Jonathan V. Last

I hate instant replay. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

When I first wandered into The Weekly Standard I worked at the front desk and answered the phones. It gave me a window into who was genuinely kind (they do not make human beings nicer than Gary Bauer) and who was not (no reason to name names). Because I'd grown up as a political junkie, I…

Everyone is focused on North Korea today and I would point you to Ethan Epstein's "Three Questions" piece about the upcoming (possibly?) meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un and Steve Hayes' piece on the dangers of such a meeting.

Ryan T. Anderson is the Heritage Foundation’s William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow and one of my favorite writers in Washington. He’s got an uncanny ability to combine razor-sharp arguments with kindness and good faith. He’s the best kind of public intellectual: One who tries to clarify ideas…

So here we are.

As I said last week, it’s pretty clear that the Eagles are now America’s Team.

The Philadelphia Eagles routed the Minnesota Vikings 38-7 in the NFC championship game on Sunday, which means they will play the despicable New England Patriots in the Super Bowl in two weeks. They are America’s team now, and you should root for them. Here’s why:

Last week, I wrote that I thought Donald Trump was dangerous but that it would be a “tragic mistake” to remove him. Here’s why: The 25th Amendment. There’s been a lot of talk recently about invoking that amendment in order to remove Trump from office.

The Australian Open starts on Monday and we’ll have coverage of the tournament throughout the fortnight from my favorite tennis writer, Tom Perrotta.

Donald Trump has a strange ability to inspire contradictory thoughts, some of which are sensible, some of which are not.

I always kind of liked Steve Bannon.

Was Samuel Alito worth the Iraq war?

In 2017, the bar for what must be deemed politically incorrect, culturally appropriative, or just plain inappropriate was set to a new low, so low that only insects could limbo their way beneath it. What was determined to be bad in 2017? Oh, just the Rocky Horror Picture Show, nearly all Halloween…

It should go without saying that America is a Christian nation. It was founded as such and you could fairly say that there would not be an America today if America had not been Christian from the start. Go back and look at the Founders—today’s secularists wouldn’t believe some of the stuff George…

Last week, in a bit of viral marketing genius, Netflix tweeted this:

Roy Moore’s defeat in Alabama has taught the Republican party a number of things about the current political environment: (1) That no state is impregnable, no matter how red. (2) That there is, at least for now, a limit to what Republican voters are willing to forgive in a bad candidate. (3) That…

Fred Barnes always told me that the two most boring words in the English language were “entitlement reform.” Well, “net neutrality” is probably second on the list.

The new Star Wars movie is here. Or almost here. I don’t really know and I really don’t care. Do you?

The other day my pals at the Federalist ran a piece by Tully Borland, an associate professor of philosophy at Ouachita Baptist University, titled “Why Alabamans Should Vote for Roy Moore.” Mind you, that’s not “Why an Alabaman Might Vote for Moore”—this was not an explainer, or a reported piece.…

Over the weekend, Will Leitch had a very smart piece about the NFL in New York magazine. You can read it here. I like Leitch a lot and this essay if very much worth your time. He contends that a variety of factors have converged to cripple the NFL—safety, politics, oversaturation—and that football…

A few years ago I wrote a piece called “Bitcoin Is Dead” and about once a week since then I’ve gotten an email from some aggrieved techno-utopian saying, “Oh yeah? How about issuing a correction—bitcoin rocks!”

One of the rituals of Thanksgiving weekend is heading out to see a movie. And so, with that in mind, let me do you a mitzvah: Do not see Justice League. Under any circumstances do not go to see Justice League.

Anyone who has followed the career of Al Franken should be unsurprised to learn that he was a jerk to Leeann Tweeden. Because if you go back to Live from New York, Tom Shales’ brilliant oral history of Saturday Night Live, Franken appears as a lying, drug-abusing (and distributing), jackass.

Mary Carillo is, hands down, my favorite professional athlete of all time. She was born and raised in New York City and came of age in the 1970s when American tennis was at its apex. She was a top-30 player and she won the 1977 French Open mixed doubles titles with John McEnroe but what I love…

On Tuesday night, as the Virginia returns were coming in, I wasn’t surprised—at all—by Ed Gillespie’s loss. He finished right around where Ken Cuccinelli did while running for governor and where Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, and John McCain did in Virginia while running for president. Virginia is a…

Let’s say that someone—maybe Jack Donaghy, or Steve Jobs, or God—appeared in a dream and asked you to come up with the worst idea in the history of the internet. What would you tell them?

