Columns, pieces and posts
There is an interesting and very modern thing that often happens when individuals join and rise within mighty and venerable institutions. They come to think of the institution as invulnerable—to think that there is nothing they can do to really damage it, that the big, strong, proud establishment they’re part of can take any amount […]
So where are we? In a dangerous place, actually. Politics is a rough arena, and understandably so, for our politicians tell us more and more how to order our lives. Naturally there will be resistance, and strong opposition. We have a long history of hurly-burly debate, and we all know examples the past 200 years […]
Excuse me, but it is embarrassing—really, embarrassing to our country—that the president of the United States has again put off a state visit to Australia and Indonesia because he’s having trouble passing a piece of domestic legislation he’s been promising for a year will be passed next week. What an air of chaos this signals […]
It was 1976 and I was interviewing Democratic presidential candidates as they came through Boston for the Massachusetts primary. One of them was Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who came into our radio studios with a small entourage. The Washington state Democrat talked about his issues, mostly national defense. He was an intelligent and accomplished man, […]
It is now exactly a year since President Obama unveiled his health care push and his decision to devote his inaugural year to it—his branding year, his first, vivid year. What a disaster it has been. At best it was a waste of history’s time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something […]
Boy, that didn’t work. Nothing in the health-care summit promised greater progress or movement. Positions started out hardened, and likely ended so. Good faith and generosity did not flourish. Some people said some smart things. The Republicans seemed fortified not with Ovaltine but, in some cases, Espresso. No normal human watching the debate could determine […]
President Obama’s decision to appoint Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to his bipartisan commission on government spending is politically shrewd and, in terms of policy, potentially helpful. It is shrewd in that he is doing what he has been urged to do, which is bring in wise men. Here are two respected Beltway veterans, one […]
There is, I think, an amazing political fact right now that is hiding in plain sight and is rich with implications. It was there in President Obama’s Jan. 25, pre-State of the Union interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, who was pressing him about his political predicaments. “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than […]
There’s renewed interest in Question Time, or rather in the idea of trying to import in some fashion the British parliamentary institution whereby the prime minister appears each Wednesday in the House of Commons in order to take questions and debate. The idea of an American version came up after the president’s meeting last week […]
When you watch a president give a State of the Union Address on television, you’re always watching three people: the president at the podium, and the vice president and House speaker on the rise behind him. As a TV shot it’s awkward. The vice president and the speaker have been instructed by media professionals not […]