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Wesley Pruden

Wesley Pruden

wpruden@washingtontimes.com

Wesley Pruden would have wanted to spend his final hours at his keyboard, deftly deflating the pompous, entitled and arrogant of the political establishment, and he came awfully close. The venerable Washington Times editor, columnist and journalism institution was found dead July 17, 2019, at his home, after putting in a full day at the newsroom on New York Avenue in Northeast D.C., where he had worked since 1982, four months after the newspaper's founding. He was 83.
His remarkable career began 67 years ago as a teenage copy boy in Arkansas, making him among the few old-school newsmen whose sharp political acumen, elegant writing style, and keen sense of the absurd allowed him to remain as relevant in the digital age as he was in the days when the rumpled shirts of reporters were splattered with ink.
To read his obituary, please CLICK HERE

Articles by Wesley Pruden

Joe Lieberman

PRUDEN: A religious test for a president

We're getting close to the beginning of the new presidential election cycle, so we must get back to Sunday school. The pundits are parsing religion again. Somebody has to pose the liberals' religious test for public office.

September 2, 2011
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg

PRUDEN: Goodnight, Hurricane Irene. What a floozie

Nobody cuts Barack Obama any slack, not even a hurricane. The president was ready to try anything to change the miserable trajectory of his luck. The polls were enough to ruin a week with the elites on Martha's Vineyard.

August 30, 2011
William Clark

PRUDEN: When a quake really was a quake

We're all orangutans now. Iris the orangutan at the National Zoo in Washington — which The Washington Post's man on the scene, citing her "straight, elegant red-orange hair," calls the prettiest orangutan at the zoo - showed the nation's capital just how to behave in a minor-league earthquake.

August 26, 2011
Woodrow Wilson

PRUDEN: Obama dusts off old campaign strategy

President Obama has dusted off an old campaign strategy. It worked once. More than once, actually. FDR ran against Herbert Hoover not once, not twice, but three times. The Messiah is giving it a try against George W. Bush.

August 23, 2011
Donald Douglas

PRUDEN: The jet airplane that changed everything

The jet airplane has changed everything, and nothing has changed more than the means of escape from squalor and oppression. The pursuit of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, pursuing freedom and opportunity in the city on the hill, can be a part-time job now. For that, we can thank Bill Boeing and Donald Douglas, the builders of the first transcontinental airliners.

August 19, 2011
Mrs. Miniver

PRUDEN: Scary nights in London

The wolves have made their way into the parlor again in England, and this time it looks like the powers-that-be think it's serious. The government of the uneasy coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is trying to talk tough after several nights of murder and mayhem in the bleak public-housing tracts of the poor and unemployed in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and other cities.

August 16, 2011
Former President Bill Clinton

PRUDEN: The failure of liberal gods

The gods of the liberals - "progressives," as they insist on calling themselves this season - are failing all over the place. Restless natives are rioting in London. Peasants are getting rich selling 90-proof Oolong in Washington. The elites are "unsettled," as elites always are, in a lot of places between.

August 12, 2011
Abraham Lincoln

PRUDEN: The terror of Rick Perry’s penitent prayer

Christians are driving atheists nuts. Atheists are trying to spread their belief — or more to the point, their lack of belief — with zeal that Billy Sunday or Billy Graham could have envied: Unless Sunday schools are closed, Bibles shredded, hymnbooks torched and children jailed when found kneeling with Mom in bedtime prayer, no one is secure in their homes.

August 9, 2011
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

PRUDEN: Disorientation Week for the Democrats

This is Disorientation Week in Washington. From the White House to the Hill, the Democrats are trying (but not trying too hard) to come to terms with a new reality. Attitude-adjustment hour is sometimes no fun at all.

August 5, 2011
General Beauregard

PRUDEN: Hope and change in a magic tea party pot

Now the real fun begins. Assuming that the debt deal has been effectively sealed — and this looked like a large assumption on the eve of the vote — all that's left is deciding who won the fight over raising the debt limit.

August 2, 2011
Nguyen Cao Ky

PRUDEN: A purple footnote to a distant war in Vietnam

Nguyen Cao Ky died last week at 80, a forgotten purple footnote to the distant war in Vietnam that nearly everyone wants to forget. Those who do remember it usually remember it for the wrong reasons.

July 29, 2011
W. Amadeus Mozart

PRUDEN: A symphony by Congress at work on the debt

Stock markets the world over are easy to spook, because that's where the money is. Sometimes it's because the traders, like foreigners everywhere, can't understand American political theater. The soap opera, like vaudeville, cowboy movies and the musical comedy, is an All-American contrivance.

July 26, 2011

PRUDEN: Crashing the party at Pearl Harbor

The mystic chords of memory hold World War II in a stubborn embrace. The reminders of the war that began in Hawaii on a bright Sunday morning seven decades ago lie all about this tropical paradise.

July 22, 2011
What? Us worry?

PRUDEN: Waiting to call Obama’s budget bluff

The game of blindman's bluff isn't working. More and more Americans are catching on to the game. President Obama's threat to withhold Granny's Social Security check did not send millions of Grannies into the streets, walkers banging noisily against wheelchairs, leaving the wounded lying bloodied amidst splintered walking canes.

July 19, 2011
Rep. Eric Cantor

PRUDEN: Obama’s tantrum in a high chair

Every mom who has ever been at her wit's end recognizes Barack Obama. The president who earlier nagged Congress that it was time for Americans to "eat our peas" finally threw his own peas to the floor and banged his spoon on his supper dish. Such a tantrum in a high chair is a familiar sight in a lot of kitchens.

July 15, 2011
Harry Truman

PRUDEN: Waiting for the enemy to blink on the debt limit

What we've got is war — a war between the taxpayers and the tax-eaters. The tax-eaters can't understand why the taxpayers won't shovel out the swag, salute as usual, and shut up. This time the taxpayers are fed up and they're not going to take it any more.

July 12, 2011
Texas Gov. Rick Perry

PRUDEN: No panic yet, but real fear

The 2012 presidential marathon is on, and one mainstream pollster (Rasmussen) says a Republican apparition is opening up a lead on President Obama. (Any Republican 46 percent, Barack Obama 42 percent.) A growing number of Democrats figure that whoever can keep his head in the rattle and bang of unexpected events just doesn't understand the situation.

July 1, 2011
Russell Crowe

PRUDEN: On the cutting edge in San Francisco

There's a referendum in November to determine whether circumcision of male infants should be prohibited by law, punishable by thousand-dollar fines and misdemeanor sentences of a year in jail, with no religious exemptions.

June 28, 2011