Overview for David Frum in Print

What Happens When The Money Runs Out?

When Bill Clinton rattled off his list of economic statistics at the Democratic convention last week, there was one that he chose to omit: In 1996, the number of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. for the first time passed the one million mark. When Bill Clinton rattled off his list of economic …

Written by David Frum on Thursday August 24, 2000

Joy Of Sex? Real Intimacy Was Too Close For Comfort

Alex Comfort, who died last week at the age of 80, was the sort of man of whom it is said that he was ahead of his time. In this case, the tribute is not a compliment. Demographically, Comfort belonged to the World War II generation; he was born in England in February 1920. Spiritually, though, he …

Written by David Frum on Saturday August 5, 2000

The Republicans' Cheney Moment

As George W. Bush has led America to contemplate Richard B. Cheney as a vice presidential nominee, he has sent two powerful messages to the country and his party -- one reassuring, one disturbing. The reassuring message: Mr. Bush is self-possessed and self-confident -- unafraid to campaign …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday July 25, 2000

George Bush's 60's Were Real, Too

In the spring of 1968, the same season in which George W. Bush graduated from Yale, the university's blue-collar workers went on strike. Similar strikes would shut down the school's dining halls later on, but not this time, thanks to students who crossed the picket lines to keep the kitchens …

Written by David Frum on Thursday June 22, 2000

Protesting, But Why?

Dateline: Washington The anarchist Emma Goldman is supposed to have defiantly cried that she wouldn't join the revolution if she couldn't dance; nearly 100 years later, her spiritual descendants decided that they wouldn't join the revolution if they had to get wet. On the second day of …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday April 19, 2000

Gore Isn't As Strong As He Looks

One of the things that makes America great is its old tradition of admiring underdogs and despising losers. Poor Bill Bradley has made the transition from the first to the second at near-record speed. The professional second-guessers are already chastising Mr. Bradley for a long list of …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday March 8, 2000

Learning To Love The National Debt

Devoting the surplus to paying it down could be bad for the economy If Americans do things his way, President Clinton vowed in his State of the Union, "We will pay off our national debt for the first time since 1835." This promise is now being treated as an unequivocally good thing. Alan …

Written by David Frum on Monday February 21, 2000

Pandering To The Middle Class

The four flaws in John McCain's four-point economic plan What is John McCain up to? Until now, McCain has appealed to voters and wowed the press by presenting himself as something bolder and better than an ordinary politician: a man beholden to nobody, a risk-taker, a truth-teller. The tax plan he …

Written by David Frum on Monday January 24, 2000

What Makes A Man Of The Century

There were lots of important individuals, but one stands out: Winston Churchill was both great and indispensable "He understood that reality is more than the facts before you; it's also how you feel about them, how you react to them, what your attitude is." That was one of President …

Written by David Frum on Monday January 3, 2000

Canadas Reckless Supreme Court

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has just announced that Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin will ascend to its chief justiceship next year. This promotion has been cheered, in Canada and beyond, as a heart-warming symbol of female progress. Mr. Chretien must be very pleased: By focusing …

Written by David Frum on Monday November 15, 1999

Review

American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century "Value-subtraction" was the term used by American economists to describe the process by which factories in Communist Russia combined leather, glue, and dye into shoes worth less than the raw materials that had gone into them. …

Written by David Frum on Monday November 1, 1999

The Dangers Of Conservative Compassion

As slogans go, "compassionate conservatism" is a work of genius. It combines the left's favorite adjective with the right's favorite noun in the most spectacularly effective recombination since Procter & Gamble rolled out the fat-free potato chip. But while we all can imagine what a fat-free …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday September 14, 1999

Our Fearless Press

Soon after President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Timothy Phelps of Newsday and Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio heard rumors that a law professor in Oklahoma had accused Thomas of making crude sexual remarks to her when they worked together almost a decade before. …

Written by David Frum on Monday March 15, 1999

Books In Review

WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP IT'S BEEN " Here I come, my name is Jowett. If it's knowledge, then I know it. I am the Master of Balliol College. If I don't know it, it isn't knowledge." That ditty was composed by some now-forgotten Oxford wag about the great Oxford classicist Benjamin …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday February 16, 1999

The Good Fight

In Defense of the House Republicans Was it worth it? Was it worth losing five Republican congressmen in 1998 and risking more in 2000, consuming a year of the nation's time, dragging dozens of unwilling figures into the glare of publicity, and depressing the party's poll numbers, all in an …

Written by David Frum on Monday February 8, 1999

The Triumph Of Clintonism

There's no blinking the truth: Campaign '98 was not only a bad Republican defeat, it was a personal triumph for the president. Some happy-talk Republicans will want of course to deny the magnitude of the president's victory. They will point to the exit polls showing that voters still disapprove of …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday December 1, 1998

Winners And Losers In The American Midterm Elections

Clinton and Bush did well, unlike Gingrich and Gore There were two big winners of Tuesday's U.S. election and two big losers. The winners: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The losers: Newt Gingrich and Al Gore. Mr. Clinton is a winner because the election result has quashed virtually …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday December 1, 1998

The Cabinet Clinton Deserves

"Bill Clinton's problem is not a party problem, it is not a New Democratic problem, it's a Clinton problem." That's Elaine Kamarck, a former Gore staffer now decamped to Harvard, as quoted in the New Republic last week, and hers is a line we are very likely to hear repeated more and more …

Written by David Frum on Monday October 12, 1998

Let's Not Get Too Choked Up Over The Death Of Socialism

A faith that once moved millions has gone the way of Albigensianism 'The biggest intellectual event of the 20th century is the death of socialism.' When the neo-conservative intellectual Irving Kristol first offered that observation in the mid-1970s, it sounded almost perverse. But of course …

Written by David Frum on Saturday August 29, 1998

Revisionism And The Reference Books

Politically correct editors put their own slant on history Dictionaries, books of quotations, encyclopedias: it's impossible to be a journalist without them. It's noon, the editor is on the phone demanding copy, and there you are, desperately trying to remember who came first, Charles Tupper or …

Written by David Frum on Thursday August 20, 1998