Columns, pieces and posts
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 […]
President Obama says he didn’t know the U.S. government was tapping Angela Merkel, and you know, maybe he didn’t. I have come to wonder if we don’t have what amounts to a deep state within the outer state in the U.S.—a deep state consisting of our intelligence and security agencies, which are so vast and […]
We should not lose The Headline in the day-to-day headlines. This is big history, not small. The ObamaCare rollout is a disaster for the White House, not a problem or a challenge or an embarrassment, not a gaffe or a bad few weeks. It is a political disaster, and the only question is whether it […]
Oh what it was like. “Mission Control, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.” “America on the moon.” “Godspeed, John Glenn.” “Come on and light this candle.” “A-OK.” “Four 3, 2, 1, and liftoff, we have liftoff.” Oh, we did. Those are words and phrases of America’s space program, especially the Mercury program, one of […]
Chris Christie kills in this moment from last night’s New Jersey gubernatorial debate. You forget that when he’s in the mood he can dance. David Freddoso posted it on Conservative Intelligence Briefing.
You know, on one level the government shutdown is the strangest story. Congressional Republicans didn’t want a shutdown—they wanted to ding ObamaCare without having one. Democrats did want a shutdown—they thought it would reveal the Republicans as crazy, irresponsible, at the mercy of their radical wing. That’s not what they said in public, but it’s […]
Are the Republicans in civil war or in the middle of an evolution? Sen. Robert A Taft (1889-1953) says it need not be the former and can be the latter. Taft, known in his day (the 1930s through ’50s) as “Mr. Republican,” possessed a personal background strikingly pertinent to the current moment. He was establishment […]
We’re all limited in our judgments by what we’re capable of seeing. Our political perceptions are skewed by our passions—we can’t help think everyone else cares about or responds to what we care about and respond to. We’re limited by what we’ve experienced. The last government shutdown took place within a certain context and ended […]