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...

I’ve written about Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff before, but after watching his questioning of Jay Clayton, President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence (DNI), I think he deserves another look—particularly in comparison with Atticus Finch, the central character in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The comparison is not exact, nor should it be. Atticus is a fictional Alabama...

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things—not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” When John F. Kennedy stood at Rice University in 1962 and said those words, he was not merely talking about rockets, astronauts, or beating the Soviets into space. He was speaking to something larger in the American...

Much has been written about George Washington, our first American president: his command of the Continental Army, his leadership in the fragile birth of a new nation, and his presidency. But less attention has been paid to Washington the person, the private Washington, whose conduct set a standard that may be even more urgently needed today. At a time when...

Conclusion: The Words That Made Us and Still Must.  In December of 1776, the Revolution was not moving toward triumph. It was close to collapse. Washington’s army was exhausted. Enlistments were running out. Men who had already given much were being asked to give more. Then Thomas Paine’s words were read aloud… …  “These are the times that try men’s...

For the most part, my high school history classes consisted of names, dates, documents, and battles. What I’ve learned since then — through historians like Doris Kearns-Goodwin, David McCullough, Ken Burns, and others — is that history comes alive when we discover the human stories behind the events. One of those stories belongs to John Hart of New Jersey, a...

During a contentious staff meeting at 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley spoke out sharply, criticizing the judgment and decision-making of CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss and newly appointed executive producer Nick Bilton — the meeting I wrote about yesterday in “The Clock Is Still Ticking… ” After that meeting, in a letter addressed to Pelley, obtained by NBC News,...

What does leadership require when decisions send others into harm’s way, and uncertainty is shared not just by those in command, but by the nation itself? General Dwight D. Eisenhower once observed that “the supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity.” Not confidence. Not control. Integrity. And it is precisely that quality that is tested when clarity is hardest to...

Since my dinner with Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, I’ve been reading more about James Madison, who’s often called the father of the Constitution. What struck me is this: despite the distance of time, he isn’t speaking about us. He’s speaking to us. Madison did not fear a foreign army nearly as much as he feared us. That is not an...

There are moments in history when power reveals its true character. During World War II, no American general was more central to victory than George C. Marshall. As Army Chief of Staff, Marshall oversaw the most rapid military expansion in U.S. history, transforming a modest peacetime force into an army of more than eight million. He selected commanders, managed logistics...