Unless you live in Virginia’s Prince William County, you have no idea who Rich Anderson is. Anderson is a fine fellow who was a capable, moderate local politician whose career was cut short last night. And his story ought to set off warning bells to elected Republicans, at all levels, across the…

If Ed Gillespie wins tonight, it’s proof that Trumpism is triumphant in the Republican party. Gillespie may have been a longtime establishment party-insider, but he spent most of his campaign fighting on populist cultural issues. If Gillespie wins, so does Trumpism.

The news just broke that Bowe Bergdahl has been given a dishonorable discharge, with no jail time. People are outraged. Matthew Betley (a former Marine officer and author of a series of political action-thrillers), told me, "As a former Marine, I am literally sitting here with jaw on the…

Over at the Long War Journal, Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio have the first analysis of the massive trove of documents, files, and images which were recovered at Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during the raid in which bin Laden was killed.

The indictment of Paul Manafort and Richard Gates is filled with interesting tidbits about their businesses and lifestyles. Some highlights:

Richard Rushfield is a maverick.

There's a new episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol up and it is, typically, intensely interesting.

If you can find the bootleg-Substandard from this week, good for you. Some endnotes and digressions from the show that wasn't:

With the norm-demolishing, nationalist-establishment civil war in America’s Republican party, we sometimes lose sight of what the other great disruptor is doing over in Europe.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest episode:

Some assorted thoughts on Trump versus the NFL:

Endnotes and digressions from the latest episode:

What happened to ESPN?

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

On Wednesday night Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer dined with Donald Trump. Following the meeting, the Democrats announced that they had reached a deal with the president on DACA, to give permanent amnesty to the 800,000 or so DREAMers who are, through no real fault of their own, in the country…

In a normal Republican White House, it would be unnecessary for the press secretary to state, on multiple occasions, within a single briefing, that “The president is a Republican.” But this is not a normal Republican White House, so that is the position in which Sarah Huckabee Sanders found herself…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

It’s been almost a week since the violence in Charlottesville, and we are still parsing the meta-story about what our president said in its aftermath and then expanded upon a few days later and then doubled back around to re-re-explain on Tuesday, just so people wouldn't get the wrong idea about…

End notes and digressions from the latest show:

Stuart Stevens is something rare in politics: A campaign strategist who can write. Stevens has run just about every kind of campaign there is—he helped win elections for Bob Dole, Haley Barbour, and George W. Bush. He got the guy from The Love Boat into Congress and ran Mitt Romney’s failed 2012…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Over the years Irwin Stelzer has been one of my favorite economists. He is a direct, yet graceful, writer, a clear thinker, and an analyst possessing large amounts of both humility and charitability. I like to think of him as the anti-Krugman.

By now you’ve read about the ten-page “anti-diversity screed” that was published by an anonymous engineer at Google. Well, he’s no longer anonymous. His name is James Damore and yesterday Google fired him.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Ken Starr might be the most famous lawyer in America outside of the Supreme Court. He has served as a federal judge on the DC Circuit Court and later as solicitor general. He has practiced law and taught law, been the dean of Pepperdine’s Law School and the president of Baylor University. But his…

Whatever else you want to say about Anthony Scaramucci, he was a character. Maybe not a good character, but a character nonetheless. And while the White House will be a better, more stable place with him gone, in a certain way, I’ll miss him.

Data is the best. Or data are the best. Whatever. Everyone agrees that in politics, as in baseball, you can’t trust your own lying eyes. You have to look at the data.

A few years ago someone sold a script to Hollywood based on a Reddit post asking an interesting question: Could you destroy the Roman empire if you traveled back in time with a single Marine infantry battalion?

If you are an American man  born after 1945, you have almost certainly played with Legos. Earlier generations had Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, and Erector Sets, but Legos began taking over the world of building toys in the early 1970s. Meaning if you are under the age of 70, you likely played with…

I saw Dunkirk over the weekend. What a lousy movie!

