Richard Cohen

Harvey Weinstein does not personify American liberalism any more than Bill O'Reilly personifies American conservatism.

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

We grow up to respect the gray. Black or white, one or the other, is childish. It represents the worldview of someone who does not know the world.

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

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

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.

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 heroes are not necessarily people of great ability but ones who did what I think I could not.

It's all right with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States - if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth.

Polanski is a great film director - although the much-acclaimed 'Chinatown' has a muddled script - but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.

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

We are a segmented society, living in our individual bubbles.

How is it possible to defame Trump? When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a 'moron,' was that defamatory or merely the prosaic truth?

Churchill had a marvelous way with words, and greatness accompanied him like a shadow, but in certain ways, he was a 19th-century man wandering, confounded, in the 20th.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, he cares. He cares about things I don't, and he has some awful ideas, and he is an amoral man in so many ways. But, in contrast to Obama, his emotions are no mystery.

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

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.

Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.

Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.

Hillary Clinton may have lied about her emails, but Donald Trump lies about everything.