Pinstripe paranoia, a seasonal ailment, has plagued many of us since 1949, when Joe Page, predecessor of the peerless Panamanian, Mariano Rivera, was a prime reliever. When Page opened the bullpen gate at Fenway Park, we knew that Red Sox bats would soon turn into sawdust and that winter would...

Whenever a Kennedy runs for office, the tom-toms resound. Her uncles and cousins heard it. So did her father. Unqualified, inexperienced, starting at the top, impatient, dilettantish, haughty. Also inarticulate and afraid of work. Anti-Kennedy clatter has echoed for half a century.

Can wealth and fame help Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg...

Just over year ago, amid fretting and swooning, Rupert Murdoch took over The Wall Street Journal, owned by the same families since 1889. Readers and media critics worried that he would dumb down or tart up the nation's first successful national newspaper. Some familiar, even beloved, bylines migrated elsewhere. But...

The political capital of the world is now Chicago, an agreeably invigorating prospect. The most consistent thing about Chicago, infusing its politics, architecture, literature, even its journalism, is self-confidence. The place is big enough to feel provincial about itself. It is so attractive, so diverse, and so influential that it...

THE REPUBLICAN COLLAPSE: 100 YEARS IN THE MAKING
Even amid the stressful heat of the campaign, the candidate could not escape the obvious. "The Republican party needs the discipline of defeat," William Howard Taft told a friend in 1912, near the end of his one term as president.
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No picket signs, no shouting crowds, no "spin alley," no corporate sponsorship, no bread, no circuses, and perhaps best of all, no live audience. Today's presidential debates have become unserious to the point of self-parody. They have strayed from the original, the first national presidential debate in 1960.

On Sept....

What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward the sad end of this presidential campaign? It is the shade of the late Joseph R. McCarthy, who bequeathed his name to an "ism" John McCain has clumsily exhumed. McCarthyism asserted that if you ever met a Communist, you...

Why do John McCain's daredevil stunts recall George Romney's mangled syntax, Edmund Muskie's teardrops in the snow or Bill Clinton's relentlessly roaming eye? These campaign phenomena were not gaffes, not aberrations, but revelations, confirming what many voters suspected. They were epiphanies of character.

McCain is the perpetual rebel, a Waldo...

Daniel Patrick Moynihan had the touch of a poet. He was also a practical man. In 1982, after Tim Russert's political skills had assured Moynihan's reelection, the senator invited me to lunch in New York. "I need your advice," he said. "Let me clutch my wallet," I replied. "No, no....

It is not a Miss Congeniality award, not a runner-up trophy, nor a consolation prize of any sort. The vice presidency has been derided and desired, but one central fact about it is inescapable

In 1966, after a reporting trip with Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, I enjoyed off-the-record drinks...

Edmund Muskie weeping in the snow, George Romney being brainwashed, Michael Dukakis in an Army tank, John Kerry on his windsurfer. These moments are memorable not because they are gaffes, but epiphanies, illuminating what many voters already think of a candidate. The images endure not because they were aberrations, but...

Has anyone noticed the resemblance between George McGovern and Robert Mugabe? Sen. Hillary Clinton and her inventive mathematicians have. They see a parallel between the longtime dictator of Zimbabwe and the heroic former South Dakota senator, who won the 1972 presidential nomination while losing the popular vote in Democratic primaries.

Is she Barbara Stanwyck of Night Nurse and Baby Face? The pre-Code 1930s Stanwyck was a tough cookie who did not stay home baking them.

Sally Field, Hillary Rodham Clinton's contemporary, could play her on screen. The Oscar winner for Norma Rae won again for Places in the Heart and...

A senator whose antiwar eloquence appealed to young voters faced off against a senator with a famous name seeking to restore a dynasty. In 1968, Indiana and its unique political heritage stood at the center of American politics. On May 7, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York won the...

It's never too early to plan to think about choosing a vice president. Here are some rules.

1. Toss the Pollsters Out of the Room

They know nothing about choosing a VP because most voters are too busy to peruse the details of an office that is still standby equipment....