And that is how we intend to destroy the enemy!" The superior shakes his head wearily. "Young man, the Soviets are our adversary. The Navy is the enemy.

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.

One of the things that really has gone wrong in modern politics, one of the things that made Trump possible was that many people have a view of politics as something dramatic and exciting and thrilling and emotional.

If you go on TV and say there's no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.

A generation ago, or two, when there were three channels, plus PBS, and when you needed - when you needed 15 million people to make a living, the media could focus on the broad country. And most people had no choice about getting political information. It was there at 6:30 whether you wanted it or not.

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.

Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry.