Columns, pieces and posts
There were two big speeches this week, and I mean big as in “Modern political history will remember this.” Together they signal something significant and promising. Oh, that’s a stuffy way to put it. I mean: The governors are rising and are starting to lead. What a relief. It’s like seeing the posse come over […]
So Hosni Mubarak is gone. He’d been finished since Jan. 25, when the Egyptian revolution began. That a broad uprising could spontaneously occur demonstrated that the government could be taken. That it continued and the military didn’t clamp down guaranteed that it would be. The story is primarily and obviously a political one: Pro-democracy forces […]
What an incredible and bizarre Thursday afternoon it must have been in Cairo. Thousands are massed in Tahrir Square, waving banners and flags, dancing and cheering as they await a speech by President Hosni Mubarak. They have been told he will resign. They are overjoyed and eager to act out their joy for each other, […]
Simi Valley, Calif. At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountain Range where old Hollywood directors shot Westerns, they will mark Sunday’s centenary of Reagan’s birth with events and speeches geared toward Monday’s opening of a rethought and renovated museum aimed at making his presidency more accessible to scholars […]
It is a strange and confounding thing about this White House that the moment you finally think they have their act together—the moment they get in the groove and start to demonstrate that they do have some understanding of our country—they take the very next opportunity to prove anew that they do not have their […]
The State of the Union Address is usually among the most important and least memorable of presidential speeches. The speech itself, in an august setting, is an opportunity for a president to break through in a new way. TV and radio carry it live, and it’s hard for the average citizen to avoid seeing at […]
The beginning of the president’s speech wasn’t good, and was marked by the sonorous banalities on which White House staffs in times of crisis always insist. “We join you in your grief,” “We mourn with you for the fallen,” “a quintessentially American scene . . . shattered by a gunman’s bullets.” Modern presidents sometimes speak […]
At a time of new beginnings in Washington, and as a new year starts, some thoughts on leadership that begin with two questions. First, why is it a good thing that the captain of the USS Enterprise was this week relieved of his duties? Second, why is the movie “The King’s Speech” so popular and […]
You know exactly when you’ll hear it, and you probably won’t hear it again for a year. The big clock will hit 11:59:50, the countdown will begin—10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4—and the sounds will rise: the party horns, fireworks and shouts of “Happy New Year!” And then they’ll play that song: “Should auld […]
We have not in our lifetimes seen a president in this position. He spent his first year losing the center, which elected him, and his second losing his base, which is supposed to provide his troops. There isn’t much left to lose! Which may explain Tuesday’s press conference. President Obama was supposed to be announcing […]