Numerous tributes to George H. W. Bush this week hailed his crucial role in helping to peacefully close the Cold War and turn out the lights on the USSR. It was the pivotal event of the close of the last century. As a sign of how much things have changed, I was contacted shortly after […]

I had hurled two scoreless innings in relief, and the lead was 7-2 when Mets’ skipper Gil Hodges pulled me after the eighth inning. He reasoned the Chicago Cubs might figure out a nervous rookie’s sidearm delivery and limited variety of off-speed pitches the second time through the lineup. But then he uttered five words […]

Who needs term limits?  We got them this year without a law. Term limits are supposed to ensure turnover among elected officials, breaking the power of a few bosses and bringing in new legislators attuned to the popular will.  They don’t exist at the federal level, and the Maine version needs a truth-in-labeling review. This […]

Marvin Pincus understands that times change. He sure has. He’s a lot older now, of course, and it gives him more time to consider things, like snowboarding. There he was, the other day up on Parker’s Ridge, our local ski slope, resting his arms on the antique wooden ski poles he’s used since the Hoover […]

Chances are, you’ve heard economics referred to as “the dismal science.” That unflattering description is glib and catchy; it is also 100 percent wrong. Let me set the record straight and explain why economics—far from being dismal—is cause for hope, joy, cheer, and optimism. Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century Scottish essayist, coined the phrase “the dismal […]

So endeth one of the great American lives. It wasn’t the Ragged Dick up-from-poverty American life of a Horatio Alger bootblack; George H.W. Bush was born to privilege and profited from primogeniture. It wasn’t the Mr.-Smith-Goes-to-Washington American life of a James Stewart ingenue; he was the son of a senator (and then the father of […]