Thanks everyone. As Meghan noted, I had great teachers -- including one that also taught her!

Sometimes there's a gread deal of wisdom in a snip...

I appreciate Troy's generosity of spirit but let me add a dash of realism to the brew. Yes, I hired Troy -- my very last hire, with Marc Thiessen, my successor. I hired Meghan too. Let me reassure Ricochet readers: this was not Christian altruism. This was hard-headed self-interest. These two people made me look better than I am. In many ways that's the secret of life: hire people smarter than you are and give them free reign. I've been a little absent from Ricochet these last few weeks as this new future beckons. Let me say, publicly, that I have a hard time leaving my home at the Wall Street Journal, for which I worked over many years on three continents and in several war zones. Paul Gigot has been a superb editor, and though I know I have brought him grief for some of my stands, he has never inhibited me in the slightest. If I prove to be worthy as editorial page editor of the Post, it's because I've had good bosses myself. Meghan and Troy are young, so please forgive their mistaken attribution to me of a wisdom that owes more to their talents.

Paulbe, With all due respect, it is an issue. Mayor Bloomberg shows it with every breath he takes. This is a guy who wants to tell people how much soda they can have and rabbis how to circumcise babies -- but cannot plow the streets or get relief to people. We are now reading how he has refused to put the National Guard to work -- against the governor's desire -- because doing so would indicate the problem is much bigger than he cares to admit. The point is that this kind of stuff doesn't hurt the people in Manhattan who can buy other options, but it kills the people in more modest communities such as Rockaway or Staten Island.

Almost every move to expand/improve the power grid is opposed by environmental activists and Democratic pols. There is zero incentive for companies to invest. And what do we see instead: at my house this weekend, where we had with us two families without power, we see on t.v. the pols all congratulating themselves -- Bloomberg, Sebelius, Napolitano, even Peter King. It shouldn't be like this in the greatest city in the world.

I'm with you, Umbra Fractus. I was under the impression that owning a shotgun legally in Britain was illegal. The gun laws there are insane. 

We don't know what, if anything, they are hiding. They tell the Senators they can't speak because of an ongoing investigation. Apparently they speak to reporters. And the ongoing investigation didn't stop Ms. Rice and Mr. Carney from coming out with their ridiculous this-wasn't-an-attack-on-the-US claim right away. 

I'm not someone who believes problems in a candidate goes away if he ignores them. Gov. Romney doesn't have to get into the weeds: Ronald Reagan in 1980 made clear his goal was military superiority viz a viz the Russians. The section on Afghanistan on MittRomney.com  is the process drivel you put down to substitute for policy.

My fear is not that he has no opinion on Afghanistan. My fear is that he believes  the American people cannot handle the truth -- especially if it mean keeping troops there that Mr. Obama is now pulling back. On the other hand, maybe he believes the situation hopeless. Either way, he ought to say so, and tell us why. Especially those Americans deployed overseas. 

If he doesn't do it now, he's going to suffer in the debates. He is also going to find himself bound by President Obama's parameters. The signs are not hopeful.  

Let me use these 200 words to clarify: I am not running for Commander in Chief. In point of fact, I do not need to spell out a policy on our longest war. By contrast, I believe any man or woman who seeks that job owes it to the Americans we have there to tell them what he would do.

I know Marine headed off to Afghanistan. Anyone who would be his Commander in Chief ought to be able to look him in the eye, tell him what he is there to accomplish for America, to support that action in public, and to be able to look his mother in the eye if that assignment leads to the sacrifice of his life. We rightly criticized President OBama for his long review process and incoherence. Mitt Romney owes the 68,0000 men and women in uniform who remain in Afghanistan after the surge more than promises of a new "review" or "full interagency" reassment.

The alternative is, as a Romney advisor suggested, to cede to Mr. Obama foreign affairs, where Mr. Obama has the worst record since Jimmy Carter,  and at a moment when a mob just attacked our embassy. 

Rob, You forgot to add that people who stay up late are more likely to purchase Ronco products, if only because the rest of us go to sleep before the commercials come on. I confess that in my single days of staying up late, I once bought a wok heavily pushed on late-night tv. 

Get well, Brother Paul. There's an election on, and you are needed. No use trying to get out of it by predicting a landslide! 

Interesting post, Paul, as well as the article to which you referred. Two small points. If her defense of Clarence Thomas was that workplace harassment is fun while he was denying he harassed anyone, the defense implies he was both a liar and a harasser.  It may be a welcome dig at the new feminism's idea that every woman in the workplace is helpless, but I'm not sure Justice Thomas would consider that "support."

The larger point is something that undergirds all these posts: the tendency on the left to eat their young. We have so many people who were in their own time hailed to be progressives, only to live long enough to see the movements they started grow into something that ends up lumping these founders in with the reactionaries. 

Mama Toad. I certainly believe all these things ought to be re-examined and possibly restructured to face new realities. They were established in different times with different assumptions.

Mama Toad,

You make some good points. My point really is about the Al Smith Dinner itself. It is from a time when no political party in the U.S. was making the kind of pro-abortion, pro-same sex marriage, pro-contraceptive mandate. You could do these things in that environment without a problem. You can't today.

In addition, the Al Smith dinner is supposed to be completely apological and humorous. No one is supposed to make a political point. This seems to me the most damning. To have a photo of the cardinal and the president exchanging thigh slappers -- the message is certainly incoherent. It is not a witness to Christ; it is like a celebrity roast. In this environment, in the midst of this election, I believe it highly imprudent and utterly demoralizing. (Demoralized, by the way, would be a better way to describe the faithful's reaction than "scandalized.")

I make no larger points about the Cardinal's motivation, which I know to be good, or his character, which I know to be sterling. It comes in the realm of prudential judgments where it strikes me as just a colossal and dispiriting blunder.  

I am afraid I do not see the opportunity. No one objects to the Cardinal meeting face to face with the President to tell him what he thinks. The last time that happened, the Cardinal came out of the Oval to tell people he thinks we'd be fine viz the mandate. Plainly the President misled him. The point is that a face to face won't necessarily do the trick.Nor do I think the Cardinal can give a speech that takes the President on. This is not the forum for that. This is supposed to be apolitical and jocular. That latter strikes me as a problem. Is the President engaged in an attack on conscience, on religious freedom -- or not? If he is, it is a curious thing to have the two sides coming together to swap jokes. It certainly undermines the idea that it is a very serious fight.As for a speech, that will never overcome the image, again on the NYT, of the two laughing it up together. I'm sure David Axelrod would consider enduring even a speech, which will be forgotten, for that image, which people will remember. Again, I hope I am wrong.

It seems to me no good choices here. You cannot disinvite a President of the United States, or cancel the dinner, after you have invited him. Nor can you insult him when he is your guest. 

BrentB67, gently, may I say I would read the book before I dismissed people such as Gary Becker so lightly. I'm betting you would be like it.