"Nightfall on the Kennedy era in Washington looks like this..."

"...Representative Patrick J. Kennedy’s office space surrendered to a Republican, his family memorabilia in boxes, and Mr. Kennedy yearning for a role away from the public eye."

"So often, powerful forces and powerful interests stand in your way, and the odds seem stacked against you...."

"I want you to know this: I've taken on the powerful forces. And as president, I'll stand up to them. ... It's about our people, our families, and our future — and whether forces standing in your way will keep you from having a better life...."

Just something Al Gore once said, as noted by Mickey Kaus in the year 2000. It came up in conversation this morning as we were talking about — can you guess? — the origin of religion. I was riffing on the idea — based on my memories of "The Evolution of God" — that primitive man perceived the entire environment as imbued with spirit and — this may not be in the book — there had to have be individuals in early human times who saw how to amass power by making it seem as though they could influence or appease whatever spirit or spirits made things — such as weather — happen in the world. This led — can you see how? — to a discussion of Al Gore.

"To any of the ladies I’ve offended, I apologize.."

"I say this to the men out there who have never opened a graphic image on the Internet: Don’t vote for me. For those who have, I welcome your vote."

What's your earliest political memory?

Some writers answer that question here. You can answer it here.

What's my answer? Let's see. Maybe, 1960. I was in 4th grade. All the kids I knew were for Nixon. I analyzed the situation and proclaimed: "If kids could vote, Nixon would win by a landslide!"

"Even on their own terms the politics and business of the world were absurdly evanescent."

"One week politicians, people who worked in the City, and people whose job it was to report their doings would all be kept out of their beds by a financial crisis which, six months later, would be little talked of. By that time perhaps there would be . . . a corruption scandal in local government, which would then be followed by a flurry of public concern over crimes of violence, which in its turn would be pushed out of people's minds by their fury over some proposed new tax; and so it would go on. Each of these things would seem important for a time, then each would pass away and scarcely matter again except to historians. In fact, the truth is that most of them made little or no difference even to the daily lives of most of the population living through them. People immersed in this stream of ever-changing events were filling their minds with . . . ephemera and trivia, what people in electronics mean by 'noise.'"

Is it a mistake to follow politics?