Closely allied to the assumption that Democrats can't win because they're too secular is the view that they can't win if they're too liberal. This assumption has steered Hillary Clinton toward the center, following her husband. I tend to share this view myself.

To count as transformative, a president needs to synthesize the moment and mood of the country.

Where Reagan channeled disenchantment with overweening government, Obama symbolized America's transformation into a multiracial country.

The conservative position that all spending is evil obliterates any distinction between investment and consumption, between the long-term and the short-term.

Raised in a house filled with old books, I'm drawn to them: the dust jackets that call out a historical moment, the marbled boards, the words pressed into the page with movable type.

Unlike the Japanese internment, water-boarding was ordered and served up in secret. But it, too, was America's policy, not just Dick Cheney's. Congress was informed about what was happening and raised no objection. The public knew, too.

By 2003, if you didn't understand that the United States was inflicting torture on those deemed enemy combatants, you weren't paying much attention.

The leader who loves books that tell him he is great and right may be worse than the leader who does not love books at all.

It's tempting to dismiss the debate about the National Security Agency spying on Americans as a technical conflict about procedural rights.

I don't think Kanye West can support his view that George W. Bush just doesn't care about black people. But it's a demonstrable matter of fact that Bush doesn't care much about black votes. And that, in the end, may amount to the same thing.

Northeastern conservatism is moderate, accepts the modern welfare state, and dislikes mixing religion with politics. Western conservatism is hawkish, hates government, and embraces individual freedom. Southern conservatism is populist, draws on evangelical Christianity, and plays upon racial resentments.

Southern conservatives care about government's moral stance but don't mind when it spends freely on behalf of their constituents. Western conservatives, by contrast, are soft-libertarians who want government out of people's way on principle.

Southern Republicans are guided by the Bible. Western Republicans read the Constitution. Seen in historical terms, it's the difference between a movement descended from George Wallace and one that harks back to Barry Goldwater.

Many reporters have gone to Tea Party rallies looking for expressions of bigotry. What they have tended to find instead is a constitutional fundamentalism that argues that Washington has no right to tell individuals or states what to do.

Sexual signals can be received without being consciously sent.

Running a magazine is a journalistic assignment, and part of the fun of being a journalist is that you get to change jobs every so often. Though there's no stated term limit, four or five years should be plenty of time to put your stamp on a publication.

I think 'Slate''s editorial staff understands the intersection of journalism and technology better than any other.

Being editor of 'Slate' is the best job I've ever had because of the freedom and support given to me by Don Graham and the Post Co. and because of the opportunity to work with colleagues I admire and adore.

Members of Congress are less beasts of accumulating burden than computational machines designed to win re-election. Their sense of their own political interests is acute.

Essential to the self-image of conservatives is the notion that they are enemies of an established orthodoxy, insurgents against the dogmatic political correctness that predominates on the Left.

The party where humorless thought police work to enforce a rigid ideological discipline isn't made up of Democrats. It comprises Republicans.

Conservative journalists don't just have the inside track on Republican strategy - they help devise it.

Whether couched in terms of envy, admiration, or derision, celebrity fascination begins as an exercise in imagining what it would be like to lead a more carefree and pleasurable life.

Seeing the rich and famous screw up makes us feel superior, or at least not quite so inferior.

We're quick to describe politicians whose views we find extreme or whose behavior seems odd as 'crazy,' and perhaps anyone who runs for president in some sense is. But I've long wondered whether Newt Gingrich merits that designation in a more clinical sense.

Without medical records that he hasn't released, we can't know whether Gingrich may have inherited his mother's manic depression. Nevertheless, one observes in the former House Speaker certain symptoms - bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, racing thoughts, spending sprees - that go beyond the ordinary politician's normal narcissism.

Though there are some debatable exceptions, sanctions rarely play a significant role in dislodging or constraining the behavior of despicable regimes.

People who live in hermit states like North Korea, Burma, and Cuba already suffer from global isolation. Fed on a diet of propaganda, they don't know what's happening inside their borders or outside of them. By increasing their seclusion, sanctions make it easier for dictators to blame external enemies for a country's suffering.

To describe Peter Thiel as simply a libertarian wildly understates the case. His belief system is based on unapologetic selfishness and economic Darwinism.

Most people prefer living in a healthier town.

Paternalism is the method of government activism most amenable to an impoverished public sector.

Both Left and Right take pleasure in mildly persecuting those who fail to meet their civic ideals.

Political analysts tend to overinterpret the results of isolated elections.

Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue.

Joe Lieberman can be cloying and sanctimonious.

Middle-class Americans really don't want to hear about sacrifices or trade-offs - except as flattering descriptions about how ready we, as a people, are, or used to be, to accept them.

To describe the world Michael Jackson has created around himself as a childhood fantasy isn't quite accurate. Thanks to wealth and celebrity, he has been able to live as a superannuated child. With the help of plastic surgery and dramatic affectation, he has made himself look and sound pre-pubescent.

Republicans with any moral sense are desperate for a supportable alternative to Donald Trump.

Like academic Marxists, who are their sisters under the skin, libertarians are far more interested in an ideal world than in the one where ordinary humans live.

Professional politicians often claim they are not professional politicians. Trump genuinely isn't one.

If Obama succeeds in turning health insurance and funding for college into universal entitlements, he will have expanded Washington's obligations on the scale of an LBJ or an FDR.

The cradle-to-grave welfare state diminishes individual initiative and can breed a pervasive sclerosis.

Americans are defined by a history of immigration in pursuit of freedom and opportunity. We are more individualistic, enterprising, and protective of liberties that most Europeans do not expect, such as owning guns, working 70-hour weeks, or appreciating nature as it goes by at 60 mph on a snowmobile.

Founded in rebellion against colonial tyranny, our country is naturally suspicious of government intrusion, interference, and snooping. European systems, by comparison, grow out of a tradition of the state providing social benefits for workers that stretches back to Bismarck and Germany in the 1880s.

Abandoning traditions of responsibility and civility won the GOP control of both houses of Congress in 1994. Rejecting any compromise brought Republicans the perks and power of majority control for the first time in 40 years. Thus did the politics of total resistance become their path of least resistance.

Online, you can't be scooped. If you are scooped, it's no one's fault but your own.

The most important newspapers in this country need to exist. Our democracy needs them. Life as we know it would be unthinkable without them.

If there's one epithet the Right never tires of, it's 'elitism.'

The tone of good web writing grows out of email. It's more direct, personal, colloquial, urgent, witty, efficient. It doesn't waste your time. It reflects that engagement, responsiveness, and haste of web surfers, as opposed to the more general passivity of print readers.

In practice, conservatives are no less inclined than liberals to adopt superior stances or to tell people how to live their lives.