Sean Spicer is the appropriate face of the new Trump administration. He is the White House press secretary and he came into the briefing room on Saturday wearing a blank expression. You’ve heard of a Molotov cocktail. Spicer was wearing a Molotov face. Vyacheslav Molotov was Josef Stalin’s foreign minister. He was so scared of […]
Op-Eds
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Trump must move quickly to solve problems
President Donald Trump’s inaugural address may not have risen to the rhetorical level of John F. Kennedy (“The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” and “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”), or Ronald Reagan’s critique of government (“Government is not […]
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One reason millions gathered to say ‘no’ to Trump
WASHINGTON — Within 48 hours, we learned that Donald John Trump intends to govern as the same fiercely angry man who shook the country in 2016. He confirmed that his administration intends to show no regard for norms — or facts. His opposition has drawn the obvious conclusion. Its only options are to contain the […]
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Trump speech: Patriotism on steroids
WASHINGTON — The question that swirls around Donald Trump’s inaugural address is whether his aggressively pronounced policy of America First will actually result in America Last — not literally last, but declining in power and prestige because the United States no longer views its role in the world as promoting economic and geopolitical stability for […]
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Globalization isn’t the great sin that many would make it
DAVOS, Switzerland — The World Economic Forum this year feels like an exercise in ritual self-flagellation, which — as with the old Christian practice of fasting and whipping one’s own body — is supposed to purify the sinful nature of man. The sin, of course, is globalization, which everyone now seems to agree has been […]
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Books proved to be invaluable for Barack Obama
The first time I met Barack Obama was in early 2006, when he was still a U.S. senator. He had come to Cincinnati to help out my husband, Sherrod Brown, in Sherrod’s campaign to join him in the Senate. I sat next to Obama during breakfast, before he took the stage. Almost immediately, our conversation […]
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Education Secretary ready to push for change
Some years ago a friend of mine wrote a book titled “The Seven Last Words of the Church, or, We’ve Never Tried It That Way Before.” It is about what he regarded as the entrenched bureaucracies in his denomination that are reluctant — even hostile — to change. The same opposition to change exists in […]
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Obama reveals true self in final acts
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama did not go out quietly. His unquiet final acts were, in part, overshadowed by a successor who refused to come in quietly and, in part, by Obama’s own endless, sentimental farewell tour. But there was nothing nostalgic or sentimental about Obama’s last acts. Two of them were simply shocking. Perhaps we […]
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Changes to ACA could devastate hospitals
Maine hospitals would stand to lose more than $3 billion over 10 years, according to our estimate that envisions a nightmare scenario where the Affordable Care Act cuts to hospitals remain but benefits to hospitals are repealed. For this reason, Maine hospitals strongly urge Congress that there should be no ACA repeal unless there is […]
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Boycotts represent a powerful form of speech
Liberals have organized a campaign to boycott Simon & Schuster over its planned publication of a book by alt-right bad boy Milo Yiannopoulos. Is this boycott a form of censorship? Wendy Kaminer, a civil liberties lawyer, argues that progressives should be troubled by “the chilling effect of consumer book boycotts on speech.” I disagree. A […]