As I write this, Jeff Sessions still has a job as America’s attorney general, though for all I know, he could be gone by the time you read this.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

The events of this dizzying week present us ample opportunities to take the Earth 2 Test. Imagine we’re on an alternate planet where Hillary Clinton won the election and the parties and players are flipped. Then ask yourself if you would care if she and the Democrats were doing it.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

So John McEnroe has gotten himself into all kinds of trouble this week.

I was a late convert to baseball. I never played it growing up—or even watched it, for that matter. I went to one Orioles game my freshman year of college and didn't stick a glove on my left hand until my junior year, when a couple buddies were heading out to have a catch and I tagged along. At…

Camille Paglia is one America's smartest and most fearless writers. Like Elvis, she's the kind of superstar who really needs no introduction—though it is worth pointing out that Pantheon has just published a collection of her essays on sex, gender, and feminism, titled Free Women, Free Men. It's…

It wasn't exactly May vs. Corbyn, but Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial primary was a shocker in its own right. The race pitted Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (the heir to the Clintons' heir in the Old Dominion) against former representative Tom Perriello, a super-progressive who was attempting to sell…

On Sunday afternoon Rafa Nadal won his 10th French Open. It is difficult to overstate how impressive this achievement is.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Over the past 48 hours there have been dozens of news stories trying to inject President Donald Trump into the London Bridge attacks: "World leaders call for unity after London attack. Trump tweets the complete opposite." And "With his London tweets Trump embarrasses himself—and America—once…

* We started out this week with some watch talk that may or may not be SFW, depending on your physiological reaction to things such as the Patek Philippe Constellation.

So far as I can tell, I was patient zero for anti-anti-anti-Trumpism: the philosophy which says that it is not enough to avoid the subject of Donald Trump by criticizing the various hucksters, idiots, SJWs, and partisans who criticize him. Because President Donald Trump is the leader of the free…

Roland Garros is open for business!

Tom Ricks is disappointed in General H. R. McMaster. On May 15, during Donald Trump's hebdomas horribilis, McMaster, the president's national security adviser, appeared briefly outside the White House to attack a story in the Washington Post. The Post piece alleged that the president had revealed…

Tom Ricks is disappointed in General H. R. McMaster. On May 15, during Donald Trump's hebdomas horribilis, McMaster, the president's national security adviser, appeared briefly outside the White House to attack a story in the Washington Post. The Post piece alleged that the president had revealed…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

There's a scene in the Brock Landers documentary—the movie-within-a-movie tucked away inside Boogie Nights—where Dirk Diggler explains how his work in adult films is actually a public service:

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

If James Bennett is remembered for anything, it's the formulation: "Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism . . . pick any two." A lot of people—in America, in France, all over the place, really—have come to see this proposition as reasonably serious.

After Neil Gorsuch was confirmed, most of America moved on to Russia, North Korea, the tax plan, and Rodrigo Duterte. But a small universe of Republican legal thinkers moved on, instead, to war-gaming the next Supreme Court vacancy.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Last May, I traveled to Rome with a small group of journalists. We met with bishops and cardinals. We toured the Scavi beneath St. Peter's and explored the Vatican Museums with a renowned art historian. We were welcomed onto the terrace atop the papal apartment, giving us an extraordinary view of…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

I draw your attention to the New York Times, which earlier this week ran…wait for it…a devastating attack on the students and faculty at Middlebury.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

The grievance-industry racket is as old as the culture war itself. But rarely has it been practiced as transparently as it was this past week by the Human Rights Campaign.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

The grievance-industry racket is as old as the culture war itself. But rarely has it been practiced as transparently as it was this past week by the Human Rights Campaign.

So we're in the strange place where Paul Ryan—globalist, RINO, scourge of tru-cons everywhere—is now wholly aligned with Donald Trump—populist avenger, conqueror, and the truest of true-conservatives. They became teamed up in pursuit of a healthcare reform package that exactly no one really liked.…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

There's a small movie coming out about Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Unless you're over a certain age and/or deeply invested in the intersection of the law and religious freedom, this name might not mean much to you. But half a century ago Madalyn Murray O'Hair was reasonably famous. She founded the group…

A few weeks ago Wellesley College invited Laura Kipnis to give a talk. Kipnis is not an especially controversial figure. She is a professor of media studies at Northwestern who teaches film and seems to be generally in line with old-guard feminism. Her one deviation was a piece she wrote for the…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

A few years ago I wrote a piece where I asked whether or the '00s had been worse than the '70s. At the time, I thought it was a close call, one that could go either way. Today, I'm not so sure.

