I am totally not going to take sides in the Frum-AEI business, having no worthwhile knowledge of him, them, or the him-them relationship.

I will put down this marker, though: I admire David very much — admire, which is not a synonym for “agree with” — as a writer and political analyst. His books are beautifully done. Writing We Are Doomed, I near got to the point where I thought I should have to hide Dead Right, the easier to resist the temptation to keep quoting from it. His book on the seventies, though not so relevant to what I was writing about, is, if anything, even better.

I kind of lost track of David after that, haven’t seen his blog, and never finished Comeback, which depressed me. (Depressed! Me!) Not many of us manage two really fine books, though. I’ll thank David for that, wish him well, and salute what I feel certain is a fellow pessimist, though one better at whistling in the dark than I am.