Skip to content
Advertisement
Author profile
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

House Speaker Paul Ryan. (The Washington Times) ** FILE **

WESLEY PRUDEN: Donald Trump loved by voters, loathed by establishment

The Republican establishment is determined to kill the Trump candidacy, and it may succeed. Donald Trump is assisting with the task. The mouth that roars rarely soars, and his unthinking vulgarity is beginning to bore. It's hard to know what he was thinking when he said women who have abortions should be punished.

March 31, 2016
Joe Biden

WESLEY PRUDEN: Bernie Sanders gaining on Hillary Clinton

If you believe Cassandra and other doom-criers, this may be remembered as the year they gave an election and nobody came. The Republican Party's skepticism of Donald Trump is exceeded only by the Democrats' growing terror at the prospect of campaigning with Hillary Clinton. It looks like a bipartisan meltdown.

March 28, 2016
Abraham Lincoln

WESLEY PRUDEN: The teaching moment, lost in Havana

Barack Obama loves to talk, mostly about himself, and he's never as happy as when he's talking about America's faults, even in foreign capitals where tradition says a good citizen doesn't do that.

March 24, 2016
Mitch McConnell (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: The great Republican snipe hunt

Once the media mob has worked you over there's not much the undertaker can do to make you look presentable for the wake. You're well smashed up and truly dead, unless you're Donald Trump, fortified by crude wit, relentless stamina and astonishing resources of ego, confidence and self-regard.

March 21, 2016
Sen. Chuck Schumer (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Playing a game with the Supreme Court

The nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court is all about politics. There's nothing wrong with that. Politics is governing, with no argument here about what the meaning of "is" is.

March 17, 2016
Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump holds a plane-side rally in a hanger at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna, Ohio, Monday, March 14, 2016.  (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Economics prime factor in 2016 presidential race

James Carville, the colorful shill of Bill Clinton's successful campaigns, coined the most memorable slogan of those campaigns, and it continues to be the essence of presidential politics: "It's the economy, Stupid." Mr. Stupid forgets it at his peril.

March 14, 2016
Richard Nixon (Associated Press)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton has as much as Richard Nixon to answer for

The wheel that goes around comes around, as life teaches us all, even Hillary Clinton. She was 27, a reckless and ambitious lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee, working to impeach Richard Nixon. She couldn't imagine that she would one day be the Nixon of the Democrats, a reckless and ambitious presidential candidate forever tracking mud and grit through the house.

March 10, 2016
Chris Wallace of Fox News. ** FILE **

WESLEY PRUDEN: How could everybody get it so wrong on Donald Trump?

The list of "experts," "analysts," self-appointed "strategists" and other know-it-alls who were wrong about Donald Trump is a long one, and nobody is as ignorant of why the Donald has had such an appeal and such staying power as the pundit who is paid to know everything, and never does.

March 3, 2016
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds up a campaign sign that reads "Farmers for Trump" after speaking at a rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Ga., Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Panic over Donald Trump on the eve Super Tuesday

Marco Rubio's only appeal to the elites is that he's not Donald Trump. But after Tuesday night that probably won't be enough. With the momentum -- what George Bush the Elder famously called "the big mo" -- born of this week's results the Donald might well drive a stake through the last great hope next week in Florida.

February 29, 2016
Barry Goldwater

WESLEY PRUDEN: The dilemma of the scared Republicans

The Republicans ought to be comfortable in their catbird seat, surveying nothing but knee-high cotton, corn as high as an elephant's eye and blue skies for as far as anyone can see. They have the happy prospect of running against a Democratic foe awash in scandal and chicanery. Few voters like her, nobody trusts her and she seems as likely to land in prison as in the White House.

February 25, 2016
Boris Johnson (Associated Press) ** FILE **

WESLEY PRUDEN: Donald Trump phenomenon spreads to Britain

Donald Trump's politics have arrived in Old Blighty, and Britain may never be the same. The Mayor of London has joined the campaign for Britain to kick itself out of the European Union. This terrifies the easily terrified elites.

February 22, 2016
Vice President Joseph R. Biden (Associated Press) **FILE**

WESLEY PRUDEN: A modest suggestion for choosing the judge

Everybody is putting his 2 cents in about the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court and how to fill it, and President Obama hasn't even sent up the name of the man, woman or trans-sexual whom he thinks would adorn the highest bench in the land. Who knew we had so many Philadelphia lawyers amongst us?

February 18, 2016
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton meets with employees at a Velcro Companies facility Monday, Feb. 8, 2016, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Democrats stuck with Hillary Clinton

The Democrats have got the Republican dilemma nailed, and the rattle and buzz over Debbie Wasserman Schultz' tea cups is happy talk that the Grand Old Party looks stuck with a candidate the party doesn't want.

February 11, 2016
A student teacher in the second-grade classroom of teacher Susanne Diaz at Marcus Whitman Elementary School, goes over lessons with students, in Richland, Wash. (Ty Beaver/The Tri-City Herald via AP) ** FILE **

WESLEY PRUDEN: Let no child be left unconfused

Mae West, the famous philosopher of the boudoir, would hardly believe her fortune today. "So many men," she once complained, "so little time." She was the kind of girl who set out to "climb the ladder of success, wrong by wrong."

February 8, 2016
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes photos with workers at her campaign office in Des Moines, Iowa, Monday, Feb. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton needs a charisma transplant

Frightened party-line Democrats think they've got a solution to their unique "woman problem" if they can find the right surgeon. Instead of finding an alternative to Hillary Clinton, they propose a charisma transplant.

February 4, 2016
In this Jan. 29, 2016, photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks during a campaign event at Greasewood Flats Ranch in Carroll, Iowa. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

WESLEY PRUDEN: And now, here comes New Hampshire

The wind and snow of Iowa gives way to the ice and slush of New Hampshire, and the long, long trail to sunny South Carolina has never looked so inviting to so many. No one could have survived these last weeks but for the ample supply of hot air from the candidates to raise the temperature to barely tolerable.

February 1, 2016
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes a question from a member of the audience during a campaign event at the Knoxville School District Administration Office, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Knoxville, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

WESLEY PRUDEN: The election when nobody showed up

Why are the front-runners in both parties so unelectable? The frenzied and the frightened count the ways, without getting into the depth and breadth and height a body's soul can reach.

January 28, 2016
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at Central College, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Pella, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

WESLEY PRUDEN: Donald Trump and his high-minded critics

The establishment Republicans are having a high old time beating up on the lesser breeds under the tent, if not the law. The establishment Republicans, for whom politics does not come easily, pay their tribute to Ronald Reagan's famous eleventh commandment, that Thou Shall Not Speak Ill of Another Republican.

January 26, 2016