Entries

Can Obama Dare To Be Dull?

A great speech is not always a smart move. Just about everybody hailed Barack Obama’s March 18 speech on race as an effort worthy of Martin Luther King. Within ten days, it scored almost 3.5 million views on YouTube. Yet it’s not clear that the speech did Obama any good. Two weeks …

Written by David Frum on Thursday August 28, 2008

The Coming Chinese Slowdown

The leaders of China have carefully planned an imposing Olympics. They have bought new stadiums, new airports, new facilities of every kind -- in fact, just about everything available to an authoritarian state with a full treasury and low labour costs. They overlooked only one possibility: that …

Written by David Frum on Saturday August 9, 2008

Home Alone Dad

Possibly you remember the 1990 film Home Alone. Parents leave on family vacation, forgetting one of their children? Very improbable, obviously. But what does happen every summer, in who knows how many houses across the continent, is the scene just enacted in my house this week:Wife, children, dogs …

Written by David Frum on Saturday August 2, 2008

Three Dangers And An Opportunity

For most of the nearly three decades since 1980, the United States has been governed from the center-right. Now that era is drawing to a close. Many Canadians will welcome this change. But Canadian policymakers should be on guard: this new era will present at least three serious challenges, even …

Written by David Frum on Friday August 1, 2008

An Unconventional Idea

The imperatives of television have turned party conventions into scripted, meaningless events. With some reinvention, they could be a useful and important part of the political process. Summon to mind the most memorable moments in television convention coverage: George McGovern's late-night …

Written by David Frum on Saturday July 26, 2008

The Demise Of Fannie And Freddie

The shapers of the U. S. mortgage finance system hoped to achieve the security of government ownership, the integrity of local banking and the ingenuity of Wall Street. Instead, they got the ingenuity of government, the security of local banking and the integrity of Wall Street. Yesterday, …

Written by David Frum on Saturday July 12, 2008

The Demise Of Fannie And Freddie

The shapers of the U. S. mortgage finance system hoped to achieve the security of government ownership, the integrity of local banking and the ingenuity of Wall Street. Instead, they got the ingenuity of government, the security of local banking and the integrity of Wall Street. Yesterday, …

Written by David Frum on Saturday July 12, 2008

A Clear Gain For Obama

'You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and handguns. I consider them a threat to national security, and I will go door to door if I have to, but I'm gonna convince Americans that I'm right, and I'm gonna get the guns." That passionate outburst occurs at the …

Written by David Frum on Saturday June 28, 2008

The Rules

How McCain should pick 'em. Some years ago, C-SPAN's Brian Lamb played a dirty trick on a journalist friend of mine. My friend was appearing on c-span's "Washington Journal" to discuss recent events. If I remember right, my friend was expanding on the future of East Timor when Lamb abruptly …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday June 25, 2008

My Father Was Right

'Marriage is a lottery." Among the pieces of wisdom that my father tried to impart to me, that quotation ranked number one. (Number two was "internal rate of return is a useless concept in evaluating a real estate investment" -- but that's a topic for another column.) My father's …

Written by David Frum on Saturday June 21, 2008

The Clinton Ultimatum

It's not unusual for the winner of a U. S. presidential nomination to choose the runner-up as his running mate. John Kerry did it in 2004. Ronald Reagan did it in 1980. John F. Kennedy did it (under very different rules) in 1960. In these pairings, it is always the winner who reaches out to the …

Written by David Frum on Saturday June 7, 2008

In Mcclellan, Bush Reaps What He's Sown

Except maybe for MSNBC's wild-eyed commentator Keith Olbermann, nobody in politics or media seems to have a good word to say for Scott McClellan, the former George W. Bush press secretary turned ferocious Bush critic. The right complains of his disloyalty. The left complains that McClellan'…

Written by David Frum on Saturday May 31, 2008

Democracy To Democracy

Seven bombs exploded in the Indian city of Jaipur on the evening of May 13. An eighth was placed outside a Hindu temple just outside the city. At least 63 people were killed, more than 200 wounded. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but Indian media and police take for granted that the …

Written by David Frum on Saturday May 17, 2008

Subsidizing Ethanol Was A Mistake

It was a routine drop-by for President Bush. Speaking last weekend at a high-tech firm near St. Louis, Missouri, the president attempted to defend himself against the charge that his policies were responsible for rising food prices. Bush has strongly favoured subsidies to ethanol: …

Written by David Frum on Friday May 9, 2008

Republicans Must Change To Win

These have been a terrible few weeks for the Democrats - so bad that Republicans are feeling faint flickers of hope. Damaging revelations about Barack Obama - and his own and his wife Michelle's ill-chosen words - have opened the way for John McCain to rerun the Republican presidential campaign …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday May 7, 2008

The Loyal Son

Like thousands before and after me, I first met William F. Buckley because of Yale. A group of us from the Yale Political Union had invited the conservative magazine editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. to come talk to us. Tyrrell generously accepted -- and asked if he could bring his friend Bill …

Written by David Frum on Thursday May 1, 2008

The Axis Of Evil: An Idiot's Guide

Mystery solved. On Sept. 6 of last year, Israeli warplanes struck a facility in the deserts of eastern Syria. The Israelis refused to explain what they had hit or why. The Syrians immediately bulldozed the site to block all further investigation. The U.S. government acknowledged the attack but …

Written by David Frum on Saturday April 26, 2008

Big News Out Of Basra

What the hell is going on in Basra? According to the major media outlets in New York and London, the answer is: a major defeat for U.S. and British policy in Iraq. This is how the well-regarded Michael Gordon of The New York Times reported the story: "Mr. Maliki overestimated his military's …

Written by David Frum on Saturday April 5, 2008

Beware Of Pandering Politicians

Across the U.S., mortgages are being foreclosed. Banks are writing off bad loans. One investment bank has already failed, with who knows how many more to come. So is it a recession yet? Oddly, the news from the overall American economy remains surprisingly better than expected. On Friday, the …

Written by David Frum on Saturday March 29, 2008

A Noble Project, Badly Managed

Five years later, the debate over the Iraq war rages as hot as when it began. We have never ceased looking over our shoulders. We have attempted to fight our way forward with our eyes fixed backward. Mired in these old arguments, it becomes impossible to see anything new. Just last week for …

Written by David Frum on Saturday March 22, 2008