We`re a little bit low in the 1970s, right, post-Vietnam, Watergate era, malaise, all that, but this is more like the 1930s where the very notion of liberal democracy is being questioned, and that is disturbing.

We Americans are focused on Russia`s attacks with our electoral system and we`re consumed with that. But Russia is pushing against the West generally.

We should not assume that Russia is doomed to live according to its worst traditions. In fact, in Russian history, failed efforts at external aggression, when they fail, usually bring on areas of internal reform.

There are a lot of policies that don't work out that are nevertheless worth doing.

I believe the liberal international order is under assault from Russia, and from other authoritarian regimes, and it is being questioned from within the West by nationalists, by nativists, and by people who doubt our - doubt the values of the West. We've gone through periods like this before; in the '70s, after Vietnam and Watergate, and certainly in the '30s, when people thought liberal democracy was dead, and the future belonged either to the fascists or the communists.

9/11 was a genuine trauma, and President George W. Bush rallied the country. I think the Iraq war was ill-considered, but there - it was done in the wake of a national trauma. And that the errors made under such circumstances are different than errors made in the cold.

Lincoln is quoted more often than he's understood, and he understood that the founding principle of our nation is, in fact, the Declaration of Independence.