[Barack Obama] says that he thinks America felt better, more confident, because Washington was not simply in a gridlock, in stasis, where nothing was being done. And he talks about that as a positive.

The idea that our son would be like Raymond Babbitt was a shocking reordering of everything. And something we couldn't quite fathom, really.

Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community?

Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.

Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.