In Praise of Sumida, Not Allison

There’s Good History, and Not-So-Good History, Newsday, August 11, 2017. "It turns out that predicting the future by leaning on a famous phrase isn’t enough to make a history good. Indeed, it may be enough to make it bad. I’d recommend you read Sumida and avoid Allison. But read what you like. Just remember: if it makes history seem simple, it’s probably not good."

The Best Strategy Is Always To Be Very Strong

Three Questions Worth Asking For 2015, Newsday, December 24, 2014, "Coping with the unpredictable future isn't easy. Consequences seem obvious -- once they've happened. But Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian master famous for saying that war is the continuation of politics by other means, has good advice for dealing with unpredictability: "The best strategy is always to be very strong." If you can't predict, you can at least be prepared. And right now, I doubt that Havana, or anyone else, is worried about U.S. strength."

Journalism Schools and All That

Pretending to Teach a Trade: From the Progressive Era to Today, Contentions, February 10, 2011. "Journalism schools are useless, argues Michael Lewis, but they prosper because they appeal to our worship of professionalism. That’s a nut graph — a nutshell paragraph — one bit of journalism jargon that Michael Lewis doesn’t grasp in his wildly entertaining piece on the Columbia School of Journalism."

Reagan's Writings

Reagan As Draftsman, Contentions, February 4, 2011. "Perhaps it’s not in keeping with Reagan’s legacy to lose hope. But I can’t help wondering if Reagan will be our last president who had the ability – even if none of them can be expected to have the time – to write his own speeches. If so, we will have lost something important. A president who cannot write clearly cannot be expected to think clearly either."