Columns, pieces and posts
It is late in the morning one day last December. A plane is in distress, it’s lost one engine and now two and it’s going down, and people on the ground hear the sound, look up, say, “That’s going awful low,” and whip out their cellphones. You could see the pictures they took later on […]
Washington A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night. By the end of it Barack Obama had become president. Every president has a moment when suddenly he becomes what he meant to be, or knows what he is, and those moments aren’t always public. Bill Safire thought he saw it with Richard Nixon one […]
Monday morning, 11:30:39 Eastern Standard Time, and I had just hit send. I was in a wide-body 767, high above the continent. “This is so exciting,” I wrote to a friend. “I am on an airplane going over the Rockies. I am sending you an email. Down there the settlers went in covered wagons. Up […]
A moment last Monday, just after noon, in Manhattan. It’s slightly overcast, not cold, a good day for walking. I’m in the 90s on Fifth heading south, enjoying the broad avenue, the trees, the wide cobblestone walkway that rings Central Park. Suddenly I realize: Something’s odd here. Something’s strange. It’s quiet. I can hear each […]
All week the word I kept thinking of was “braced.” America is braced, like people who are going fast and see a crash ahead. They know huge and historic challenges are here. They’re not confident they can or will be met. Our most productive citizens are our most sophisticated, and our most sophisticated have the […]
It looks like a win but feels like a loss. The party-line vote in favor of the stimulus package could have been more, could have produced not only a more promising bill but marked the beginning of something new, not a postpartisan era (there will never be such a thing and never should be; the […]
Washington It was like “The Canterbury Tales.” That’s what it was like last Saturday, in LaGuardia Airport, on the shuttle to Washington packed full of people going to the inauguration of President Obama. A handsome, affluent black woman in first class—fur hat, chic silver jewelry—laughed on a cell phone as a businessman—tall, black, middle aged—hurried […]
Washington Teddy Kennedy is gallant. He attended the swearing-in of the new president on Tuesday in the midst of serious illness, white-haired and frail—in his jaunty fedora he looked like his father, old Joe Kennedy, in 1939, when he first burst on the scene as the new American ambassador to the Court of St. James. […]
Washington Flying in, we take the route over the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson, the Tidal Basin: the signs and symbols of the great republic. And you’ve seen it all a thousand times but you can’t stop looking, and you can’t help it, your eyes well. After a minute you realize you must have a moony […]
He didn’t seem distracted, like he was thinking about lunch, and he didn’t seem to be deflecting responsibility, but taking it. This was a relief, and rather unusual in a Washington politician, or pretty much any politician. Blago, when he speaks, always looks like he’s thinking, “Are they believing me?” and “How’s this playing?” Barney […]