[President George W.] Bush - never mind his well-crafted set speeches; listen to him as he leans on a lectern, chatting to an audience of carpenters - is completely comfortable being himself, a skill still eluding Gore in his 55th year.

An alloy of innocence and arrogance, young (Ted) Williams came to Boston when it had four morning and four evening local newspapers engaged in perpetual circulation wars. He became grist for their mills, and his wars with the sportswriters brought out the worst in him, and cost him. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and finished second four times. Several of those times he would have won had he not had such poisonous relations with the voting press.

I've lived in Washington now for 44 years, and that's a lot of folly to witness up close. Whatever confidence and optimism I felt towards the central government when I got here on January 1, 1970 has pretty much dissipated at the hands of the government.

[Cultural relativism] licenses the envy of the untalented, giving rise to what has been called the revenge of failure: Those who cannot paint destroy the canons of painting; those who cannot write reject canonical literature.

I am opposed to term limits because if we did not have seasoned professionals, we would not have the good government that we have.

Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.

Nationalism is blamed for this century's wars, but nationalism need not mean militarism. And the nation-state has been the laboratory of liberty.