“One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.”

American journalist and conservative political commentator, born 1961

John Mordecai Podhoretz is an American journalist and conservative political commentator. Born in 1961, he has been editor of Commentary since 2009, following a career in newspaper and magazine editing, speechwriting, and political commentary. He previously ran the editorial page of the New York Post and served as deputy editor of The Weekly Standard. Podhoretz also worked as a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and in the George H. W. Bush administration, and he has written several books on politics.