, their choices narrow. They […]
I had a lot of jobs in a somewhat knockabout youth—waitress, clerk, temporary secretary, counter girl in a bakery (nice—no one’s ever sad in a bakery) and in a flower shop (hard—for hours I removed the thorns from the tough, gnarly roses we sold, which left my hands nicked and bloodied). All the jobs of […]
I’m off this week but wanted to join in on some last JFK thoughts. I write just a few minutes before the 50th anniversary of that moment the shots rang out. The television coverage has been excessive, and some have found it grating. Fair enough, but we’ll never do it like this again. There won’t […]
I am on my way from Los Angeles to Dallas, where tomorrow I will appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which will come live out of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. I can’t believe I’ll be inside that place, from which, 50 years ago next week, at a corner window on the sixth floor, Lee Harvey […]
Congress right now has a historic chance—really, it could wind up in the history books next to the stopping of FDR’s court-packing scheme in 1937—to hold back ObamaCare. Congress can delay it, or pass a law mandating or allowing insurance companies to continue insuring everyone they just threw off coverage. Heck, they could try to […]
Republicans should stop taking the boob bait of the press. The story of the day is ObamaCare and the pain it is causing the Democrats. That story is not being fully explored. We are not seeing pieces on Captol Hill Democrats rethinking their four-year-long lockstep backing of a program that is failing massively and before […]
All my friends in politics on the Republican side are feeling dour, angry, frustrated, furrow-browed. That’s understandable. Progressivism may look tottery at the moment, but Republicans don’t know how to knock it down and are at odds over what to replace it with. Interparty friction is high: The GOP is a bird with a lot […]
Washington It is a month since the government shutdown and a day after the election. The minority leader of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, longest-serving senator in Kentucky history (1985 to the present, up for a sixth term in 2014), is seated in his office talking about the stresses, strains and estrangements that mark the […]
Years ago John McPhee wrote a great book about Bill Bradley called “A Sense of Where You Are.” I keep thinking about that title. You have to know where you are in time and space, you have to know who you are and what you’re doing, you have to be able to locate the moment […]
Former White House press secretary Dana Perino has good, commonsensical advice for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who’ll be questioning Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on ObamaCare tomorrow. Boiled down: Can the theatrics, know your stuff, we don’t need re-enactments of constituent rage, be serious and sober. If members take […]