Words matter. These are the best Richard Cohen Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Much worse than the unavoidable inefficiencies of large government is the failure to fund the government we need.
Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.
The term ‘disrupter’ has become an accolade, like first-responder or something.
Republicans remain silent because Trump is doing what they want – lowering taxes on the rich, eviscerating regulations, bulldozing the environment, and insisting that a woman’s body is not her own.
A presidential candidate needs a slogan.
There is only so much chaos a nation can stand.
What if Hillary Clinton were a man? What if she were a 68-year-old man rather than a 68-year-old woman? Would we think differently of her?
Germany’s crimes were recent and of such a scale and depravity that, unless constantly faced, they will come to seem fictitious.
I reveled in political science and history of all kinds, and I felt for a long time that I had discovered all the secrets of life in psychology, although its Freudian variety left me cold. The id never made much sense to me.
Conservatives watch Fox News and read ‘Breitbart.’ Liberals watch MSNBC and read ‘HuffPost.’ When we agree, it’s the truth; when we differ, it’s fake news.
Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in ‘Casablanca.’ Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman, and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age.
Heroism is a matter of choice.
I have come to the conclusion that Ben Carson is a bit nuts. I say that not because I disagree with him politically, but because he doesn’t seem to know what the truth is.
Trump critics such as myself have been accused of living in a bubble. On the contrary, it is Trump’s supporters in the 1 percent who breathed their own fumes.
Iran may or may not be the existential threat to Israel that Netanyahu insists it is. But a lessening of U.S. support for Israel certainly would be. With an indifferent America, Israel would become a lonely, frightening place.
Trump lies when confronted with the truth, since any crack in his narcissism might spread like an Ebola of the soul, and he would deflate like one of Macy’s balloons on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Leaving aside handguns and hunting weapons, what’s the justification for possessing an AR-15-style weapon?
Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism.
I have written about cultural dislocation, and I understand the corrosive effect of diminished expectations.
I came of age when jobs were plentiful and college not exorbitantly expensive. I graduated with debt, but it was manageable, and I set off to do something I loved – journalism.
How is it possible to defame Trump? When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a ‘moron,’ was that defamatory or merely the prosaic truth?
It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished – DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence – life in prison is a worthy substitute.
In order to take a nation to war, you have to believe mightily in the threat you are facing and the virtue of your cause.
Pence is the very personification of the career politician. With the exception of a few years doing talk radio and television shows, he has done nothing but run for office, winning all but the first two times.
To anyone other than an adamant social conservative, Pence is shockingly unreasonable. But he is also shockingly hypocritical.
I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry – and anger is discomforting. We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This, of course, is nonsense.
I never went to college to make money.
Republicans and others who are in anguish over the possibility of socialized medicine ought to have to explain their ideology to a mother with a sick newborn. They ought to have to explain how this nation can debate health care and not mention how abysmal ours is.
When I was a kid, I went door to door in my neighborhood asking for donations to the Jewish National Fund, best known then for its Israel forestation program. At the age of 11 or so, I imagined myself a regular Johnny Appleseed, responsible for vast forests.
Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world’s policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.
Raising money, like sausage-making, ain’t pretty to see, and it would be just criminally naive to rely on the big hearts of big donors.
We fear hackers lifting our digital wallet, a public accounting of our private lives, and we wonder if the shoes that follow us around the Internet will someday, with the click of a distant mouse, look like the jackboots of old.
I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy.
Most men, I think, wonder about their courage. How would they act in combat? Under torture?
The fact is that the United States does not need Israel. Our special relationship was not forged, as it was with Great Britain, in two world wars, not to mention a common language and, in significant respects, culture. It is based on warmth, emotion, shared values – and, not to be dismissed, a potent domestic lobby.
Trump’s presidency will fail. Just don’t ask me how and when. It will collapse because at its center is a hollow man, lacking ballast, whose chaos cannot be contained.
With a sinking feeling, I have come to a horrible conclusion: I am addicted to Donald Trump.
I met Clinton during her husband’s first campaign for the White House. It was 1992, New Hampshire, and both Clintons had stopped at a coffee shop to greet the folks and get something to eat.
As a presidential candidate, Trump seems heaven-sent just to make fools out of Republicans.
The grieving are surely owed our empathy, but capital punishment can neither right a wrong nor prevent another from happening.
Let me tell you, seven days without Wolf Blitzer is heaven. A week outside ‘The Situation Room’ is downright calming. No ‘breaking news!’ No hype. Blitzer is a first-class journalist, and I mention him only by way of acknowledging his fame.
The NRA has led the way in the mainstreaming of a demented gun ideology.
I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.
You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media and, to get just a bit more specific, ‘The Post.’
My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the ‘elite.’ If so, I damned well earned it.
As we see with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, interreligious fights are the most ugly.
Israel may be beloved, but for American security, it is not essential.
Being an American is life-threatening. For various reasons, men and women here don’t live as long as men and women in about two dozen other countries, including the ones we defeated in World War II – Japan, Germany and Italy.
I don’t know if history will adjudge Barack Obama a great president, but he has been a necessary one.
Churchill had a marvelous way with words, and greatness accompanied him like a shadow, but in certain ways, he was a 19th-century man wandering, confounded, in the 20th.
I am glad to see the Confederate battle flag gone from a place of honor at the South Carolina state capitol.
I served in the Army. I worked at blue-collar jobs. I washed dishes and bused tables.
Among the things I know is that Trump voters were played for suckers.
Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen, or a conversation not held.
Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s got his eye on 2020.
It is not true that Trump is nobody’s fool. He is the GOP’s.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, he cares. He cares about things I don’t, and he has some awful ideas, and he is an amoral man in so many ways. But, in contrast to Obama, his emotions are no mystery.
We are a segmented society, living in our individual bubbles.
Trump is a dust storm of lies and diversions with the bellows of a bully and the greasy ethics of a street-corner hustler.
The more Scott Walker campaigns, the more he proves he is not intellectually fit for the office he’s seeking. He asserts innocent ignorance on matters he should by now know something about – a way of masking his apparent bigotry.
