Quotes from David Frum

Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained.

I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words.

Donald Trump's big goal is to become the richest man in the world, abusing the powers of the presidency.

And that is how we intend to destroy the enemy!" The superior shakes his head wearily. "Young man, the Soviets are our adversary. The Navy is the enemy.

We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry.

Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon.

So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I've found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best.

My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?

To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.

I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.

Trump does not picture his role as being a leader; he sees his role as going on national television and criticizing the leadership of others.

The first decade of the twenty-first century was a crazy bookend to the twentieth, opening with a second Pearl Harbor and ending with a second Great Crash, with a second Vietnam wedged in between. Now we seem caught in the coils of a second Great Depression.

Anyone who can be cool about his first visit to the Oval Office has lost so much body heat that rigor mortis is probably about to set in.

Across the Atlantic, there beckons a third ideal, bigger than either: "Europe." For reasons of history, geography, and culture, no plausible supranationalism exists on this side of the ocean. If Americans do not identify as Americans, they will identify more narrowly and acrimoniously, not more universally and humanely.

The ceiling in the mess was very low, not even eight feet. You can feel the weight of the West Wing above your head, and with the the weight of American memory.

As American conservatives have felt the ebb of cultural power away from them, they have come to feel watched and judged. They do not like it. "How does it feel to be a problem?" memorably asked W. E. B. Du Bois.

I don't take responsibility at all." Those words of Donald Trump at a March 13, 2020, press conference are likely to be history's epitaph on his presidency.

The disease will strike harder in the Blue-voting cities than the Red-voting empty spaces, and many in the Blue zone may blame the Red for the miseries ahead. In the next political chapter, there will be little patience for those earnest anthropological expeditions into MAGA-land that once engaged so much media energy. How do you listen to people if you blame their votes for killing your mother before her time?

Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington.

People need to understand that in Washington, the process is the punishment.

A generation ago, or two, when there were three channels, plus PBS, and when you needed - when you needed 15 million people to make a living, the media could focus on the broad country. And most people had no choice about getting political information. It was there at 6:30 whether you wanted it or not.