We're in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don't believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.

Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.

In a way, Calvin Coolidge is better than Reagan. His tax rates were lower, and he cut budgets.

Coolidge was a federalist. You go back and read him and it's almost intimidating to write about him because he writes better himself than anyone. He's one of the best writers as presidents go.

I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.

There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them.

The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.