One symptom of the coronavirus outbreak—at least for me—has been nasty flashbacks to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. At the time I was a policy adviser to President George W. Bush, visiting New York City for meetings. The day after the storm hit, I recall talking to a colleague at[Read More…]
Author: Michael Gerson
Public health officials can beat COVID-19 – if the WH lets them
WASHINGTON — America is entering a disturbing new stage in the coronavirus outbreak. There has been community-spread in at least one and likely two locations in Washington state. And it appears the virus was being transmitted for several weeks before current cases were recognized. So we can expect dozens or[Read More…]
MLK’s passion for justice was not synonymous with defeating an enemy
Usually our civic holidays inspire us. But sometimes—as in the case of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2020—the spirit of a holiday is so at odds with our current practice that it judges and indicts us. That spirit is impossible to summarize in one King quote from a lifetime of[Read More…]
Mueller has no savior
WASHINGTON — I was at the dentist getting a tooth drilled at the start of Robert Mueller’s comparable experience on Capitol Hill. I am the kind of person who cringes intensely while watching anyone fail in a public and humiliating fashion. So it was just as well that I missed[Read More…]
Celebrating victories but not character
The celebration of American independence is supposed to be a unifying national ritual. But we are a country with profound differences over the meaning of nationhood itself. People in more typical countries —such as Belgium, Japan or Russia—are attached primarily to a unique piece of earth, a unique language, a[Read More…]
Endless self-regard on world stage
I worked for a leader who was sometimes accused of lacking in the smarts department. But no one I know who spent time with President George W. Bush was left with that impression. Bush took an almost gleeful satisfaction in picking holes in arguments, as any half-prepared briefer quickly learned.[Read More…]
Helping hope return
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report that is the closest thing we have to the quantification of despair. Between 1999 and 2017, suicide rates in America rose to their highest level since World War II. The increase can be found among women and men,[Read More…]