Columns, pieces and posts
One of the greatest professional gifts of my life was a bit of offhand advice given me about 20 years ago by a writer who said, “Never feel guilty about reading, it’s what you do to do your job.” If he hadn’t said it, I don’t know if I’d read less or read guiltily, but […]
It’s become a status symbol in New York to know someone who lost everything, as we now say, with Bernard Madoff, and to provide the details with a tone of wonder that subtly signals, “I of course was too smart for that, but I do feel compassion.” It reminds me of the study I was […]
Is this the last Christmas of the old era, or the first Christmas of the new? Will people spend in a way that responds to what’s around them (Nothing seems changed!) or to what they know is coming (Did you see this week’s jobless numbers? Highest in 26 years!)? Will they go for some last […]
Washington To drive through the suburbs of Northern Virginia is to marvel still at the widespread wealth, the mansions and mini-mansions that did not exist a quarter-century ago and that now thicken the woods and hills. It used to be sleepy here; it used to be horse farms. I remember looking at one of the […]
The hundred days are happening now. That’s the real headline on President-elect Obama’s series of news conferences and his announcements of intended administration policy, such as an economic stimulus package. We don’t really have to wait till after the inauguration on Jan. 20 for the new administration to begin. What the Obama transition has become […]
Rumors, leaks, gossip, backbiting, an air of mounting mistrust. Looks like Lulu’s back in town. The smooth Obama transition has been disrupted by the great disrupter, and one wonders: Does he really want to go there? Hasn’t he been there? How’d that go? On the face of it, the apparent offering of the secretary of […]
I’ve been traveling in New York and Texas, and it’s all Obamarama all the time. People mention Sarah Palin (there was appreciative laughter the other day in Houston when a speaker said wistfully that the Alaska governor may soon discover the power of silence), and now and then President Bush (not often—people move on with […]
You’re lucky to live through big history. And you’re living through it. The explosion of joy in large pockets of the country Tuesday night was beautiful to see, and moving. For me, at the end of the evening, looking at live shots of the throngs in Chicago’s Grant Park, I flashed back to 1960 and […]
The case for Barack Obama, in broad strokes: He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which […]
It’s all going fast, the whirl of images on the screen, words on the page, data flashing by. Barack Obama’s up here, his lead now in the double digits there. In green rooms on book interviews, I see quietly angry former Reagan staffers, defensive former Bush aides, harried McCain spokesmen, and almost-jaunty Democrats. A network […]