Mike Matson

I have lived long enough to remember Muhammad Ali, Johnny Carson and Vietnam. Elton John, Farrah Fawcett and the arrival of major league baseball free agency. Some of those things are still with us. Some aren’t. And some have changed so completely that explaining what they once were requires the sort of historical context normally reserved for the Roman Empire. I remember the Interstate highway system being new. There was an actual thrill to riding in my grandfather’s ai

I’m disappointed. Actually, that word doesn’t cut it anymore. I’m disgusted. Not simply that Donald Trump has managed to turn the presidency into something resembling a family business with nuclear weapons. I’m disgusted that he’s getting away with it. Ezra Klein of the New York Times put it beautifully in July, if “beautifully” is the appropriate adverb for governmental rot. Republicans he talks to privately, Klein said, acknowledge we’re dealing with corruption “maj

It was 1992. He had already run for vice-president once, president twice, and was laying the groundwork for the ’96 White House run in which he’d actually win his party’s nomination. His re-election that year to the U.S. Senate from Kansas was a mere formality. Formality or not, Bob Dole always took care of Kansas. As the political reporter for WIBW-TV in Topeka, I’d be fed a news release or two a week from Dole’s machine, touting some new manna from Washington. A senio