David Bell – Explaining the Divisions
Over the past week, very little has changed in the presidential race. The polls in the seven key battleground states remain agonizingly close, and the election’s political dynamics seem, for […]
The Barnier Budget
The circus is over, France has a government, and the government has presented its budget. It is a budget of harsh austerity, which seeks to cut expenditure by 80 billion […]
Kamala Loses Momentum
Has Kamala Harris’s campaign stalled? It is now less than a month before the election, and the energy and excitement that built up around the Democratic candidate after her assumption […]
David Bell – The State of the Campaign
Since my last column, remarkably little has changed in the presidential campaign. Observers mostly agreed that Kamala Harris decisively beat Donald Trump in their September 10 debate (Trump, of course, […]
FULL FORUM: The Meddlers, by Jamie Martin
** In August, we published four reviews of Jamie Martin’s The Meddlers, as well as a response by the author. The entire forum is now available as a PDF. […]
Harris’s Triumph, Trump’s Debacle
By any reasonable measure it was a massacre. Overall, Kamala Harris performed brilliantly, under enormous pressure. She spoke lucidly, fluidly, convincingly, eloquently. She did not let Donald Trump fluster her. […]
Outsiders in an Age of Turmoil: Eilenberger on Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil
Review: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside (translator), The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times (Penguin Press) The years from 1933 to 1943 constitute among […]
The Self-Diminished French Left
The French left is now doomed to opposition for the foreseeable future. This is perhaps not the worst place to be, given the fractious nature of the new minority-majority, which […]
David Bell – Back at the Starting Line
So where do things stand? After some of the most dramatic events in recent American history—the Biden-Trump debate, the assassination attempt, Biden’s exit from the race, and Kamala Harris’s […]
Barnum and Bailey, er, Make that Barnier and Bailey
Yes, indeed, the process of nominating a prime minister in France has been a rollicking circus worthy of Barnum and Bailey, and the nomination this morning of Michel Barnier therefore […]