I am not generally a fan of President Trump, Trumpism, the alt-right, or anonymous internet trolls. But on the other hand, you have to pay respect where it's due. Let us now discuss the greatest act of pro-Trump trolling, ever.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Bill Bishop is one of my favorite sociologists. (He's not a real sociologist, mind you. He's a journalist. But he co-wrote one of my favorite sociology books, The Big Sort. If you haven't read it, run, don't walk.)

By now, I suspect you've heard about what happened when Charles Murray went to Vermont to give a lecture at Middlebury College. But perhaps you have not seen it. The video is here. It is instructive.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

I'm fascinated by the evolving taxonomy of conservatives in the age of Trump.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

I frequently point you to the writings of Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist and blogger who I think of as the liberal Theodore Dalrymple. His blog is called Slate Star Codex and he's pretty great.

Are you going to watch the Academy Awards this Sunday? Please don't. You'll only drive yourself crazy. If you love Donald Trump, you'll be outraged at all of the idiotic, self-important protests. If you hate Donald Trump you'll be exasperated that the idiots in Hollywood somehow managed to find the…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of laughs watching people on the left trying to climb the pyramid of grievances.

Since we now live in a world where Democrats have a "new standard" for Supreme Court nominees, it's worth gaming out what to expect from Dems at Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearing. Will they pull some sort of unprecedented stunt? Perhaps by staging a walkout? Or a performance of "La Resistance"?…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

I've known David Frum almost since I first came to Washington. A mutual friend of ours once described him thusly: "David is one of the handful of people in this town whose intellect is genuinely intimidating." That appraisal always struck me as pretty much correct.

I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from Sunday night.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

J. L. Penfold died early on the morning of January 10. He was 71 years old. He was at home. And he was surrounded by his family. All of which are blessings.

There's a lot of important Trump news this week—the SCOTUS pick, his executive order on visas and refugees—but I'm going to deliberately ignore it because these are fast-moving stories.

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

I don't know about you, but I hate movie twists.

The response from Trump supporters, both in the media and in the wild, to Sean Spicer's Saturday press conference were instructive. It basically boiled down to:

The first official White House press conference is on Monday, but Sean Spicer called a Very Special Presser Saturday evening. Why? He had something he wanted to get off his chest. "[P]hotographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

We're into Day 4 of the Australian Open!

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

A year ago, as he prepared to give his final State of the Union speech, President Obama strode the halls of the Capitol while being interviewed by NBC's Matt Lauer. Lauer asked the president, in his friendly and earnest way, if he "takes responsibility" for the fact that Donald Trump was catching…

Over the weekend BuzzFeed published what it called "the definitive ranking" of Disney animation films. All 56 of them.

So what did Russia do to influence the election and does it matter?

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

A year ago, as he prepared to give his final State of the Union speech, President Obama strode the halls of the Capitol while being interviewed by NBC’s Matt Lauer. Lauer asked the president, in his friendly and earnest way, if he "takes responsibility" for the fact that Donald Trump was catching…

There were two stories before Christmas that pointed to the possibility that we are now living in an alternate universe, or have diverged onto a new timeline, or pick your Fringe metaphor.

Have you ever heard of Marc Goodwin and Mikhail Gallatinov?

Some endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Editor's note: The piece below first ran on THE WEEKLY STANDARD's website in May 2002, upon the release of Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. It is reprinted here to commemorate Friday's release of the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which serves as a standalone…

One of the mini-classics of the '90s was the James Brooks movie As Good as It Gets. It's about a slightly deranged writer played by Jack Nicholson and the title comes from a scene in which Nicholson's character walks out of his shrink's office into the waiting room and mischievously asks the other…

Growing up in mitte middle-class New Jersey, I spent much of my adolescence riddled with an unbecoming status anxiety. I was forever worried that not having the right clothes, or the right backpack, or the right sunglasses, would mark me as not belonging to the smart set. The fact that there was no…

Growing up in mitte middle-class New Jersey, I spent much of my adolescence riddled with an unbecoming status anxiety. I was forever worried that not having the right clothes, or the right backpack, or the right sunglasses, would mark me as not belonging to the smart set. The fact that there was no…

I want to share a fantastic Bloomberg Businessweek piece on the Medallion Fund by Katherine Burton.

