political moderation

The Reflecting Pool on the National Mall being repainted. “And truth is like a punch or two. It hits you hard; it knocks you through.” These are words from a song I like by Tired Pony called “Get on the Road.” It’s a song about traveling, physically or emotionally, toward your great love. But for me there’s always been this yearning in it not toward a romantic love but rather toward one’s life destiny. My grandmother also used a road reference to talk about life. She woul

We talk often of the dangers of poor public policy decisions or political divisiveness. But today I want to talk about another danger. And that is the danger of being “bad tired.” Bad tired is an idea I first heard decades ago on an old cassette tape while driving to high school. On it, Harry Chapin, the late great singer-songwriter, told this story. “My grandfather was painter. He died at age 88. He illustrated Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry. And he was looking at

Once the customer, the American citizen in this case, has grown accustomed to a government service, it is hard, and in many cases unfair, to take it away. And it doesn’t matter if that service provided or right granted is Social Security, Trump-era tax cuts, Affordable Care Act subsidies, or reproductive rights. No one likes having something and then having it taken away.