The Spectator (U.K.)

In January, I met a friend of mine to discuss his impending departure from Washington DC. He was moving to Chicago to join Senator Barack Obama’s budding presidential campaign. At the time, it was hard not to have an instinctive sympathy for Obama, not least because the Clinton campaign had by that point attracted many of the most loathsome careerists in Democratic politics. Among other things, we discussed the general election landscape. My friend, confident even then that Obama would win the Democratic nomination, was convinced that… more

In late May, New York magazine noted a highly unusual advertisement that appeared on Craigslist. A young Brooklyn couple had decided to sell virtually everything they owned, from electronics to furniture to designer shoes, for $8,500. As it turns out, the couple was planning on taking their two young children and setting out for the open road. Two weeks earlier, the New York Times profiled several other couples who had made a similar choice -- to surrender their accumulated possessions… more

Britain’s Conservatives might be plotting a triumphant return to power but America’s Republicans are in a state of utter collapse. And it’s not just because the tide is turning after two terms of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, the Cameron Conservatives have adapted to a more culturally liberal, urban, diverse society. They have reconciled themselves to the welfare state in a way that Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher never did. Republicans, in contrast, are labouring under the… more

Soon after the installation by the Republican-majority Supreme Court of George the Second of the House of Bush, the American people learned that they had a new Founding Father: Winston Churchill. President George W. Bush let it be known that he had placed a bust of the British statesman in the White House Oval Office he had inherited from his dad. After the attack on the World Trade Center, the President's speeches became self-consciously Churchillian. Earlier this year, marking the… more