Over the weekend Ross Douthat had an interesting column about the"crisis of liberalism." "The 2016 campaign was a crisis for conservatism," he writes, "its aftermath is a crisis for liberalism."

Over the weekend I received emails from two very smart conservative lawyer friends about who President Donald Trump should nominate to take the late Antonin Scalia's seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The first mounted a strong argument for Joan Larsen—about whom I had known relatively little. When I…

Over at Slate Jamelle Bouie has been on a tear about how racist Donald Trump and all of his voters are. His case is not especially nuanced: "White Won" and "There's No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter." You can read Bouie's arguments in depth if you like, but the headlines give you a pretty good…

No one was more surprised than me when Donald Trump pulled off the greatest electoral upset since Truman beat Dewey. (Except maybe these folks.) But from this point on, all the clichés are basically true: He's our next president. Every American should pray for him and hope he's successful.

If you're one of those people who was surprised to learn that the national anthem is inherently racist, then you were probably surprised to learn that the Lego Group—the parent company that makes Legos—has decided to pull all its advertising in London's Daily Mail.

The 2016 election tested a number of questions about American electioneering, among which was how much organization matters in the modern political environment. The Trump campaign had very little organization and no get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation. The Clinton campaign went big on both. The…

The 2016 election tested a number of questions about American electioneering, among which was how much organization matters in the modern political environment. The Trump campaign had very little organization and no get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation. The Clinton campaign went big on both. The…

Since there will be an avalanche of post-election analysis on Wednesday, I thought it would be more helpful to give you some thoughts on what to look for tonight as the returns come in.

This has not been an especially ennobling election. Or a rewarding one. Or even entertaining. Pretty much everything about 2016 has been boorish and grotesque. But finally it is time to laugh.

A few weeks ago a group of public figures dubbing themselves Scholars and Writers , er, for America issued a "Statement of Support" that read, in toto:

Last week, Buzzfeed’s Katherine Miller observed that the most interesting thing about Donald Trump is what he reveals about other people. This depressing truth has been on display for the better part of a year as Trump has laid bare the cowardice of much of the Republican establishment, the toxic…

There are going to be lots of different ways to examine Donald Trump's impending loss. But I want to point to a very basic one that's so simple that it might escape notice: On election night, you should keep an eye on the raw vote totals.

Let's get this out of the way up top: This was, by far, Trump's most disciplined debate performance. For 32 minutes, he almost sounded like a normal presidential candidate and for the first hour he wasn't terrible. Trump even seems to have spent some time preparing. He knew the name of a Supreme…

Wednesday night will probably be the last time Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are ever in a room together. (Unless Madam President accepts the invitation to Trump's next wedding.) But other than as a historical footnote, this debate doesn't really matter.

Now that the presidential race is over, it's time to start thinking about what's going to happen to the Republican party next.

I've been telling you—for a couple months now—that Donald Trump is not going to be president. I've gotten a lot of pushback on this from readers who proclaim, variously, that the polls are wrong, that Trump is playing four-dimensional chess, that this is the second coming of Reagan, or that Beltway…

So you've got this buddy, Bob. You aren't as close as you used to be, but you grew up together and have a bunch of friends in common. And even though you're both busy with your lives, you get together every couple years to catch up.

There is one important sense in which Donald Trump "won" the debate on Sunday night: He did not implode. He wasn't "good," or attractive, or knowledgeable. He was coarse and whiny and unpleasant. He lied constantly. And he became the first presidential candidate in the history of our Republic to…

Bill Kristol uses a great quote from Churchill in the service of urging all of the various Republican/conservative factions to come together and remove Donald Trump from the ticket.

When you collect comics, there are all sorts of factors that determine the value of the book. Certain important comics (they're referred to as "key" issues) are high-value. So, for instance, Detective Comics #358 isn't worth all that much, but issue #359 is, because it's the first appearance…

One of the themes I visit over and over again is the difference between tactics and strategy. I keep ringing this bell because the two ideas aren't particularly well understood in the political realm.

