Bloomberg’s Element

Mayor Bloomberg presented the 2007 Executive Budget in the Blue Room this morning, and, as is true whenever Mike finds himself pointing a little red laser at a flat screen full of charts and numbers, he seemed especially relaxed, on his game and in his element.

He spoke in a knowing, breezy manner about Read More

Crisis in Kerry Camp: How to Suck Wind From Swift Boat Sails

Almost five months ago in this space, I offered some respectful advice to my candidate for President, John Kerry. Here’s the gist of it:

1) Senatoritis: You’re getting hung by your own looping, overly nuanced, ultimately contradictory speechifying. Simple, declarative sentences, please.

2) Michael Moore: Distance yourself from the “grassy knoll” wing of the Read More

A Single Day, A Dividing Line

The dying year will be remembered for a single day. Did it, as was predicted at the time, change everything? Evidently not. Did it, as the counterintuitive types now suggest, change nothing? Only for the insulated, the detached and the heartless.

Movie stars may still consider themselves intellectuals, walking skeletons may still stroll down runways Read More

Just Stop Shouting And Listen to Me!

As long as we’re wallowing in Nixon nostalgia-yes, Richard Nixon, the flawed man who put the national interest ahead of personal ambition in 1960-let’s revisit another item in the Nixon canon: his inaugural address in 1969. Speaking to a badly divided nation after an extremely close election, Nixon said: “Greatness comes in simple trappings. The Read More

So What If George W.’s a Dope?

After Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980, the legendary Chicago columnist Mike Royko counseled against panic, even if, he wrote, the nation had elected its dumbest President ever. But Royko died a couple of years ago. He didn’t live to see George W. Bush assembling a cabinet in waiting.

Whether or not Mr. Bush Read More