It turns out Hillary wasn't ready to lead on day one, but the sheer grit of her end game will long be remembered. In her concession we glimpsed the candidate she might have been.

She's at her best when she's closest to inhabiting herself. No one's public persona is...

Bill Buckley died Wednesday at 82 at his home in Connecticut. He was the most influential public intellectual of his generation in this country, maybe the world.

More than anyone, even Goldwater or Reagan, he was the father of modern conservatism, which was as much an intellectual as a...

New Year's is about optimism, just as July Fourth is about patriotism and Thanksgiving, gratitude. Optimism is sometimes hardest to muster up. It isn't based on experience; indeed, it's how we endure despite everything that happens to us.

Survival skills are learned. The will to survive comes from a...

Like most of you, I love Christmas. Unlike many of you I also love winter, both for its connection to Christmas and for its intrinsic beauty. I delight at the first snow and don't tire of it till well into mud season.

In many places these days it's as...

I have a distinction you won't envy. I saw or heard every presidential debate but one and read all the transcripts. What did I learn? This: For passionate idealism and timely analysis of issues, I'd have been better off watching reruns of Boston Legal.

If you're more into 'character'...

In 1960 John Kennedy went to Texas to talk to some Protestant pastors about what it means to be a Catholic. They were mostly Democrats but the reception was not a warm one, the reason being they were also white, male, conservative and on the brink of an historic political...

Ten years ago I got caught unaware during a TV debate on global warming. Midway through the show, the industry funded science denier I was debating unveiled a new argument. It was so daft I mistook it for a joke, thus appearing disrespectful when I meant to be congenial; proof...

It was no surprise to find Democrats raking over the same old issues in their last debate but it was shocking to find them raking over old Republican issues instead of their own. If they go on doing it they'll give away another election that was theirs for the taking.

That Hillary Clinton's one tough gal. As everyone knows, in the last debate some very bad boys did everything but push her to the sidewalk and steal her purse. Each time they hit her, she got back up. Among American politicians only her husband, the king of pain, seems more...

Al Gore once campaigned for me with his foot in a cast. As we waited to be introduced at a luncheon he confided that the injury had ended his dream of an NBA career; that and the fact that he was 46 and Vice President of the United States. I...

Nearing the end of a catastrophic presidency George Bush seeks redemption in odd ways. Having wrecked Iraq he takes aim at Iran. Having denied global warming, he asks others to fix it. Having waged war on a credit card, he mimics fiscal prudence in symbolic budget battles with Congress.

It's...

Ever since John Kennedy won a Pulitzer for Profiles in Courage, presidential candidates have written books. They range from vacuous policy tomes to memoirs meant to inspire to a book by John Edwards about people's houses. I didn't quite get Edwards' point but his central theme -- there's no place...

Rudy Giuliani is slipping, if not quite sliding away. In early polls he led Hillary Clinton and every Democrat and was pulling away from the Republican pack, having benefited much from John McCain's gracious decision to set himself on fire.

Back then the smart money--and it's a wonder they...

On September 11 George Bush contrived with Democratic assistance to send David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker to tell Congress how the Iraq war is going.

Bush wanted the date not because he thought it would be, in Lincoln's words, an altogether fitting and proper way to honor the fallen,...

With the 2008 campaign in high gear some folks would like real debates to go along with it. Last week's CNN/YouTube debate tinkered with technology in hopes of eliciting more spontaneity and substance but Democratic candidates for President weren't so easily tricked.

Maybe you missed the debate -- got home...

In 1979 I was a freshman Connecticut State Senator lucky enough to be seated next to Joe Lieberman. Lucky because he was majority leader and I could chat him up regularly, and lucky because he was funny, kind, decent and smart.

In 1988 Joe went after Lowell Weicker's U.S....

Barack Obama recites his best line with trademark understatement. "It's time to turn the page" he says and each time he does, audiences erupt. Some think he's taking aim at George Bush but his target is Hillary Clinton.

Before a ballot is cast, the Democratic race is narrowing down to...

In April of 1995 in Warm Springs, Ga., I met Arthur Schlesinger. We'd met once before and he was nice enough to pretend he knew it. We'd come to memorialize the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. I worked for Bill Clinton, so I got to ride on Air Force One...

It's been a busy time in the lives of the would-be presidents. As Kerry finally took a pass, Obama, Clinton, Dodd, Richardson and Brownback were joining Edwards, Kucinich, Biden, McCain, Giuliani, Romney and a half dozen more already in the race. The major parties could field twenty five candidates.

It's...

We live in a golden age of lying. We went to war based on lies: Colin Powell's aluminum tubes, Condi Rice's mushroom cloud, Bush's sixteen words. Experts told Bush there was no hard evidence of Iraqi nuclear weapons programs. He told us there was and off we went.

Bush's...