It has never made any sense to argue that, unique among the people of the world, Arabs are more concerned on a day-to-day basis about the treatment of people they don't know than they are about how they're going to put food on their own tables, or whether their sons will ever find a job.

Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.

The United States established itself as a trustworthy new nation in its first two decades after the Revolutionary War by paying its debts, even when many in the country believed it had no obligation to do so. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of this newspaper, insisted on it.

This, of course, has no chance of passing. But then Tuesday night'€™s State of the Union address could be the first one in history deliberately designed solely to generate a Pavlovian rage response in members of the opposing party.

Romney is a good, intelligent, extraordinarily generous man who put on a great fight. But he didn't understand the country or the people he sought to lead, and that is why he lost.

Newt Gingrich has a restless and outsized intelligence that is tragically unleavened by any kind of critical sensibility.

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.