The vice presidential debate doesn't matter. It never matters. And if you want proof, consider Lloyd Bentsen. In 1988, Bentsen scored the biggest knockout blow in the history of vice presidential debates, hitting Dan Quayle in a moment so vivid that it remains the most memorable moment of the…

I live in a little homogenized exurb about 30 miles outside of Washington. Way outside of the Beltway. Out in the "real Virginia," as George Allen once unfortunately put it. And over the weekend my little town had two craft breweries open. That's in addition to the brewery that opened last year.…

One of the theories I have about 2016 is that because the two most unpopular candidates in American history are running, the race tilts away from the candidate that has the country’s attention. When Hillary Clinton is front-and-center, as she's been for the last few weeks, she's losing. Ditto for…

"We need to start voting for leaders whom we actually want to see in office," Evan McMullin says as we sit together in a small conference room. "Or we will never get them."

Ninety-seven years ago this month, Bolshevik troops stormed the Winter Palace at Saint Petersburg in the coup de grâce of the Russian Revolution. As much as any other event, this triumph of communism would dominate and shape the remainder of the century. To get a sense of scale, consider that the…

"We need to start voting for leaders whom we actually want to see in office,” Evan McMullin says as we sit together in a small conference room. "Or we will never get them."

"We need to start voting for leaders whom we actually want to see in office,” Evan McMullin says as we sit together in a small conference room. "Or we will never get them."

Over at his excellent Kristol Clear podcast (to which you should most definitely subscribe,) Bill Kristol argues that Monday's debate could be a really big deal. His reasons include:

Stuart Stevens has found fame and fortune as a political strategist. He is one of the half-dozen or so campaign consultants in America who actually understands both politics and strategy and isn’t just grifting the needy, well-heeled marks who often find themselves compelled to run for office.

Let's talk some Hillary Clinton. First off, I'm totally unconcerned about her health. To begin with, as everyone knows (or should know) Hillary Clinton is immortal. That's why she drinks the blood of a unicorn every morning at sunrise. I'm sorry, what did you think Huma's real job has been all…

Tuesday night Newt Gingrich went on Brit Hume's new show on Fox News. Gingrich is a fascinating interview because, whatever his eccentricities, he's a visionary and one of the major figures of the last century of American politics. If you want to see full-bore Gingrich, go and take in his long…

In presidential politics, the phrase "ground game" carries an almost mystical sense of portent. It is invoked by journalists, partisans, and campaign consultants as a vehicle for tipping close elections. But does it really matter?

In presidential politics, the phrase “ground game" carries an almost mystical sense of portent. It is invoked by journalists, partisans, and campaign consultants as a vehicle for tipping close elections. But does it really matter?

The first week of the U.S. Open was reasonably entertaining, but I want to focus on two players, one current (Nick Kyrgios) and one recently retired (Andy Roddick) because I think they represent the opposite poles of why some of us love tennis.

There are two ways to challenge politically correct orthodoxies. One is to toss off outrageous remarks designed to épater les bourgeois. This requires little and accomplishes less. The other is to take the commanding orthodoxy, put it under a microscope, and dismantle it piece by piece. This is…

There are two ways to challenge politically correct orthodoxies. One is to toss off outrageous remarks designed to épater les bourgeois. This requires little and accomplishes less. The other is to take the commanding orthodoxy, put it under a microscope, and dismantle it piece by piece. This is…

The Clinton campaign has been pretty smart so far.

You might not believe this, but we're just four weeks out from the first presidential debate and behind the scenes, prep is well underway. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that Laura Ingraham is helping the Trump campaign prepare for the debates and may even wind up playing the part…

It was on Halloween night that I first realized there was a problem. My three children—dressed as Darth Vader, a pirate fairy, and Tinker Bell—were making their way down Lee Street, in Old Town Alexandria, Va. The houses were decked with spider webs and all manner of spooky, expensive-looking…

What I was trying emphasize with all the poll talk Wednesday is that this race is over. There is no coming back from where Trump is now. A candidate with high-favorables and a semi-competent campaign—say, Bob Dole—couldn't do it. A conspiracy-obsessed narcissist who is hated by 60 percent of the…

Are you enjoying the new Trump pivot? Like President Obama's pivot to the economy—coming soon to a theater near you since the spring of 2009—Donald Trump has been just about to pivot to the general election since the evening he wrapped up the nomination in Indiana. And yet, there's always a shiny…

I admire Tom Edsall a ton. Like Robert Putnam and Phil Longman, he's smart and honest and interesting and you don't have to be a fellow-traveler to profit from reading him.

