Entries

Back To The 1880s

There is no new conservative era; the good news is things are bad for Democrats, too "Their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together. Which had the whiskers, which had the burnsides: which was which?"-- Thomas Wolfe George W. Bush wants to reinvigorate …

Written by David Frum on Monday December 4, 2000

History As It Wasn't

What if Napoleon Had Won at Waterloo? What if Cleopatra Had Had an Ugly Nose? Virtual History. Alternatives and Counterfactuals edited by Niall Ferguson; Basic, 560 pp., $30 What If? The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been edited by Robert Cowley; Putnam, …

Written by David Frum on Monday November 27, 2000

Electoral College A Scapegoat For Nation Divided

It's often said that the Electoral College survives only because it is so hard to get rid of, like woodpeckers or the post-40 bulge. With Al Gore the apparent winner of the popular vote and the apparent loser of the electoral vote, though, many Democrats are getting serious at last about eliminatin…

Written by David Frum on Thursday November 23, 2000

Ultimately, Right Will Be The Winner

In the end, George W. Bush will prevail. He will prevail not because of any outbreak of statesmanship on the part of Al Gore or the Democratic Party -- on the contrary, it is alarming how few Democrats have been willing to say for the record that the Florida result should be respected even if it …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday November 15, 2000

Myth Of The Happy Single

Watch daytime television long enough, and you are sure to hear the following statistic: Married women, it will be said, are twice (or four times) as likely to be depressed as their unmarried sisters. The implication of the statistic is clear: Marriage is bad for women's mental health. …

Written by David Frum on Sunday October 8, 2000

Chants For Peace Brought Us Closer To War

On Wednesday, three women loaded their belongings into a van and rolled away from their encampment near Newbury, England, a town about 50 miles due west of London. To the uninstructed eye, there was nothing very remarkable about them. But in their day, they had been very remarkable. These were …

Written by David Frum on Sunday September 10, 2000

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