In 1998, at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Secret Service Director Lewis Merletti was driving to work when a radio report stopped him cold. President Bill Clinton had been accused of having a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. When Merletti arrived at his office, his deputy informed him that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr wanted to question...

By all appearances, we are becoming less the land of the brave than the land of resentment. Every day is Groundhog Day: same arguments, same anger, same search for a way out. Disagreement becomes resentment, resentment turns to anger, then contempt and sometimes hate. I’ve had plenty of disagreements with friends, colleagues, readers, and people whose politics are nothing like...

On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks in New York, at the Pentagon, and aboard Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. More than 400 first responders died that day, many while trying to save others. Today, we remember the lives lost, the courage of those who ran toward danger, and the families who have carried that loss...

One of my favorite movies is Mister Roberts, the 1955 comedy-drama set aboard the USS Reluctant in the Pacific during World War II. Henry Fonda plays Lieutenant Doug Roberts, the ship’s executive officer, serving under James Cagney’s Captain Morton, a petty authoritarian who makes life miserable for his crew. When Morton denies the exhausted sailors shore leave, Roberts intervenes. He...

In 1984, Wendy’s ran a television commercial featuring the redoubtable Clara Peller, staring at an enormous hamburger bun. Inside was a burger patty smaller than the bun’s sesame-seed budget. She looked at it for a moment and asked, “Where’s the beef?” More than forty years later, it may be time to ask a similar question about the people we elect...

Freedom of speech in America is under attack, not only when people are denied the right to speak, but when lies, intimidation and the deliberate distortion of facts make the truth harder to hear. This is nothing new for America. In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy exploited the nation’s fear of communism, making sweeping accusations against government employees, journalists...

The political and cultural landscape has become a minefield of conflicting beliefs, many now rooted less in public policy than in personal identity. One of James Madison’s central concerns in drafting the Constitution was the danger posed by “factions”—political, economic or ideological groups so driven by shared passions that they might place their own power above the rights of others...

A few nights ago, I was watching The Way We Were, a film I’ve seen more times than I can count. This time, a single line stopped me. Katie Morosky, played by Barbra Streisand, has just returned from a political demonstration in Washington. She and Hubbell are arguing when she says: “People are their principles.” It’s a simple sentence. But...

“Politics had infiltrated every corner of government—a strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White House.” —Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men I recently reread All the President’s Men and was taken back to a time I believed America would never experience again. NEVER. More than half a century after Watergate, the country is AGAIN confronting...

“Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”—George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796 “Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption…. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls.”—Donald Trump, Election...