Sen. Elizabeth Warren stumping for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire in 2016. Photograph by Tim Pierce.

A country for old (white) men

March 8, 2020

Remember that film “No Country for Old Men”? Well, this isn’t that.

Just when you thought Bernie Sanders was the second coming of, well, Bernie Sanders, “Uncle Joe” — as one of my sisters calls former Vice President Joe Biden — came roaring back. Now no matter who gets the Democratic presidential nomination, the presidential contest will be between two old white guys and, if it’s between Sanders and President Donald J. Trump, two grumpy old men with an enormous sense of grievance and my-way-or-the-highway entitlement. (They’re like the relatives you have to tolerate on holidays and then pray they don’t say anything politically incorrect.)

Time to let women run the world?

March 31, 2019

If you were to ask me what is the greatest crisis facing the modern world — apart from the failure of education — I would say the lack and perversion of leadership. On the one hand, we have the strongmen — Donald J. Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, Nicolas Maduro and Rodrigo Duterte. On the other, the besieged rationalists — Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau and Angela Merkel.

To Merkel, we must add a number of other female leaders who’ve emerged on the world stage — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, playing a tricky hand brilliantly through the government shutdown-showdown, her encounters with her fractious caucus, the disheartening release of the Mueller report and now the latest attack on Obamacare; New Zealand’s Jacinda Adhern, who’s been a magnificent example of grace in the face of the white supremacist attack on the Muslims of her nation; Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon, a steadying hand on the till as she guides her country through the rough waters of Brexit; and now Slovakiia’s first woman president, Zuzana Čaputová, who ran on the platform “Stand Up to Evil.”

In the March 31 edition of The New York Times, Tina Brown wonders if women might not be better leaders than men.

Is it the end of the U.S.-North Korean affair?

March 4, 2019

Don’t kill those Nobel Peace Prize hopes just yet.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is eager for talks to resume between President Donald J. Trumpet and North Korean Supreme Leader “L’il Kim” Jong un and pointed to the cancellation of U.S.-South Korean military exercises as an act of good faith. If I were Moon, however, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The myth of the strongman

March 4, 2018

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Russia’s Vladimir Putin. China’s Xi Jinping. And, of course, our own Donald J. Trump.

The world is in the grips of the strongman – tough, reactionary and taking no prisoners. Part of this is a response to the terrible, fascinating transition in which we find ourselves – a backlash to the global, multicultural, digital age to which so-called “feminine” energies (communications skills, sensitivity, a sense of service) are better suited. Part of this is the envy, rage and resentment, particularly in this country, of white, blue-collar males, who lacked the courage, intelligence, industry and imagination to confront their greedy employers and, failing that, reinvent themselves when manufacturing jobs began to dry up in the 1970s. ...

The rules of narcissism

August 2, 2017

Add President Vladimir “Vlad the Lad,” “Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin and (now former) Communications Director Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci to the long list of those who banked on President Donald J. Trump to be something other than he is.

What he is is a narcissist, and the first rule of dealing with a narcissist is that you cannot bank on anything. That’s because the narcissist must always be right. But no one is always right. So in order to maintain perfection, the context has to change. The circumstances and others must be wrong. ...