Columns, pieces and posts
The presidential debates this year have been more consequential than such debates have ever been. They’ve been historic, shifting the mood and trajectory of the race. They’ve been revealing of the personalities and approaches of the candidates. And they’ve produced a new way in which winners and losers are judged. It’s a two-part wave now, […]
has to win this one if for no other reason than pride, and the president’s supporters seem increasingly confident that he will do well. But when I ask them what “well” would look like, what they imagine when they imagine his victory, they’re not sure. They don’t say things like, “The president knocks him out […]
The vice presidential debate was uniquely important because if Paul Ryan won it or did well, the Romney-Ryan ticket’s momentum would be continued or speed up. If he did not, that momentum would slow or stop. So the night carried implications. The debate, obviously, was the Republican versus the Democrat, a particular kind of conservative […]
A friend in Texas told me of some local difficulties in getting big Romney lawn signs. Its possible there’s been a run on those signs since the first debate, and maybe local GOP organizations are running out. You know what Romney supporters who cant find lawn signs should do? Put an empty chair on the […]
Out on a limb, where the breeze is best: The impact of the first debate is going to be bigger than we know. It’s going to affect thinking more than we know, and it’s going to start showing up in the polls, including in the battlegrounds, more dramatically than we guess. It wasn’t just Mitt […]
Sometimes things you’ve long known break through again in a fresh and powerful way, and what you know becomes new again. “Man needs less to be instructed than reminded,” Dr. Johnson said, but it wasn’t really a reminder I got yesterday, it was a sort of revivifier. I was at the big annual street fair […]
“Governor, the success or failure of your entire presidential campaign will come down to what happens between the hours of 9 and 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3. We’re at a hinge point in history. It’s not too much to say the future of the American republic depends on how you do in that hour […]
“Nothing is written.” That was T.E. Lawrence to the Arab tribesmen in Robert Bolt’s screenplay, a masterpiece, of “Lawrence of Arabia.” You write no one off. Nothing is inevitable. Life is news—”What happened today?” And news is surprise—”You’re kidding!” But you have to look at the landscape and see the shape of the land. You […]
What should Mitt Romney do now? He should peer deep into the abyss. He should look straight into the heart of darkness where lies a Republican defeat in a year the Republican presidential candidate almost couldn’t lose. He should imagine what it will mean for the country, for a great political philosophy, conservatism, for his […]
No American leader’s public statements were up to the task or equal to the moment this week. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama were appropriately full of high praise and sentiment for the four U.S. diplomats gruesomely murdered in Libya. The four can’t be praised enough: They put themselves in harm’s way […]