Donald Rumsfeld succeeded at everything — so why did he fail in the end?
What kind of man was Donald Rumsfeld? A successful one, by almost every measure. Ivy League scholar-athlete, captain of Princeton’s…
Is J.D. Vance the right man for the right?
J.D. Vance is the man Republicans have been praying for since the day Donald Trump stormed to the party’s presidential…
Joe Biden’s party is over
Washington, DC The Democratic party is dying. That may be hard to believe since Democrats control both houses of…
The strange death of the Democrats
The Democratic party is dying. That may be hard to believe since Democrats control both houses of Congress and won…
The Republican party has taken over Donald Trump
Forty minutes into Donald Trump’s remarks at CPAC, I’d formed a conclusion. Donald Trump hasn’t just taken over the Republican…
Rush Limbaugh, conservative rebel
‘The cutting edge of societal evolution.’ That was one of Rush Limbaugh’s catchphrases in the 1990s, and it was an…
The death of the Republican right has been greatly exaggerated
As Donald Trump goes on trial in the Senate, the Republican party faces the possibility of a crack-up. Trump will…
What does Trump want now? Revenge — and a second term
The figure of the ex-president is one of the most endearingly republican features of American politics. He who was the…
America’s Yeltsin moment
The end of the Cold War was as great a shock to US politics as it was to the Soviet Union’s. The…
The fight for liberalism
The world has many island nations, and sometimes the United States counts itself among them. We have water on either side of us,…
Can the GOP win by losing Georgia?
Not long ago I attended a gathering of young White House and congressional Republican staffers. Conversation turned, as you might…
The wars go on
America’s longest war has just entered its 20th year. The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban…
Joe Biden’s endless wars
In just over a week, the Empire hopes to strike back. Joe Biden personifies the foreign policy of endless war…
Will Amy Coney Barrett save America — or wreck it?
Americans hate the Supreme Court. You wouldn’t think so from a look at the polls, which usually show that the…
How democracy dies
What would happen if Americans voted on different days? Suppose Republicans voted on Tuesday and Democrats voted on Wednesday. Would…
The persistent myth of a non-political Supreme Court
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a terrible blow to Democrats, but there is an important point to…
After Trump, the reckoning
As voters prepare to pass judgment on Donald Trump’s presidency in November, they might want to entertain a few counterfactuals.…
Trump redefines the race
Helplessness and passivity were the defining themes of the Democratic convention last week. The American people are unable to overcome…
Joe Biden's Republican Convention
Joe Biden’s range of emotional expression has narrowed with age – when he wants to convey feeling now, he shouts.…
Will it be Biden-Harris or Harris-Biden?
News of Kamala Harris’s selection as Joe Biden’s running mate was greeted by everything but the popping of champagne corks…
The mock revolution of the elites
‘Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified,’…
Same old same old
American politics is getting senile. Donald Trump and Barack Obama were both elected as agents of change, repudiations of an…
Self-righteous vandals
Violent left-wing activists have taken to styling themselves as antifa, short for ‘anti-fascists’, though their street-fighting tactics resemble nothing so…
Neocons come home to roost
Dolphins returned to the canals of Venice during the COVID-19 lockdown, and neoconservatives are returning to the Democratic party. Bill…
This riot is brought to you by Nike
In Chicago last weekend 82 people were shot, 22 of them fatally. Between May 2019 and late May 2020, homicide…
