THE NEW MODERATE

The Burial of Innocence: A Newtown Postscript

Rick Bayan — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:31:47 +0000

The burials have already begun, up there in Connecticut. Cheeky young football fan Jack Pinto and rambunctious, bright-eyed Noah Pozner both went to their graves under a leaden December sky, a week before Christmas Eve, that most magical of nights. They were six years old, both of them — absurdly, maddeningly young to be laid out in caskets […]

Two Nations, Indivisible

Rick Bayan — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:47:45 +0000

Maybe it is 1860 all over again. Within days after President Obama’s re-election, disgruntled red-state Republicans (and even some terminally alienated blue-state GOP diehards) were petitioning their states to secede from the Union. Granted, these latter-day rebels were scanty in number and could easily be dismissed as cranks. Secession has been a touchy issue on […]

Election Night 2012: Is It 1860 All Over Again?

Rick Bayan — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:26:47 +0000

We couldn’t have asked for a more portentious finale to a hard-fought presidential campaign. The swirling storm swept up the Atlantic seaboard, emptied its wrath on the Jersey shore, battered lower Manhattan and the southern shore of Long Island, and produced scenes of Old Testament destruction before it veered inland. Any soothsayer worth his sooth would have […]

Final Debate Recap: Obama vs. the Land Shark

Rick Bayan — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:42:51 +0000

Most reasonably objective viewers (and even a few conservative ones) scored the third and final presidential debate as a solid win for Obama. After his widely panned performance in the first debate, the president rallied to take the best-of-three series. But presidential politics isn’t as simple as a baseball playoff, as we’ll see. In that third debate, Obama never looked better: relaxed yet authoritative, appropriately serious yet animated […]

Obama Strikes Back with a Left to the Chin: The Second Debate as Political Slugfest

Rick Bayan — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 05:25:44 +0000

I miss the days when heavyweight boxing loomed large over the American cultural landscape. The great champs were men of mythic stature — Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and (most mythic of all) Muhammad Ali. Then the sport deteriorated like a jack o’ lantern two weeks after Halloween. The hulking, ear-biting Mike Tyson is the last heavyweight […]

Romney’s Smile and Obama’s Frown: Lingering Images from the First Debate

Rick Bayan — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:57:28 +0000

Hard to believe (isn’t it?) that as I write these words, less than a week has passed since the first debate between Mitt Romney and the embattled occupant of the White House. Hard to believe that less than a week ago, the Romney campaign appeared to be imploding. The Mittster’s notorious “47 percent” remark, uttered behind closed […]

Solving the Voter I.D. Controversy in 500 Words or Less

Rick Bayan — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 03:51:54 +0000

I’ll keep this one short, because we’re looking at one of the simplest issues ever to cause mass consternation across the republic. I know we don’t need to resort to fisticuffs, because the solution is so self-evident (except, apparently, to all the combatants on either side). Let’s see if you agree. It seems the individual states can decide how much […]

The Prophet Motive: Islamists on the Rampage

Rick Bayan — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:29:20 +0000

The Islamic world is ablaze, and once again the target of the Islamists’ wrath is (guess who) the United States. The protests started in Egypt and quickly spread to Libya, where popular American ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others died when a band of miltants torched the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Now the wildfires have spread to a dozen nations within […]

What We’ll Remember About All Those 2012 Democratic Convention Speeches

Rick Bayan — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:26:13 +0000

Now that the 2012 Democratic National Convention has winked into history, a dozen or so memorable moments continue to glow like embers in a late-evening fireplace. Michelle Obama electrified the faithful with her passion, eloquence and wifely devotion… she could add a good ten years to any man’s life expectancy, especially if that man has been thwacked […]

Image vs. Reality at the GOP Convention

Rick Bayan — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:29:30 +0000

Give those Republicans some due credit: they’ve been putting on the kind of show that would have done Ziegfeld proud. Saddled with a vanilla nominee in Mitt Romney, they’ve been firing up their base with a multi-megawatt display of passion and purpose. And not only their base: the Republicans have jettisoned their dowdy image as the […]