The Deep State of Dementia

My first reaction upon seeing what was supposedly a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard removing what was alleged to be a mine from the broken hull of what we were…

What We Do in the Shadows

The celebrity scandal of the year has been the discovery of just what lengths some actors will go to in order to get their children parts in our leading universities.…

Freedom from Inspiration

The fight over which of our public monuments should remain where they are is as complicated as the American past they commemorate. For all the fighting over who and what…

The Crisis of Our Constitution

Lost in this past electoral season, one of the most vicious and frightening in American history, is how shaky the very foundation of our democracy is. Throughout Trump’s deformation of…

Certain Certainties

What Amazon HQ2 means for New York City

The Ghosts of Versailles

Ahundred years ago this month, the First World War shuddered to a close. The end came when the armistice took effect on the Western Front at 11 am on November…

Political Football

With the fall and another election season upon us, the one thing we can count on is a renewal of Donald Trump’s war on football. This has become an annual…

A Fate Worse Than Bush

Rudolph Giuliani and the politics of personality

21st Century Limited

The lost glory of America’s railroads

Angry White Men

Can the G.O.P. genuinely change its attitude toward minorities and women?

Is the Media Walking Us Into Another War? (Part II)

A New York Times op-ed writer nods his head along with Mitt Romney.

David Brooks Wants to Mix It Up

On the genteel Republican Party of David Brooks's imagination

Mitt Romney Announces His Intention to Cheat

"The presidential debate in Denver this evening is supposed to be exclusively about domestic policy. But in today’s New York Times, we read that 'advisers said he would try to…

The Crybabies’ Response to the Centrist

Mark Lilla says he's a centrist Democrat who was "relieved" to observe Obama's "political liberalism and instinctual conservatism." But which of the social programs generated by the Great Society's legislative…

Why Vote?

When your vote counts for nothing

The Literary Art of W. Mitt Romney

"Some have begun to detect a literary current in Mitt Romney’s seemingly mindless ramblings—a stream-of-consciousness that reflects, perhaps, the romantic wistfulness of the middle-aged man facing his own mortality."

Teatime With the Tea Party

"There’s little point now in trying to suss out whether Mitt Romney is at heart as much a thoroughgoing, Social Darwinist creep as the one he plays for rich donors.…

Ruin and Rebirth in the South

The South is, perhaps, the last romantic place in America, in all the best and worst senses of that word. It is a region where the wail of a freight…

Ybor Stories

“There was music in the cafés at night/ And revolution in the air . . .”—Bob Dylan Some may conclude from reading this blog that I believe downtown Tampa to be a soulless,…

Party Like It’s 1984

I was struck, attending the Republican and Democratic political conventions, by how woefully inadequate the two southern host cities were to the task. I completely understand the political calculations that…

The Path to Genuine Political Change

President Barack Obama’s speech to the 2012 Democratic Convention was one of the best he has given, and one of the best in recent history. It was an almost word-perfect…

The Clinton Show

Just as it was for the Republicans, Day Two of the Democratic Party’s convention was a serious work day, one in which speaker after speaker went about making the case…

Courting Disappointment in Charlotte

The delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, are absolutely delightful. Taken all together, they make the Republican convention look like a convocation of especially dreary MBAs.…

The Republican Claim on Hope

One irreducible fact to come out of the towering slagheap of falsehoods that was the Republican convention is that Mitt Romney can win, and is likely to do so, if…

The Imposed Culture

I hate to ever mention the name Donald Trump. But I feel obliged to do so now, following his recent near-descent upon Tampa, Florida, and the Republican National Convention. Like…

John McCain’s Road Map to Eternal War

“The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it.”—Apocalypse Now We wrote about all of the outrageous lies perpetrated by Republican speakers on the…

Lies On Parade

How do I lie to thee? Let me count the ways. There were so many last night at the Republican National Convention—and I don’t mean just the usual convenient, half-apologetic,…

In Search of the RNC Cocktail Lounge

The Texas delegation, which in 2004 distinguished itself by wearing Band-Aids with inked-in hearts on them to mock John Kerry’s service to his country—in the cause of a man who…

After Rick Santorum, Ann Romney, and Chris Christie

Jack: At home, on TV, a convention is a giant show—colorful swag, barn-burning speakers, big funny hats. When you are amid the scrum, though, you can see just how much…

Alternate Roll Call

An exchange from last night in Tampa, where, after an eternity of keeping Mitt Romney at arm’s length, the G.O.P finally nominated him as its standard-bearer against Barack Obama. As…

No Apology: Bad Book, Worse Premise

August 28, 3:37 p.m. Tucked away in the RNC’s media swag bag, alongside a pack of complimentary CSX peppermint breath mints (“Feel that good, minty breath/ Like a freight train…

Security Theatre, Act II

August 28, 9:39 a.m. Another piece of what Jack likes to call Security Theatre last night in Ybor City: We were drinking and playing pool with my cousin and her…

1960 Is(n’t) Here Again

August 28, 9:33 a.m. Happy LBJ’s birthday! Appropriately enough, the permanent sign on the wall of the Republican Convention reads, “We can do better”—the phrase John Kennedy used against Richard…

A Season in Hell, or A Brief Chronology of the Trip From Ybor City to the Republican National Convention

August 27, 4:55 p.m. 10:00 a.m.   This is going to be great! I’m covering a convention with my long-time best friend and old political buddy, Jack Hitt. We have known…

Isaac’s Left Turn

August 27, 8:50 a.m. Here, there’s only a light rain and wind outside. But the local Fox channel is reporting that Tropical Storm Isaac is picking up power and headed…

The Scene Is Wet

August 27, 12:40 a.m. Tampa is a blur tonight, a smear of soft rain and humidity and downtown lights that have transformed an essentially modern and no-nonsense city into something…

The Blogging Bastards of Tampa Bay

August 26, 6:27 p.m., en route to Tampa and the Republican National Convention, Jet Blue Flight 985, Seat 25D. With apologies to the Battling Bastards of Bataan: We’re the blogging…

The vanishing liberal

How the left learned to be helpless

Barack Hoover Obama

The best and the brightest blow it again

Change without movement

High Noon for the Republican Party

Why the G.O.P. must die

A Fate Worse Than Bush

Rudolph Giuliani and the politics of personality

Trivial pursuit

The fake quest for an "authentic Democrat"

Stabbed in the Back!

The past and future of a right-wing myth

We’re in the army now

The G.O.P.'s plan to militarize our culture

The magic Reagan

More misguided arguments for his greatness

Up from extremism

Getting it wrong about the American right

A buried life

The pleasures and pitfalls of WASP reticence

The improved man

The opera of elephants

The great San Diego fire sale

How and why baseball's management plays to lose