David Frum's Blog, page 74

GOP Revival Requires More than Hashtags

I'm about to defend Stuart Stevens, the spearhead of Mitt Romney's disastrous campaign, so please bear with me. Stevens, the author of boneheaded post-election op-eds like this piece of fine art, has a piece in today's Washington Post debating the impact of social media on November's GOP debacle.

Dealing with Awful Loss

Please read and contemplate Tim Carney's beautiful essay on his infant nephew John Paul Kilner, who recently passed away from spinal muscular atrophy:

Rolling Our Way to Recovery

Lots of doom and gloom on the blog these days, so here's something that should give cheer. The Wall Street Journal's Jim Carlton examines the lumber market in Oregon and sees good signs:

The Sequester is Everyone's Fault

If only more members of Congress spoke about the sequester with the honesty of Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill:

Here's Why the Sequester Cuts Hit Defense So Hard

Some fiscal hawks question why the sequester must harm US defense readiness. After all, the cuts are not so very big - not in the first year at least. Surely the Pentagon can find some waste to cut?

Italian Election News

Thus far the one thing we know for sure: a calamitous plunge in voter turnout, down 7.3 points from 2008 levels.

Should We Rejoice a Post-Work Future?

Douthat, in a provocative column, says no, but not for the reasons I expected. I'm spending the day writing a review of Congressman Lincoln, and will let this be for now, but you might enjoy thinking this over.(Per the video above: don't tell me you've never thought about doing this).

Our Next Energy Secretary?

Even the rumor that President Obama will appoint Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist at MIT who previously served in the Clinton Administration, has the "green" left in an uproar. Sounds to me like a decent candidate. (Emphasis mine):

What's Post-Truth Journalism Really About?

Jamie McFadden offers this reply to my National Post column on the post-truth journalism of Breitbart.com:

Why Can't Our Politics Improve Like Our Medicine?

James A. Garfield has always been for me one of the great might-have-beens of American history: the most substantial personality to hold the presidency between Ulysses Grant and Theodore Roosevelt, and the only one of the post Civil War presidents to care very much about the conditions of the freed slaves. His 1881 inaugural address offers the most full-throated defense of black political equality that would be heard from any president until after World War II. Garfield contemplated a federal...