Columns, pieces and posts
We’re seeing bipartisan slippage of standards. It is embarrassing as a citizen to see the president of the United States pardon his son, and in such an all-encompassing way, for any legal transgression going back nearly 11 years, which feels like a concession to the assumption that his more interesting law-stretching or -breaking may be […]
By the time Donald Trump is inaugurated president on Jan. 20, 2025, a lot of people will think he’s already been president for a year. All eyes, every day, have been on Mar-a-Lago, from which have come a constant barrage of appointments, some good, some half-mad, a few promising electrifying confirmation hearings. But that is […]
The first wave of nominees to the Trump administration announced this week included normal Republicans—Susie Wiles as chief of staff, Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations, Lee Zeldin at the Environmental Protection Agency, Marco Rubio as secretary of state. All are grown-up players who have political histories that preceded Donald Trump and became […]
It is worth being moved that in our huge, restive, cynical and yearning nation we peacefully, and with complete public acceptance of the outcome, made a dramatic national judgment this week. Just about every adult citizen took part and took it seriously. All together they produced something we needed: a clear outcome, one delivered without […]
I can’t shake a feeling of peace. As I said, we’ll get through it. No one knows what’s going to happen Tuesday and Wednesday, or what will follow a close election in the weeks and months to come. But yes, I believe our institutions will see us through, not because they are strong—they’re battered old […]
It’s exciting out there but enervating. People are spun up, nerves at a breaking point, and there’s an undercurrent. Whatever the outcome of the election, at least half the country will feel crushed. Voters feel they are faced with a bad choice, and many millions will vote against, not for. Everyone is afraid the other […]
‘Let us go forth to lead the land we love . . . knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” Those are the last words of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address. To me they mean do your very best within your area to make things better. My world has turned […]
We have been thinking about disasters, about Hurricane Helene and North Carolina, about Milton and Florida. It sent me back to the great classic on American disaster, “The Johnstown Flood” by David McCullough, published in 1968. I hadn’t remembered it contains information pertinent to the current moment. Johnstown, Pa., in the western part of the […]
For the love of God, Madam Vice President, reverse your decision and come to the Archdiocese of New York’s Al Smith dinner. There’s still time, schedules free up, and announcing you’ll speak will make you look both humble (“on second thought”) and heroic (into the lion’s den). Why would she snub the famous, ancestral, bipartisan […]
Jump ball, deadlock, coin flip, tossup. We’re running out of election metaphors. Everyone’s texting each other, every interaction turns quickly to “Whaddaya think, what’s gonna happen?” You feel an urgency but also a sincerity: They honestly don’t know. Kamala Harris holds a close lead in the nationwide polls, Donald Trump in several battlegrounds. I think […]