Biography

Was a speech writer in the Reagan Administration.

Graduated from Farleigh Dickinson University

Was raised a Democrat, but became a Republican after becoming disenchanted with the anti-war movement and the student counterculture.

Wrote the terms "one thousand points of light" and "Read my lips, no new taxes".

Chief speech-writer for President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Barack Obama inherited financial collapse, deficits, and debt. He inherited a broken political culture. These things weren't his fault. But through his decisions, he made them all worse. Editorial, June 3, 2011

I love columnists. I relate to their desperation and lone-cowboyness.

Lee Atwater had a phrase for when the voters made clear they were no longer enamoured of something. "The dawgs don't like the dawgfood".

9/11 was the trauma that changed everything. We lost the national luxury of assuming nice things will happen.

[on Donald Trump] The president's primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It is not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity. He's not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determine. He's whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He's a drama queen.