If John McCain somehow defies the current odds and defeats Barack Obama in November, analysts might look at a particular moment as the turning point. At no time and in no appearance has Obama revealed his worldview more vividly than in his appearance and speech before a reported 200,000 or more during his stop in […]
Archives for 2008
The Stevens Indictment: A Turning Point for Republicans?
If the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska doesn’t trigger a major turnaround and a cleansing of Republican Congressional leadership, then they are beyond hope. This guy, Mr. Bridge to Nowhere, is the “poster child” for everything that went wrong with the Revolution of 1994 and the “earmark” culture spawned by the disastrous “K Street Project” that […]
An Idea Whose Time Has Long Passed
“It is hard in this world to do well. It is hard to do good. When I hear a claim that an institution is going to do both, I reach for my wallet. You should too.”–Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, in “Notable & Quotable”, The Wall Street Journal. Former Treasury Secretary Summers reminds us of the […]
How Are We Doing?
Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes of an “undercurrent of anxiety in the land”, an anxiety that seems more intense than the usual concern for a cyclical economic downturn. He notes that former U. S. Senator and President of the University of Oklahoma David Boren has introduced his new book, “A Letter to […]
Russert: A First Class Professional
Tim Russert was unique player in the media profession. Given his political background and career stops, he was no doubt ideologically pretty far apart from my views, but this was rarely evident to me in his professional conduct and he was clearly a cut above the other mainstream media hacks in his professionalism and work ethic. […]
A Mixed Bag from the Supreme Court
Each time I am disappointed by John McCain or remember one of the several reasons he was not my preference as a nominee for President, something happens to snap me out of it. In June it was the Supreme Court decision in Boumediene vs. Bush, which with a 5-4 stroke led by swing man Anthony […]
America the Fragile Idea
It’s Independence Day and I’m feeling more than usually patriotic. This and other inducements have prompted me to revisit one of my old themes–the American idea. Another inducement was David Broder’s article this week in which he poses the question, “is this fragile idea called America headed for trouble?”. He wrote the article in response […]
Let the Big Game Begin
So now we have a nominee of the Democratic Party and the main event can proceed. The most hotly contested primary in electoral memory, which was destined to produce at least one of two history-making results, produced the one that almost no one would have predicted as recently as six months ago, and the Clintons, despite […]
The Forgotten Man
The previous essay glides readily into the central theme of Amity Shlaes’s book, The Forgotten Man, which I recommend as a thoroughly engrossing history of the Great Depression. The connection to the charity analogy is with the image of “the forgotten man” created by the architects of the Franklin Roosevelt election campaign and the New Deal. This adaptation was […]
Charity and Liberalism
In a recent sermon delivered by Harvey C. Mansfield at Appleton Chapel in Memorial Church, Harvard University, we are reminded of the admonition of St. Thomas Aquinas that charity is the chief of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity and that charity is the common form of all the virtues because all depend […]