Here you had John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a very principled way standing up and defending Barack Obama. You had people like Gene Robinson and a lot of other liberals, who said, and this I personally agree with, however flawed Rand Paul was as a messenger, we need a debate about this. The administration has not been forthcoming enough about its drone policy.
E. J. DionnePolitically, Donald Trump doesn't seem to care much about what he says. He gauges the effect. Sometimes, in the middle of a speech, he will change his direction if the audience doesn't like him.
E. J. DionneThe worst kind of job to have is a job with lots of responsibility and very little power.
E. J. DionneAt the heart of my argument is the view that religious faith, far from being inevitably on the side of the status quo, should on principle hold this world to higher standards.
E. J. DionneThe new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.
E. J. DionneIf you really want to change the Trump administration, you have to change the guy at the top. And that's not happening anytime soon. But, again, where I do think where you will see some movement is on this economic side, where I suspect, for example, this is a victory for China, because Trump was - I mean, Bannon was the hawk on China trade.
E. J. Dionne