What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.

The two-war strategy was a product of the cold war, when we had to have the ability to fight the Russians on the plains of Europe and fight the Chinese on the Korean peninsula at the same time. That costs an awful lot of money.

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

Bush the Elder's stature as president grows with every passing year. He was the finest foreign policy president I've ever covered and a man who defied his party on tax increases while imposing budget restrictions on the Democrats.

For those of us who consider ourselves political moderates, life is a dispiriting slog, a sorry mix of rectitude and ineptitude.

I believe, I believe that the people who voted in those primaries for Donald Trump were at least helping him along with his message of hate toward immigrants, toward Muslims.