Even when it is not an election year, for leisure reading on the web I find myself drawn to political columnists—writers who, in the old newspaper days, would have appeared on the Op Ed pages. The Editorial page proper served as a platform where the newspaper’s publisher and his team could express their views; the page opposite was intended to provide a more diverse sampling of viewpoints, divided between regular columnists and guests. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post continue to follow this model, which was old when I was young.
But now, in the era of the web, you have access to far more punditry than I used to find in a single newspaper. Here are a few writers that I seek out because consistently insightful and enjoyable to read.
At his best, Mr. Chait straddles the boundary between pundit and public intellectual. I’ve learned a great deal from his analyses. When not at his most intellectual, he still offers a style of snark that’s to my taste.
This mix of blog and aggregator, jointly maintained by Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent, offers a daily dose of their own commentary, plus links to commentary published elsewhere. To my mind, Mr. Sargent is more of a reporter, sympathetically developing the views of, say, Democratic party strategists, while Mr. Waldman is more of a classic columnist and opinion writer, developing his own analyses based on original thinking, trenchantly expressed. Like Mr. Chait, Mr. Waldman can achieve heights (depths?) of snark, which I enjoy. He also publishes at The Week and the American Prospect.
An advantage of the Plum Line is that on weekdays, it is reliably published at least twice a day. I like to start my morning and begin my evening leisure with it.
Mr. Tomasky, who also edits a journal, is another theoretically-informed opinion writer. I find him spottier than some of the others listed here; he writes columns that either I don’t choose to start or don’t finish, sometimes because of too much “inside ball.” But his best columns keep me checking regularly to see what he has written lately.
You have to be a liberal Democrat to enjoy Chait, Sargent, Tomasky and Waldman. For a broader selection of opinion, a couple dozen pieces a day which you can take or leave, bookmark this site. That’s how I access opinion from writers that I don’t regularly read, but who, from time to time, post something interesting. Even if I don’t recognize the name, I find the headlining / titling of the links at realclearpolitics to be generally effective at steering me toward / away from pieces I would enjoy / not. In addition to the diversity of opinion on offer, this site aggregates enough content to be worth a daily check. It’s one of the few that throws up new content on Saturdays and Sundays as well as weekdays.
Mr. Cilizza founded the Fix blog at the Washington Post. He’s the person to read after an election or any development in a campaign (a personal favorite is the Winners and Losers column he posts a few hours after each primary or debate).
Mr. Cook is the go-to writer for hard-headed realism regarding probable election outcomes. Part of his value, for me, is that Cook is a Southerner, with conservative Republican political sympathies, whereas I was raised as a New England Democrat, and am now a fairly typical West Coast liberal. Mr. Cook keeps me from being blinded about the chances of my party and my preferred candidates.
Mr. Silver and Mr. Cook are complementary, with Mr. Silver holding down the data-centric end of political commentary, and Mr. Cook the gut instinct, hard-won field experience end. I enjoy them both.
I find the founder of Stratfor, whose pieces I generally locate through realclearworld, to be insightful on international politics. He anchors the grand strategy continuum, and like Mr. Cook, offers a dose of hard-headed realism which I find a useful corrective to my own soft-hearted, Western, democratic propensities.
Ms. Collins has a great comic style. It’s not the snark of Chait or Waldman, but rather, a gentler but no less devastating exposure of absurdity, especially on the part of male politicians. Her pieces are consistently enjoyable, and occasionally inspired.
I wish I could write as well as Mr. Krugman. He provides an important antidote to the self-interested balderdash that masquerades as the conservative economic viewpoint.
As you can see, I favor the New York Times and the Washington Post as sources of commentary. I’d have added Ezra Klein to this list, when he was writing for the Washington Post; Mr. Klein has a wonderfully incisive style. But his efforts now go mostly to managing the vox.com website, and I don’t find any other writer there to be of equal caliber.
Other publications offering political commentary of interest, which I mostly visit when one of the aggregator sites steers me to a particular article, include, on the web, politico.com and the Daily Beast, and in print or on the web, the New Yorker, New York Magazine (Daily Intelligencer), the Atlantic, the New Republic, the Daily Beast, and Bloomberg News.