It's worth remembering George W. Bush, Barack Obama also came in thinking they had the magic key to better, warmer relations with Russia; those efforts ended in tears.

Peter Beinart excoriates the doughface liberals who during the Cold War put anti-imperialism before anti-totalitarianism and demanded total moral purity on the part of the United States, thus opposing any action in the real world to resist Soviet expansionism. If the Democrats were, as he advocates, to return to the Trumanesque anti-totalitarian liberalism that held sway in the party from roughly 1947 to 1972, the party and the country would be better off.

Calculation has its advantages, but no one likes naked calculation.

Clearly [Donald] Trump likes the way business executives and generals think and talk much more than policy professionals.

I think just focusing on the wealth of these cabinet picks misunderstands [Donald] Trump's economic strategy here, which is going to be equal parts traditional Republican economics.

We're going to cut taxes, deregulate to try to create general pro-growth conditions, at the same time, much more than any other Republican ever before, [Donald Trump] is going to focus on trying to tighten the labor market directly through discouraging outsourcing and tightening up on immigration, all towards the goal of actually increasing wages, that's a new focus for the Republican Party and a very important one.

There's no point trying to sugar-coat this or get Jesuitical about it. Yes, Russia tried to manipulate our election. It's appalling. Yes, it should be investigated and taken seriously.