Donald Trump is not going to quit the race. The Republican party is not going to push him off the ballot. He may have a brief surge in the polls at some point, because the first rule of politics is that all races tighten.

You should clear the decks and read Michael Barone's new piece in the American Interest. It's an examination of the future of the Republican party and I simply don't think you can have an informed view on the subject without drinking in Barone's thoughts first:

Pretty much the only reason conservatives have for supporting Donald Trump is the Supreme Court. "Think of SCOTUS!" is a superficially compelling argument. But only superficially.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was quick to endorse Donald Trump, waiting fewer than 24 hours after Trump had cleared the Republican primary field. He did so by releasing a 75-word statement at eight o'clock in the evening. And that was that.

So there's a bounce.

How did it get to this point?

Is there any politician as ill-suited to a city as Hillary Clinton is to Philadelphia?

Finally, something went right for the Democrats in Philadelphia on Wednesday night.

You may not remember this, but four years ago Bill Clinton spoke on the third night of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. And it turned out to be the hinge of the campaign against Mitt Romney.

Day one of the Democratic convention was dominated by disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporters. The protested in the city; they chanted and booed inside the arena. And so even though 90 percent of Sanders voters now say they're supporting Hillary Clinton, the Sanders vanguard was still fighting.

If you're curious how Donald Trump could win the election, just game out what the Democrats should do in Philadelphia next week versus what they probably will do.

We can pretend that Hillary Clinton's vice presidential pick matters, but it doesn't. In fact, it may matter even less than usual. Very few voters like or trust Clinton, so instead the campaign is turning into referendum on Donald Trump.

Byron York has an interesting piece Thursday about the Trump team's bizarre eagerness to get into a fight with John Kasich. You should read the whole thing, but the short version is this: Kasich, either out of pique or self-interest or principle, didn't want to participate in the convention in his…

Well, it's finally here, the moment we've all been waiting for, when Donald Trump is formally enshrined as the face, the body, and the soul of the Republican party. I hope it works out for them ...

One of the truths I've come to believe over the years in covering conventions is that they play differently in the hall than they do on TV. I'm not in Cleveland, so I can't tell you how it played to the room, but on the screen, Chris Christie's show-trial indictment of Hillary Clinton came across…

Trumpism is a many splendored thing. It encompasses both support for the Iraq war and opposition to it. On a meta-level, it condemns supporters of the Iraq war and also forgives them.

The Drudge siren is blaring that Mike Pence is Trump's VP pick. I'm not sure I believe it, though, for a couple reasons.

I got a chance to hunker down with the new issue of National Affairs over the weekend. (I was on a commuter train full of drunk, sunburned Millennials, going from the Jersey Shore to New York City on a Sunday night. This is, I think, the optimal setting in which to consume National Affairs.)

Three stories Wednesday morning out of Trump World on the vice presidential front. The first is CNN reporting that the Trump children want Mike Pence while Big Orange is leaning toward Christie. The second is the New York Times with a quote from Trump where he says that he has five finalists, two…

While Washington elites spent Monday fussing about the merits of Mike Flynn versus Mike Pence, real America was rocked by leaked pictures of Lego's newest super set, the 71040 Disney Castle.

Over the last several years people have been led to believe a number of ineluctable demographic truths, most of which turn out to be almost exactly wrong. (I wrote a book about this a few years back, which can loosely be summarized as: "Everything you think you know about demographics is wrong.")

Michael Cimino died last weekend. If you recognize his name at all, it's probably because you remember that he was the guy who won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for The Deer Hunter in 1979.

Wimbledon started on Monday, which gave me—finally!—something to cheer about.

How bad is Hillary Clinton, really?

The Daily Signal reports today that the Department of the Interior has declared visitors to the parks "are welcome to use restrooms that best align with their gender identity."