Framed on a wall in my office is a copy of my first opinion column, published by the Dallas Morning News on Oct. 11, 1987. Until then, I had been a wire service reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., and, before that, a sportswriter in Boston, but had never written opinion.
When given the chance by the Morning News, I jumped on a subject that had piqued my curiosity: A senator for Delaware running for president had brazenly stolen a speech by a Welsh Labour Party leader in the United Kingdom and, when caught, paid the price by humiliatingly dropping out of the 1988 presidential race.
The Welsh politician was Neil Kinnock, and 27-year-old me simply used the brouhaha over the purloined speech as an excuse to praise him for daring to tell Labourites that “socialism had become old hat,” as I put it. Democrats should be stealing that speech, I wrote.
The senator for Delaware was…
