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America’s Yeltsin moment
The end of the Cold War was as great a shock to US politics as it was to the Soviet Union’s. The…
Buckle up for Biden and the Blob
With any change of power in Washington, it is routine to ask which policies will endure and which will change.…
Are we back in the Obama White House?
Like most Greek stories, the tale of Pandora’s box is fraught with ambiguity. Most of us, when we first encounter the story,…
Elvis and Nixon, the odd couple
If you were called upon to invent the human antithesis of rock and roll, you couldn’t do better than our nation’s 37th president,…
The fight for liberalism
The world has many island nations, and sometimes the United States counts itself among them. We have water on either side of us,…
The never-ending smugness of the NeverTrumpers
In March 2016 as Donald Trump looked likely to be the Republican party’s nominee to run for president, more than 100 foreign…
Farewell, Donald
Madeleine Kearns To Trump or not to Trump? Whether ’tis nobler on the page to be a morbid cynic or a self-righteous…
Biden’s speech impediment
Does Joe Biden write his own speeches? Surely not. Yet his campaign says Biden was his own speechwriter for the address he made…
Republican resurrection
When Donald Trump took his famous escalator ride, the Republican party was too attached to abstract principles at the expense of the material interests of…
Brace yourselves for President Harris
Although the electors for the presidential election of 2020 do not cast their votes until December 14, and their votes…
Libertarians suck
Everyone knew some husky chap in college who smelled like onions and called himself a libertarian. He may or may not have worn…
The mullah report: is Biden bringing back the Iran Deal?
‘We’re going to be back in the game,’ our presumptive and somewhat previous new president tells us. ‘It’s not America…
The urgent case for voting reform
By now, The Spectator knows better than to say that Donald Trump has been definitively beaten. The President’s final defeat…
The next American empire
Americans have never been sure of their standing in the world, and the world has never been sure of Americans’…
The wars go on
America’s longest war has just entered its 20th year. The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban…
The Disneyfication of the moral universe
‘I’m sitting here struggling for words and my friend nailed it: “She was our Princess Leia.”’ With those words, Dr…
Will Trump refuse to leave?
At a drinks party in Washington DC just after Donald Trump was elected, someone from the old regime told me: ‘This…
Will we ever know the truth about Russiagate?
Writing in mid-October, anno domini 2020, it is sobering to speculate that when the results of a certain upcoming political…
The paranoid style in left-wing politics
Did Donald Trump fake his battle with coronavirus to boost his standing in the polls? No, obviously not. He spent…
Their Majesties the Presidents
For anyone who’s a little bit worried about the current state of the Union, Andrew Gimson’s book is a godsend.…
Bad Kshama: meet Seattle’s worst socialist
Seattle In Max Frisch’s 1953 absurdist play The Fire Raisers, a well-off family in an unnamed town invites a man…
The Democratic art of magical thinking
I should clear up one thing straight away. I do not believe that Joe Biden is guilty of magical thinking.…
The hostages’ president
President Trump has tweeted that, among other things he’s best at, he is ‘the greatest hostage negotiator in the history…
Godforsaken: religion is vanishing from American politics
The United States has always been the world’s leading religious marketplace. Even before independence, the American colonies were more fervently…
How democracy dies
What would happen if Americans voted on different days? Suppose Republicans voted on Tuesday and Democrats voted on Wednesday. Would…
