resident Trump’s almost total silence on the matters being investigated by special counsel John Durham, and his gentlemanly remark concerning the allegations against Joe Biden coming from his former aide, Tara Reade, that sometimes people make false allegations, is an enactment of Napoleon’s advice not to interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake. […]
he coronavirus has had, at least, the unanticipated benefit of obscuring and diminishing the very tedious public clamoring about climate change. It is a slightly redeeming virtue of crises that they tend to supersede and diminish previous crises; if a crisis is serious, public opinion can rarely worry about more than one menace at a […]
t is not too soon to examine the shifting strategic balance in the world in the light of the unfolding coronavirus crisis and its economic and political consequences. Though he gets little credit for it—even from his supporters, who tend not to be overly sophisticated foreign policy specialists—President Trump has carefully developed a subtle foreign […]
he Democrats are taking their stand on the coronavirus crisis in an untenable position. It is like building a defensive redoubt in a valley surrounded by hills in the hands of the enemy (like the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1955, as President Eisenhower warned them). Whether this is tactical stupidity by the president’s […]
nti-Trump bias in the American media is profound and ultimately dangerous, because free media are essential to a functioning democracy, and the level of bias that has bedeviled this president is undermining the standing of the press and the public’s faith in the need for such untrustworthy media. In this sense, they are, as the […]
t is almost unbelievable that the Democrats have allowed themselves to be so completely out-maneuvered by President Trump in the coronavirus and economic crises. They are all calling for an indefinite protraction of the economic hemorrhage, with unemployment increasing by hundreds of thousands every day, even as the incidence of the virus declines. The Democrats […]
very day, the battle lines are drawn more clearly for what promises to be a memorable election. The Democrats infamously lumbered the president with an investigation into his relations with Russia that they knew to be unfounded. Then they attempted a completely spurious impeachment proceeding (with no believable evidence that he had committed the alleged […]
t is clear that the time is approaching that will be absolutely decisive for this presidency and for the country’s near-term future. The president will have to decide on an economic relaunch plan, and this will make or break him and his opponents. The vast amount of posturing and accusatory liberties that already surpass what […]
ow is the moment to take the president’s penal reform agenda forward. Prisons crowd people together assuring that a single instance of coronavirus is apt to infect many hundreds of people. As a matter of simple justice and to achieve some retroactive reduction of the almost unchallengeable tyranny of American prosecutors—who win over 95 percent […]
ne of the characteristics of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States is its unique political explosiveness. In order to deal effectively with it, President Trump has had to show a good deal of dexterity, which his always numerous and vocal critics have assailed as incoherence, or insincerity. He has had to be at the […]
he new Democratic pre-electoral chorus is already audibly arising like a Wagnerian finale from the largely hidden choir. President Trump, they intone, bungled this and must be investigated for his incompetence which is costing countless American lives. Because of his negligence and stupidity, the country must be shut down for months to ensure an economic […]
riting here on President’s Day last month, I engaged in the fundamentally disagreeable activity of taking issue with people with whom I always wish to agree and generally do, on the still very unsettled subject of Franklin D. Roosevelt. My contention for many years, advanced in my 2003 biography of FDR, is that Roosevelt was […]
resident Trump has met and passed his supreme test. This has left his Democratic opponents desperately espousing gloom and demanding that the economic shut-down continue, according to frequent semi-high-brow Democratic ideologue and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, for up to seven months. Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers took to the Washington Post to preach epidemiological […]
he political aspect of the coronavirus crisis is developing in a familiar way. The president’s enemies in the media have led the propagation of panic in the country, and have been given enough encouragement to do that from the scientific community, some of whose members are enjoying their 15 minutes of world fame a little […]
he third Israeli general election in a year has produced a clearer advantage for the principal party, but has been ambiguous in the more important issue of which party will lead the government. The ostensible leader of the opposition, General Benjamin (Benny) Gantz, head of the Blue and White Party—an amalgam of centrist and moderate […]
s the coronavirus crisis rapidly develops, the Trump Administration must cope with two paradoxical problems looming above the race to prepare the public health service and shield the population as much as can be done, before the full force of the pandemic arrives. An imaginative campaign by the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China […]
fter rattling the country with his implausible bravura and rather embarrassing statements at his press conference last week, where he astounded the scientific community with the depth of his epidemiological knowledge, President Trump is now turning the corner on the coronavirus crisis. His original performance was a bit like President Obama’s in 2014 when—after having […]
he combination of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus and the upheavals in the world oil market has shaken public confidence and created a susceptibility to panic, to which, as usual, investors were the first to succumb. In the United States, the antics of the Democratic politicians and media grasping at straws more desperately […]
For a perfect illustration of Europe’s collapse as a serious political force, one could do no better than to read a February 27 article by former German Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. In “The West’s Final Countdown,” Fischer warns the U.S. presidential election in November “will have an overwhelming and decisive impact on the […]