In the '50s and '60s, journalism wasn't a profession. It wasn't something you went to college for - it was really more of a trade. You had a lot of guys who came up working in newspapers at the copy desk, or delivery boys, and then they would somehow become reporters afterward and learn on the job.

In a pure capitalist system, an institution as moronic and corrupt as Bank of America would be swiftly punished by the market - the executives would get to loot their own firms once, then they'd be looking for jobs again.

When I heard the book (Thomas Friedman's latest) was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays.

America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside.

It's come around to that point of view at the end of a long evolutionary process, in which the rule of law has slowly been replaced by giant idiosyncratic bureaucracies that are designed to criminalize failure, poverty, and weakness on the one hand, and to immunize strength, wealth, and success on the other.

Unquestionably, however, something else is at work, something that cuts deeper into the American psyche. We have a profound hatred of the weak and the poor, and a corresponding groveling terror before the rich and successful, and we're building a bureaucracy to match those feelings.

Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues.