Bromwich does what the magisterial columnists of old like James Reston and Walter Lippman used to do: pull the threads of news and impression and gossip and deep reading into a “mood of Washington” and some sense of where we’re going. Sitting in New Haven, Bromwich comes at it with the training primarily of the literary man, a biographer of the critic William Hazlitt and prolific interpreter of Rousseau, Burke, Lincoln and Mill. He adopted the old liberal prejudices when they were uncontested — in favor of peace, against torture; for civil liberties without cavil; for the republican virtues and constitutional standards. Bromwich’s finished work has an often chilling clarity and eloquence I find nowhere else these days.

This interview with Chris Lyndon is pretty good. Better yet is Bromwich's recent "Five day log" of the New York Times, where he sees a concerted effort by the Gray Lady to beat the drums of escalation in the AfPak theater.