Donald Trump is the least unpopular thing about today's Republican Party. I mean, the idea that a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan could say, "Let's toss Trump overboard and return to our program of plutocratic politics, health care removal, massive income tax cuts for the affluent, deregulation of finance" - if they cut loose from Donald Trump, it's like, you know, storm in channel, continent cut off. If they cut loose from him, they are much likelier to sink.

Maybe it's true that people with less extreme views who are also interested in public affairs have been driven out by a marketplace that doesn't offer them anything of the tone they want to listen to.

So little of what makes a democracy work is written down. So much of it is just the things you don't do. There are a lot of things that a prime minister or a president can do and they don't do them because it never occurs to them to do them.

The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens.

One of the questions I often get asked is, "Were you surprised that Trump won?" I always answer the same way: "I was surprised, I am surprised and I will never stop being surprised."

That is the way successful countries, and Canada has been one of the most successful countries over the past quarter century, they operate. That when you win, you win within limits, when you lose, you accept the outcome.

My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.