TweetThis is related to David Brooks’ “personalism” column I brought up the other day. More than that, it’s an evocation of a theme I frequently bring up in my quixotic effort to foster a sort of politics that isn’t about the partisan lie that breaks everything down to an absolutist battle between angels and devils, black and white. […]
TweetTwo quick contact reports: Yesterday afternoon, I grabbed a cup of coffee with Mike Cakora, who recently returned to the blog as a regular commenter after a five-year absence. It was great to have him back, and I was happy to get to catch up with him. I knew Mike from before I started blogging. […]
TweetFollowing up on this post earlier today, here’s a column I wrote on a similar subject, back in 2007. The point, then as now, was that politicians are generally neither devils nor angels, which can be easy to miss, since the parties are all about painting everything in black and white terms. Here’s the pertinent […]
TweetHaving heard my limit of cynical statements bordering on paranoia, I resolved, on live radio over the weekend, to do The Most Daring Thing a Journalist Can Ever Do. I decided to stick up for politicians. And for the media, for that matter. I learned long ago, well before I started blogging, that the surest […]
TweetYou know how politicians are always claiming that? Well, in my case it’s true! Sort of. I got this completely unsolicited email in my actual IN box today: Brad, here’s something thing we know after Trump’s rally in Arizona last night: You are smarter, kinder, and more empathetic than our president. And all of those […]
TweetIt was Tuesday when I warned that the unnecessarily-fanned flames of several Culture War flashpoints threatened to make this into the kind of presidential election I detest — one that consists entirely of yelling about social issues (about which no one changes anyone else’s minds, which makes them ideal tools for infuriating the base and […]
TweetI have always, according to everyone else, underestimated the role of money in politics. It bores me, so I don’t attach the importance to it that everyone says I should. But for all you folks who are so much more world-wise than I, here’s a tidbit to gnaw on: Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC […]
TweetI didn’t have much to say about South Carolina’s 11.1 percent unemployment rate, beyond these two thoughts: 1) I really hope this isn’t a double-dip recession (and if we actually got out of the first one, which I can’t tell; can you?), and 2) boyohboy am I sick of this stuff. The disorienting thing for […]
TweetThere are two schools of thought about what would happen if Mark Sanford were to resign. The first, held by my former co-workers at The State and a number of politicians who feared the consequences were the governor to be impeached, hold that being installed as interim governor would give Andre Bauer a leg up […]
TweetHere we go again. In no way did I solicit this affirmation; I just picked up my ringing phone today and the city editor of the paper in Michigan City, Indiana, told me that he had just written a column telling a tale similar to my own. And I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, and […]
TweetJust got caught up enough to look at my external e-mail account (what with being off last week, I’m up over 1,500 unread messages, even after reading today’s), and a whole lot of folks chose to react to my column there. Assuming they just didn’t know about the blog, I’ll pass on their thoughts here. […]
TweetThe Op-Ed Page By Paul V. DeMarco Guest Columnist When our family moved to Marion in 1993, we knew very little about the place. We had visited to interview for what would become my first job, but had little time to search for a home. Without the benefit of internet browsing, we ended up renting […]
TweetThe Op-Ed Page By Paul V. DeMarco Guest Columnist Nikki Haley faces stiff head winds as she tries to become the Republican nominee for president. If only the Republican base participates in state Republican primaries, Trump wins going away. Her only path to the nomination is for independents and centrist Democrats to back her. The […]
TweetThe Op-Ed Page By Paul V. DeMarco Guest Columnist Those of you who are avid readers of this column (yes, all three of you) may remember my writing a column with a similar headline about QAnon back in October. QAnon has pretty much run its course. MTG will be a little harder to get rid […]
TweetA few quick topics: Why a Strong Economy Is Making Stock Investors Jittery — Oh, that’s easy. It’s because stock investors are always jittery. They wouldn’t know what to do if they weren’t having a nervous breakdown several times a day. The great weakness of our economic system is that it’s so dependent upon the […]
Tweet Yeah, I know we have real inflation now. Of course, unless the economy has come to a halt and is in danger of sliding into deflation, like during the Depression, we always have inflation. It’s just it’s somewhat higher right now. Now, it’s more like what we lived with in the early ’80s. It […]
TweetIn my last post, I expressed my appreciation to Nicholas Kristof for his efforts to remind us that we can work together and find solutions, even to the hardest of issues. I thought that today I’d share a couple of examples of how that is done. Just a couple, because I haven’t been saving them […]
TweetThe Op-Ed Page By Paul V. DeMarco Guest Columnist Tom Rice and I have different political philosophies. On many controversial issues, we disagree. Yet, I have never felt more strongly about voting for a candidate than I do about voting for him. This election cycle, rather than focusing on individual races, my goal is to […]
Tweet Thought I’d share this op-ed piece I found in the NYT this morning. It’s pretty much dead-on in describing the problem, as I frequently try to point out here on the blog. I also try to address the problem by providing a civil forum for discussion — a project that is, at best, a […]
TweetThe Op-Ed Page By Paul V. DeMarco Guest Columnist Actually, it will be all “don’ts.” It seems that 99.9% of Americans understand what Christmas best wishes, be they traditional hold-in-your hand cards or digital missives, should involve. Unfortunately, two of our nation’s highest elected officials, who represent us to the nation and the world, have […]