It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.

I will find any excuse to go into somebody's study or ask them what they are reading. I can't think of too many other things that say what goes on in someone's head than the books they have.

Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them.

If Hillary Clinton becomes president, how is she going to be able to get the country behind her when she seems like a political figure from another era?

The ranks of educated professional swelled as more Americans went to college and more Americans sort of adopted a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and worldview. And as the Democrats were looking for an alternative to the unions who no longer seemed like a large enough base for the party, they found the educated who veered more toward a progressive cultural outlook, who may have had - may have been working in the financial sector, in entertainment, in media, in universities. That became really the rank and file of the Democratic Party over a long period of time.

Since I was a kid. I had this series by Ballantine Books about the history of World Wars I and II. In my 20s, it was the Vietnam War literature of novelists like Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, and Tobias Wolff, and then nonfiction such as "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and "The Best and Brightest" by David Halberstam . Those are the two best histories of Vietnam.

American politics can produce great men and women, but it is profoundly insular.