Leaving aside the missing element of grace and the improbability of his ever stopping to think, Donald Trump is the waterbeetle of politics. His feral cunning in manipulating the masses and the media is, like the waterbeetle’s facility, instinctive. The 72 days of transition demonstrated a stylistic seamlessness with his 511 days of campaigning, which indicates that the 1,461 …

  After the Brexit vote, Christmas was always going to be the British consumer’s last hurrah. Official data today makes it look like the party never even got started. The volume of goods sold in December fell 1.9 percent from November, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday, the biggest drop since April 2012. This bad news is at …

  Posterity will pass fuller and fairer judgment on the presidency of Barack Obama than is possible today, but on one issue the verdict is already clear: personal integrity. In an especially hostile political environment, Obama was civil and decent, and he served with honor and dignity. Partisanship should not prevent Republicans from acknowledging these truths. Like his predecessor, George …