Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing.

[Barack Obama failed to sell a health care reform plan to American voters] because the utter implausibility of its central promise - expanded coverage at lower cost - led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt.

You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933... Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns.

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person.

Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect.

Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.