The military, it is said, is always preparing to fight the last war. That’s particularly true today, when the last war was a war and the current war is a police action. A few weeks ago, the Pentagon issued a report on the conduct of American troops in Kosovo. The report is the result of […]
Are the Olympics not over yet? Can I locate the grave of P.T. Barnum and crush some sour grapes on his headstone? It was Mr. Barnum who said no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. He was right, too. Viewership of the games from Sydney is off, but everyone blames […]
Welcome to the future. Are we having fun yet? Or maybe it’s the past, I’m not really sure which. I watch the news and believe I’m seeing events futurists predicted a few decades ago. In the next moment, I’m wondering what historians will be writing about us 50 years from now. Here’s what I’m thinking: […]
In the past few months, I’ve noticed the New York Times putting little tags on its stories. If the story is about the election, the tag might say “The Candidate” or “The Ad Wars.” Last week, on a story tagged “Enforcement,” the Times headline said, “CIA Is Said to Find Iraq Gives Contracts to Nations […]
Labor Day, as we’ve heard so often this week, signals the traditional beginning of the fall campaign season. The operative word is “traditional.” A “traditional” campaign season is something I think about the same way I think of “an old-fashioned Christmas.” Something that existed many years ago and is nearly forgotten. Maybe Grover Cleveland versus […]
“Pro Bono Publico” means “for the public good” and in our age the phrase is used to describe work attorneys perform for free. The phrase is Latin, not as an attempt to put on airs, but because the concept of Pro Bono Publico dates to the Roman Republic, when citizens of wealth and standing were […]
Dewey Defeats Truman
According to political legend, Lyndon Baines Johnson, when in the depths of one of his Texas campaigns for the U.S. Senate, instructed his staff to spread a rumor that his opponent was, ah, “overly familiar” with pigs. “We’ll never prove that,” someone objected. “I don’t wanna prove it,” LBJ thundered. “I wanna hear that SOB […]