William Kristol

With millions of people unemployed, finding a new job for a well-heeled Washington insider might seem like a low priority for Americans but I still believe it would be sensible and humane to find Bill Kristol another job. The poor fellow has spent years working in politics, and it just isn't working out for him – or anyone else. Mr Kristol is of course the son of neoconservative theorist Irving Kristol. Neoconservative families are unusually rich in political commentators. Irving Kristol's contemporary and ideological comrade Norman Podhoretz produced the columnist and editor John Podhoretz. Right-leaning historian Donald Kagan produced the neoconservative theorists Robert and Frederick. Conservative literary agent Lucianne Goldberg is the mother of conservative columnist Jonah.

If The Onion didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it. The self-described 'omnipotent' purveyor of current-events satire may not be (as another motto claims) 'America’s finest news source.' But it does have a good claim to the nation’s nicest anatomist of political folly (using, I hasten to add, that capacious word 'nice' not in the sense of 'kind, pleasant' but 'precise, exact, fine'). Consider this headline: 'Anthony Scaramucci talks to Bill Kristol about trying to force Trump off the GOP ticket in 2020.' Can you guess the source? If you said 'The Onion,' you would have made a perfectly rational judgment.