Gerald Ford was right. It was years before I understood that. I was 17 years old on the day in 1974 when the 38th president pardoned the 37th, Richard Nixon, for his crimes in the Watergate affair. Like millions of others — like Ford’s own press secretary, who resigned in protest — I ...

I am not disappointed in Donald Trump. For there to be disappointment at childish behavior presumes an expectation of adult behavior. No such expectation exists where Trump is concerned. So his weeks of sulking and floating bizarre conspiracy theories since he lost the election, while ...

Missing in any debate about whether it is wise for the United States to reduce our troop numbers in both Afghanistan and Iraq, as the Trump administration has ordered, down to 2,500 Americans in each country (a number, let it be noted, that is too few to fight and too many to die), is the ...

Greed is good. That, you may recall, was the mantra of corporate raider Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film “Wall Street.” It came to symbolize the rapacious gluttony of that era — and its rejection of the dewy-eyed idealism of the 1960s. Well, 1987 was a long time ago, but Gekko’s ...

“The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” — Rush Limbaugh “One day, it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Donald Trump “The risk to the average person does remain quite low” — Laura Ingraham The American death toll from the novel coronavirus will soon pass ...

Joe Biden won the White House, we are reminded almost daily, on his third try, having run unsuccessfully in both 1988 and 2008. It’s funny; I can’t recall, having covered the 1980 presidential race, much ever being made of the fact that that year’s winner, Republican Ronald Reagan, also ...

Dear Price Wallace: There was a time I would have reasoned with you. There was a time I might even have pleaded. Back then, I’d have been shocked and appalled to see a Mississippi state lawmaker advocate secession from the Union as you did in a Twitter exchange with former state Rep. ...

We turn, one last time, to Hans Christian Andersen. Over the past four years, many observers, this one included, have found one of the Danish writer’s most famous tales irresistible for explaining both Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s slavish sycophancy toward him. In “The ...

Forgive me for being the ant at the picnic. Certainly, this is a glad moment, an ecstatic and delirious moment. The election of 2020 has ended at last. Joe Biden is finally the president-elect and Donald Trump is finally consigned to the dank well of ignominy he so richly deserves. As ...

Allow me to explain. On Thursday night as a Biden victory was beginning to look inevitable, I had a brief Twitter exchange with a Republican blogger who complained that, in cheering the fall of Donald Trump, the “media elite” were “insulting those who supported him.” Let’s just ...

As I write, the outcome of the 2020 presidential race remains in doubt, though it seems very likely that Joe Biden will squeeze out a victory. This is a stunning departure from the resounding repudiation of Donald Trump that we had been hoping for. Here are a few groggy, morning-after ...

Bruce Springsteen is wrestling with death. You hear him as you float high above leafless trees dusted with snow. The scene, captured in creamy tones of black and white, is one of beauty almost unbearably elegiac, sacred in its stillness. Then he speaks, giving words to a truth all too ...

There is no place quieter or more forlorn than the losing candidate’s headquarters the morning after election night. If the phone rings, it’s a good bet that it is either one more unpaid creditor looking for payment or a wrong number. Gone are yesterday’s hopes for the upset win to ...

America is not guaranteed. There is, in other words, nothing foreordained about this country someday returning to anything approximating normal. That’s important to keep in mind as we await results of the most critical U.S. election since 1860, when Abraham Lincoln came to power in an ...

Dear Jared Kushner: So I see where you think you’ve figured out what’s wrong with Black people. Monday, you shared it on Fox “News.” “One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community,” you said, “which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the ...

Allow me, please, a point of personal privilege. Folks keep telling me how easy Donald Trump has made my job. For four years, I’ve had these discussions where we ruminate on the singular awfulness of that man and then the other person says, by way of consolation, “At least you never have ...

You did not stand up. Granted, America faced neither enemy bombers nor terrorist plot, but the threat to her was — still is — no less real. Your country needed you. And you did not stand up. You told yourself party was more important. You told yourself the courts were more important. ...

This bizarre presidential election year has suffered from acute shortages of both wit and wisdom, a fact that was highlighted for me by the passing of Roberta McCain, the remarkable 108-year-old mother of the Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee. A few years back, when ...

“Jared Kushner is under federal investigation for diverting money to terrorist organizations according to a guy I met at the gas station who told me he works for the FBI” is something I would never be allowed to publish. “Donald Trump Jr. has an escalating cocaine dependency problem ...

White people often do not understand white people. Granted, that’s a counterintuitive claim. But it is regularly reinforced whenever one hears decent white Americans attempt to rationalize the misbehavior of their less decent kin. One such effort turned up on social media a few days ago. ...