Ronald Reagan was a dim hack who did horrible damage to almost everything he touched.
Charlie PierceThe Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank's marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.
Charlie PierceEvery president learns on the job because nobody`s really prepared for the kind of decisions that cross your desk every day. No one`s prepared for that. No vice president who has scended to the presidency has ever truly been ready for that. Certainly, no vice president who`s assumed the presidency in extremis, like Harry Truman, has been ready for that. But this Trump guy doesn`t seem to be ready for a career in government.
Charlie PierceThe institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing large spectacles of mass entertainment. The fundamental absurdity of that notion requires the promulgation of the various deceits necessary to carry it out.
Charlie PierceIf religion comes into the public square, it is as vulnerable as any other human institution to be pelted with produce. Ignorance does not become wisdom just because you gussy it up with the Gospels.
Charlie PierceThere is a reason why conservatives talk about 'government' and not 'self-government,' because to refer to the latter is to concede that 'the government' is really the most basic product of our political commonwealth, that it is what we produce among ourselves so as to order the production of everything else that we do together.
Charlie Pierce