Andy, thanks for your kind words. For my part, I didn’t mean for my cheap-dates comment to come across quite as harshly as it did. More important, I gave the wrong impression when I singled you out for criticism. A lot of conservative writers have gotten into a bad habit of attaching themselves too closely, and over-investing emotionally, in particular candidates. I think it started, or at least got a lot worse, with Bush vs. McCain. This is one vice to which I don’t think I’m terribly prone, since I don’t seem to have a gene for political romanticism. But I should have gone after the general phenomenon, not you in particular. Let’s just say that when I wrote that cheap-dates aside, it wasn’t you I had in mind.