This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. ― T.S. Eliot One strange trait of the die hard NeverTrump Republicans and progressives is their charge that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. Trump, as is his wont, says a lot of
When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, many in the media considered him a dangerous extremist. Some reporters warned that Reagan courted nuclear war and would tank the economy. He certainly was not like the gentleman Republican and moderate ex-President Gerald Ford. But by 1989, the media was fond of a new
Conrad Black’s erudite biography of Donald J. Trump is different from the usual in mediis rebus accounts of first-year presidents. He avoids the Bob Woodward fly-on-the-wall unattributed anecdote, and “they say” gossip mongering. Nor is the book a rush-to-publish product from former insiders of the Trump campaign or administration. Instead, Black, a prolific
When President Harry S. Truman left office in January 1953, most Americans were glad to see him go. Since the introduction of presidential approval ratings, Truman's 32 percent rating was the lowest for any departing president except for that of Richard Nixon, who 21 years later resigned amid the Watergate scandal. Americans were
Imagine if a right-wing version of Robert Mueller, backed by a properly pro-Trump legal team, had sent former President Barack Obama the same sort of questions that Mueller allegedly delivered this week to President Trump. The special counsel might dress them up in legalese, innuendo, and with perjury-trap IEDs, thereby casting suspicion with
During his first 15 months as president, Donald Trump has postured as the bad cop. He railed about NATO members welching on their promised contributions to the alliance. Trump rhetorically reduced North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to "short and fat" and "rocket man." He ordered the dropping of a huge bomb on the
The country is about to witness an investigatory train wreck. In one direction, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation train is looking for any conceivable thing that President Donald Trump's campaign team might have done wrong in 2016. The oncoming train is slower but also larger. It involves congressional investigations, Department of Justice referrals
Washington’s self-righteous establishmentarians talk of professionalism when they act unprofessionally. They refer at length to their intellectual and professional pedigrees when they prove incompetent. And they cite their morality and ethics when they possess neither. And then, adding insult to injury, when the public expresses abhorrence at their behavior, they accuse critics of
Was the latest round of airstrikes in Syria a one-time hit to restore deterrence and stop the future use of chemical weapons, or was it part of a slippery slope of more interventions in the Middle East? President Donald Trump was elected in part because he promised an end to optional wars, such
Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 in reaction to a media still gripped by near hysteria over the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. For nearly a year before Mueller's appointment, leaks had spread about collusion between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign that supposedly cost
