“I have had to listen to the presidential and vice presidential debates and comment on them, often enough in real time, as part of my job, but sometimes it feels as if it’s a form of penance for my sins. To keep this as understated as possible, these are not outstanding people. They are seeking to occupy (or be a heartbeat away from) an office that for the past seven-plus years has been held by a not unintelligent but certainly uninquisitive man who, with that special kind of arrogance born of unapologetic ignorance and a fixation on a few dubious verities, has plunged the country into a disastrous war and now into an eminently avoidable financial crisis that almost all the politicians and talking heads have diagnosed incorrectly. Can there be much doubt that this is an empire in steep decline? People of real quality not only do not gravitate toward political leadership, they scurry away from it.” (10/06/08)