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Easing Back Online
Nearly six months ago, I announced a hiatus from online life (except for Twitter), while my wife Deb and I decamped to my original hometown of Redlands, California and a house we rented on the campus...
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Greetings From Red Oak
I mentioned last night that we’d devised a plan to pick our way through passes and valleys in the Rockies, to get from the western slope — at Rifle airport in Colorado, a little more than an hour’s...
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And Back Where We Started
The picture below is how it looked six months ago, when we were headed westward from Gaithersburg airport, outside Washington, to Redlands, California, where we’ve spent the intervening months. (This...
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How American Presidents Used to Speak Overseas
Is America an idea? Or is it a specific “people” or ethnic group? On the diverging answers to that question turn some of the biggest disputes in U.S. history. Our current president began his trip to...
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What’s Broken—and What’s Still Working—in American Politics
I tried my best, through the first half of this year, to avoid getting caught up in the political emergencies of each day, so as to write about some longer-term developments that I know are more...
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Trump's Latest Interview Highlights Four of His Greatest Flaws
“Now Donald Trump has finally done it” is a sentence many people have said or written, but which has never yet proven true. As Trump gained momentum during the campaign season, errors that on their own...
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Everything Now Hinges on Three Republicans in the Senate
By midnight on July 20, 2017, it seemed increasingly likely that Donald Trump will fire the special counsel, Robert Mueller.Mueller embodies what is admirable in U.S. public service: a wounded and...
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Responding to Trump: What about the State AGs? What about the Democrats? And...
In response to three recent pieces—one discussing the public and private parts of the U.S. system of self-governance that are still working, another arguing that Donald Trump’s monologue to the New...
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What John McCain Can Learn From Clair Engle
None of us can choose how we are remembered. Most of us are not remembered at all. Senator John McCain knows that he will be remembered. He faces a choice about how his remarkable career will be noted...
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John McCain Makes His Choice
The effort to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care bill is not over, and neither presumably is the public career of John McCain. But each crossed an important threshold yesterday, and Senator McCain gave...
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A Longtime Senate Staffer, on John McCain
I’ve had my say about John McCain’s decision to support the rushed consideration of the Republican drive to repeal Obamacare. Installment one was here, and two was here. The theme of both was that...
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The Perils of Prediction in the Age of Trump
More than two years ago, soon after Donald Trump entered the presidential race, I noted online that no one like him—with no political, military, judicial, or public-service experience, with no known...
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Collins, Murkowski—and McCain
As the votes were about to begin last night, via Twitter.The rushed, secretive, reckless effort to get a “win,” any win, by undoing the Obama health care plan is at an end—for now.It is over because...
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Trump's Dangerous Incitement of Police Violence
Today the president of the United States openly called on police officers to rough up suspects they were bringing into detention, half-an-hour into a speech in which he described as “animals” gangs of...
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Follow-up on the Health Care Vote: On the Media, Abraham Lincoln Brigade,...
After these recent items about the Senate’s failure to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care law—installments #1 (drawing a parallel with 1960s-era Senator Clair Engle), #2 (when McCain voted Yes on...
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Four Positive Developments—and a Negative One
Two weeks ago I wrote about the things that had gone as expected in the Trump era—namely, the character and conduct of the man himself—plus a roundup of parts of the civic fiber that were responding...
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Chickenhawk in Chief
Yesterday via Twitter.Those who were around during the Vietnam war have exhausted every possible argument about who did what, and why, and when, and with what justification.Those who were not around...
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Trump and the Chickenhawk Chronicles
Late last night I did an item arguing that Donald Trump represented a classic “chickenhawk” figure from the Vietnam era—someone who didn’t complain about the war, as long as it didn’t inconvenience him...
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More in the Chickenhawk Chronicles
Following this item on Donald Trump’s (ill-advised) criticism of Richard Blumenthal’s military record, and this exchange of reader mail, several more responses. I’m not planning an open-ended forum of...
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The Test Trump Failed
“Thoughts and prayers” from our nation’s leaders, via Twitter.American presidents run for office with a set of promises, visions, and ideas of what they’d like to do if they win. For John Kennedy, it...
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