David Frum
David Frum
David J. Frumis a Canadian-American neoconservative political commentator. A speechwriter for President George W. Bush, Frum later became the author of the first "insider" book about the Bush presidency. He is a senior editor at The Atlantic and also a CNN contributor. He serves on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, the British think tank Policy Exchange, the anti-drug policy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, and as vice chairman and an associate fellow of the R Street...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
CountryUnited States of America
An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein - and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans.
I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.
The Great Society went wrong for three major reasons. First, the self-organization the Johnson administration promoted turned out to be not the pooling of family and community resources into shops and businesses, but political pressure for government handouts. Second, the Great Society failed to anticipate the perverse side-effects of handing money out to people who have done nothing to earn it. Third, while the Great Society was showering money on the poor, the Supreme Court was with childlike glee smashing to bits traditional methods of maintaining law and order.
If right and left are competing to be the biggest victim, who is competing to be the government?
I knew first-hand why, for all her virtues as a human being, she would be inadequate both ideologically and in terms of qualifications for this job.
It's reaching out. But the Supreme Court is exactly the place where the president should draw the line.
What the generation, the Americans who came of age in the 30s and 40s believe they lived, felt, I mean had reason to feel they lived in a world that was very much beyond their control and in which terrible things were capable of happening to you beyond your control. The depression being the obvious example.
There is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or -- and more importantly -- that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left.
We have every reason to fear that the president's support among conservatives will decline. I don't think it will drop radically, but I think all the indicators are ... that conservatives are really unhappy about this. And if his numbers among conservatives go down, his overall ratings will drop. He's already at a dangerously low level.
Conservatives have worked too hard for too long to settle for anything less than our very best on the Supreme Court.
The Bush administration since 9/11 has been again and again fighting to escape gravity, fighting to escape the weight of the way things have always been done. Things are now coming to a decision point, and we'll know soon.
Compared to, say, a prime minister of England, a president has actually astonishingly few legal powers. A prime minister of England can take England to war all by himself. He doesn't have to have a vote in Parliament, nothing. The President of the United States has to get a Declaration of War.
The talking point was 'Let's wait for the hearings because we don't know anything,' ... Well, I knew something. It was my responsibility. This was not fun. I take no pleasure in this. The long-term consequences for me are probably not going to be favorable.
Reagan is a symbol who calls the party to be something broader. The Republican Party is in many ways a very disunited party. In a way, by making Reagan a greater figure, you can create a greater unity.