On the Right

Debasing Democracy

ROBERT Shrum has written a book in which he tells all, or at least leaves one hoping that what he has told is all there is to tell. If, in the dawn’s early light, freshly empanelled fathers convened to found a civil society, you could discredit anybody who came up with the idea of political democracy by the simple expedient of handing him Robert Shrum’s book, No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner. I interpose a personal note, which is that after a dozen hours with Mr. