I noticed some time ago that neither of the candidates are quoting the founders. If they are, they're doing it so rarely that I haven't noticed, or enough to be negligible. Certainly, neither is invoking the image of [George] Washington at Valley Forge or the Shining City Upon a Hill. In addition to this being true for John McCain and Barack Obama, it was true for Hillary Clinton as well.

I was disappointed in how [Bill] Clinton, like [Jimmy] Carter, used the founders to argue for huge expansions in federal power, clearly beyond what the founders could have ever conceived.

[John] McCain references favorite presidents like Teddy Roosevelt. Hillary cited Eleanor Roosevelt.

There's the unique case of Ronald Reagan, who cited [founders] some 850 times, and in a way that was absolutely fundamental to understanding Reagan's vision for America.

In the middle of Hillary Clinton's push for national healthcare in 1993, Bill Clinton cited Thomas Jefferson's concern for health issues as, somehow, apparently indicative of a need for federal management of the nation's healthcare system.

If our presidents, or potential presidents, don't know this or don't articulate [an America ideal], that's a blown opportunity. The president can teach as well as lead.

I was a child or didn't live through those presidents prior to [Ronald] Reagan, and thus didn't realize how little attention they had paid to the founders.