The presidency has changed Barack Obama. His hair has gone gray, which is to be expected, and he looks older, which is also to be expected, but his eloquence has been replaced by petulance and he has lost the power to persuade, which is something of a surprise. You can speculate that if the Barack […]
Richard Cohen
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Taking in all of the man
At Princeton University, the image and name of Woodrow Wilson could soon be erased. He was the school’s president from 1902 to 1910, reforming it, transforming it and setting it on the path to academic excellence. He left the school and soon became America’s 28th president — a great one, some people believe — but […]
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We share the same enemy: Intolerance
The eminent historian and public intellectual Niall Ferguson looked at what happened in Paris and somehow saw Rome. In his column for The Sunday Times of London, he conjured up Edward Gibbon, who wrote of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon said Rome fell to barbarians who “extended the promiscuous massacre to […]
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Will the real Ben Carson step forward?
I have come to the conclusion that Ben Carson is a bit nuts. I say that not because I disagree with him politically, but because he doesn’t seem to know what the truth is. Donald Trump, in contrast, does. When challenged, he becomes more forceful. He exhales a gale of fibs and just shoulders his […]
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Paul Ryan faces too-familiar struggle
Good luck to Paul Ryan. I am not referring to whether he will get along with the Freedom Caucus, what with its insistence on a congressional version of Magna Carta (down with the power of the speaker, up with the power of the committee barons), but whether he can make it home on the weekend […]