As a personal matter, I stopped voting more than a decade ago, on the grounds that it helped me as an analyst not to think about making a choice in the voting booth.

Well, politics is war, and in war, truth is the first casualty.

A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick, readily available tool for an ordinary citizen to gather information on his own. In 1960, communication was a one-way street, and information was fundamentally inaccessible. The whole idea of summoning up data or reaching thousands of individuals with the touch of a finger was a science-fiction fantasy.

The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed.

I got into writing and thinking about politics because I was told there would be no math.

As a general proposition, campaigns do not linger on the vice presidential nominee. When they have, it's always meant very bad news for the ticket. Think of Spiro Agnew's foot-in-mouth disease; Tom Eagleton's medical history; the real estate holdings of Geraldine Ferraro's husband; the unbearable lightness of Dan Quayle; Sarah Palin's reading list.

F.D.R. had to deal with Southern segregationists - and outright racists - who held power in Congress, so he had to yield to that power in order to get his New Deal legislation passed.