The peasants have seen the future - Greece and France - and concluded that it does not work. Hence their opposition to Obama's proudly transformational New Foundation agenda. Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world's foremost exemplar of that model - Europe - is in chaotic meltdown.

In reality, Kyoto was a huge transfer of resources from the United States to the Third World, under the guise of environmental protection.

There are cycles in American politics. US cycles are even more pronounced because we Americans have a totally entrepreneurial presidential system. We don't have parliamentary opposition parties with a shadow prime minister and shadow cabinets. Every four years, the opposition reinvents itself.

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

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

There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.

I think the editorial page of the Washington Post is the best in the country. I think the editorials - considering it's a liberal town, liberal constituency and from the liberal tradition - I think it's the best editorial page around. It's quite balanced.