Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He's got his eye on 2020.

To anyone other than an adamant social conservative, Pence is shockingly unreasonable. But he is also shockingly hypocritical.

There is only so much chaos a nation can stand.

Trump critics such as myself have been accused of living in a bubble. On the contrary, it is Trump's supporters in the 1 percent who breathed their own fumes.

We need a national service that throws us all together, the urban with the rural, the Fox News types with the MSNBC crowd. That way, Americans can get to know Americans and learn - as previous generations did - that we are all Americans.

Let me tell you, seven days without Wolf Blitzer is heaven. A week outside 'The Situation Room' is downright calming. No 'breaking news!' No hype. Blitzer is a first-class journalist, and I mention him only by way of acknowledging his fame.

Evil comes in through the cable and through the Internet. We look forward to the advent of driverless cars. But they can be hacked. You could be riding along, and some 14-year-old in Romania takes over your car, so you end up running the lights and losing your brakes or, worse, listening to Eminem. What's the purpose?

There was a time when an ordinary American could close the door and keep the world at bay. Now the world comes elbowing in every time you go online.

Fox News has been a force in converting the party of Lincoln into the party of Trump. The network's allegiance to Trump approaches mindless adoration.

George W. Bush, a charming and utterly gracious man, was a catastrophic twofer. He took the United States to war in Iraq, a wrenching debacle: more than 4,000 Americans dead, nearly 32,000 wounded, and the Middle East destabilized with Iranian influence enhanced.

When I was a kid, I went door to door in my neighborhood asking for donations to the Jewish National Fund, best known then for its Israel forestation program. At the age of 11 or so, I imagined myself a regular Johnny Appleseed, responsible for vast forests.

As we see with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, interreligious fights are the most ugly.

In order to take a nation to war, you have to believe mightily in the threat you are facing and the virtue of your cause.

If you told me back in my Army days that I could have bought the same weapon that I had been using in training, I would not have believed it.

The NRA has led the way in the mainstreaming of a demented gun ideology.

What's the justification for a semiautomatic weapon with a magazine of 30 rounds?

Leaving aside handguns and hunting weapons, what's the justification for possessing an AR-15-style weapon?

With a sinking feeling, I have come to a horrible conclusion: I am addicted to Donald Trump.

It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.

What if Hillary Clinton were a man? What if she were a 68-year-old man rather than a 68-year-old woman? Would we think differently of her?

I met Clinton during her husband's first campaign for the White House. It was 1992, New Hampshire, and both Clintons had stopped at a coffee shop to greet the folks and get something to eat.

Trump's juvenilia stands in stark contrast to Obama's measured words.

I don't know if history will adjudge Barack Obama a great president, but he has been a necessary one.

Something about the Clintons sets the GOP to howling at the moon.

Travelgate eventually faded, and the nation somehow survived - American exceptionalism at work again.

Most men, I think, wonder about their courage. How would they act in combat? Under torture?

As a presidential candidate, Trump seems heaven-sent just to make fools out of Republicans.

Being an American is life-threatening. For various reasons, men and women here don't live as long as men and women in about two dozen other countries, including the ones we defeated in World War II - Japan, Germany and Italy.

Republicans and others who are in anguish over the possibility of socialized medicine ought to have to explain their ideology to a mother with a sick newborn. They ought to have to explain how this nation can debate health care and not mention how abysmal ours is.

Lots of men have failed as presidents, as Trump surely will, but few fail so dismally as role models. He's a boy's idea of a man. He's a man's idea of a boy.

There is precious little that's charitable about the world of charity.

I value my education, but I cannot put a value on it. I know it has been worth some money to me - I don't think 'The Post' would have hired me if I had lacked a degree - but I probably could have earned about the same if I had stayed in the insurance business, where I worked while going to college at night.

I came of age when jobs were plentiful and college not exorbitantly expensive. I graduated with debt, but it was manageable, and I set off to do something I loved - journalism.

I never went to college to make money.

Hillary Clinton looms over the Democratic Party like Evita from her balcony.

The term 'disrupter' has become an accolade, like first-responder or something.

The more Scott Walker campaigns, the more he proves he is not intellectually fit for the office he's seeking. He asserts innocent ignorance on matters he should by now know something about - a way of masking his apparent bigotry.

Israel may be beloved, but for American security, it is not essential.

In power politics, it's usually not enough to be liked. A nation has to be considered essential.

The fact is that the United States does not need Israel. Our special relationship was not forged, as it was with Great Britain, in two world wars, not to mention a common language and, in significant respects, culture. It is based on warmth, emotion, shared values - and, not to be dismissed, a potent domestic lobby.

The ability and willingness to keep two opposing views in mind at the same time are hallmarks of adulthood.

I have come to the conclusion that Ben Carson is a bit nuts. I say that not because I disagree with him politically, but because he doesn't seem to know what the truth is.

My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the 'elite.' If so, I damned well earned it.

Among the things I know is that Trump voters were played for suckers.

I have written about cultural dislocation, and I understand the corrosive effect of diminished expectations.

I am glad to see the Confederate battle flag gone from a place of honor at the South Carolina state capitol.

Large government is inevitably inefficient, but so, too, is large private enterprise.

Much worse than the unavoidable inefficiencies of large government is the failure to fund the government we need.