Posted inOp-Eds

The GOP’s moment of truth is at hand

WASHINGTON — What is the Republican Party? Suddenly, this has become one of the central questions of the 2016 campaign. It’s not simply a matter of whether the GOP is the party of Donald Trump or the party of Paul Ryan. It is also an issue of whether Republican congressional leaders have any connection with […]

Posted inOp-Eds

Service could bring people together

WASHINGTON — After this hellacious election is over, what in the world will we do as a nation to pull ourselves together? At the moment, the polls strongly suggest that we will again vote for a divided government with a Democratic president and at least one house of Congress under Republican control. Which policies might […]

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Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web

How Trump corrupts the GOP

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., has tried for months to walk a high wire on the vexing subject of Donald Trump. This week, she fell off. Her tumble, on what most of us would see as an easy question about whether Trump should be regarded as a “role model,” came during a debate […]

Posted inOp-Eds

Media face new crisis of credibility

WASHINGTON — Spiro Agnew is remembered for pleading no contest to tax evasion charges related to bribery and resigning as Richard Nixon’s vice president. But his signal political achievement was igniting a campaign that endured for more than four decades painting the mainstream media as biased, liberal and elitist. Anti-media sentiment had long been bubbling […]

Posted inOp-Eds

Plenty to lose with Trump presidency

WASHINGTON — Even Donald Trump is capable of posing interesting questions, and he asked one of this election’s most important when he declared: “What the hell do you have to lose?” He was specifically addressing his query to African-Americans, but it’s something all Americans should think about. And the latest report on incomes released Tuesday […]

Posted inOp-Eds

Clinton’s faith gives her the edge

WASHINGTON — This is the inversion election, a contest in which so many of our familiar mental categories have been turned upside down. This year, it’s the Republican presidential candidate who says the United States isn’t great anymore and the Democrat who insists it is. The Republican says that the former KGB agent now presiding […]

Posted inOp-Eds

Trump the true star of corruption in politics

WASHINGTON — Better than anyone, Donald Trump made the case for why our campaign money system is rotten. Unsurprisingly, the prime example he used was himself. “I was a businessman,” Trump explained at a Republican debate in August 2015. “I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need […]

Posted inOp-Eds

Phony populism doesn’t feed the family

WASHINGTON — You would have thought that Labor Day 2016 would bring us a serious conversation about lifting the incomes of American workers and expanding their opportunities for advancement. After all, we have spent the year talking incessantly about alienated blue-collar voters and a new populism rooted in the disaffection of those hammered by economic […]

Posted inOp-Eds

From realism to cynicism to Trump

WASHINGTON — Only the naive have ever believed that democracy is solely a noble contest over competing ideas, proposals and solutions. Emotion looms large in every human decision, including how we cast our ballots, and smart politicians have always blended appeals to the heart and the gut with their entreaties to reason. We cherish what […]

Posted inOp-Eds

Where are the religious intellectuals?

WASHINGTON — Through the past several decades, those who view religion with respect regularly come back to the same question: What has happened to the religious intellectuals, the thinkers taken seriously by nonbelievers as well as believers? In this increasingly secular time, a natural follow-up question ratifies the point of the original query: Who cares? […]