Columns ‹ Opinion
Michael Medved
Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and bestselling author. His daily three hour show reaches 200 stations across the country and an audience of 4.7 million placing him, for ten years in a row, on the Talkers Magazine list of the top ten political talks shows in the United States. Michael’s columns on politics and media appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast and USA Today, where he is a member of the Board of Contributors.
Writer's Website
Turning Critics into Admirers
The outpouring of admiration for the late President George Herbert Walker Bush largely ignores his troubled history with the press; like all Republican presidents of the last 50 years, Bush endured carping, contemptuous treatment. One highly critical reporter, Ann Devroy of the Washington Post, was surprised to receive a handwritten letter after her cancer...
Read More
An Occasion that Was Powerfully, Unashamedly Christian
The National Cathedral funeral service for the late President George Herbert Walker Bush was as noble and remarkable as the good man it honored. Every speaker offered words of wisdom and insight to inspire Americans for generations to come. Former Senator Alan Simpson honored the late president’s love of laughter and noted that “Humor is the universal...
Read More
Overcoming False Charges of Racism
In the last Senate contest of this election cycle, Democrats tried—but failed—to destroy an incumbent Republican with unfair charges of racism.
In the runoff campaign of the Mississippi special election, they focused almost exclusively on one foolish, insensitive comment by Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who expressed her admiration for a local leader by saying...
Read More
Voters Prefer Divided Government
Looking back on the midterm elections, we should acknowledge a clear message from the electorate: voters asked Washington to “get back to normal” by restoring the divided government Americans have preferred for 50 years.
Since Nixon’s first term in 1968, Americans have chosen to limit most presidents’ power; they’ve placed the...
Read More
Does Hostility to Israel Reflect Anti-Semitism?
In the recent midterms, Democrats elected several new House members who express outspoken hostility to Israel, raising old questions about connections between antagonism to the Jewish state and hatred of the Jewish people—anti-Semitism.
Criticism of Israeli policies isn’t automatically anti-Semitic; Israel’s vibrant democracy enables loyal...
Read More
A Chance to Win by Fixing Disasters
Two recent disasters give President Trump a chance to shape bipartisan solutions to Make America Great Again.
First, disputed elections in Florida, Georgia and elsewhere exposed grievous shortcomings in the way we cast and count our votes; in an age of dazzling technology, the current confusion is inexcusable. The President could convene a national commission to...
Read More
Weak Ticket-Toppers Killed Down-Ballot Republicans
In the midterms, Democrats captured nearly 40 seats previously held by Republicans, but those losses weren’t spread evenly across the country. The GOP suffered concentrated blows in four states: California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania each flipped four seats to the Dems, and Virginia delivered three. These results reflected the flawed, flailing candidates...
Read More
The Demographic Division that Matters Most
The demographic division that counts most in presidential elections has nothing to do with race, gender or income: it involves state boundaries that determine votes in the Electoral College.
By that standard, warning signs from the midterm elections should alarm Republicans looking ahead to 2020. Three states crucial to Trump’s victory in 2016 shifted...
Read More
Hurting the Press, the President and the Country
Jim Acosta, the aggressively arrogant reporter for CNN, posed a recent question illustrating the biggest problem with the press.
The day after midterm elections, Acosta grilled the president by saying: “I want to challenge you on one of the statements that you made… that this caravan was an ‘invasion’ … As you know, Mr. President,...
Read More
Something for Both Sides to Celebrate
The mid-term elections provided a rare occasion for conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, to look at the same events and feel a shared sense of satisfaction and encouragement.
Republicans feel good about expanding their Senate majority and holding key governorships in Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere. Democrats take pride in capturing the House and...
Read More
Placing Race and Gender Over Ideals and Achievements
In the mid-term elections, Democrats won control of the House of Representatives while focusing more on the ethnicity or gender of the new legislators than on their ideas or agendas.
The media prattle endlessly over the election of the first two Muslim women in Congress, or the first two Native American Women, one of whom is a Mixed Martial Arts fighter...
Read More
GUEST BLOG BY RABBI HANOCH TELLER: An Echo to Pittsburgh
Every history-aware Jew hearing of the horrific massacre at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 made an instant mental connection to the Holocaust. Especially now, as Jews around the world plan the November 9-10th 80th anniversary commemoration of its terrifying prelude—Kristallnacht. While the differences in scope between the Pittsburgh...
Read More
Stress Blessing, Not Blame
It’s a shame that politicians on both sides tried to blame their opponents for the horrific synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Liberals attempted to tie the gruesome killing to the president’s harsh language; some Republicans shot back by trying to blame media for the brutal attack.
In perspective, this incident should have provoked gratitude instead...
Read More
“The Kingdom of Kindness”
I first learned about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting hours after it happened, when I walked to my own synagogue’s Shabbat services near Seattle. Like other Sabbath observers, I was isolated from the news until I saw a good Christian friend who had showed up at our place of worship, standing vigilantly at the back of the sanctuary.
As it turned out, our...
Read More
Vote for Collaboration Over Confrontation
Americans of every perspective say they’re disgusted by the polarization, pettiness and unbridled anger that have come to characterize our politics.
The great majority of us say we want more cooperation and civility, but there’s only one way to vote for those qualities on Tuesday. If the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives,...
Read More
A Land of Miracles
My kid brother Harry recently unearthed an old photograph showing me as a baby, held proudly by my great-grandfather, Samuel Idstein. He was close to 90 at the time, having left Germany with his family just before World War II. Neither he nor his six children ever attended college but all of his grandchildren did, becoming educators, research scientists, doctors...
Read More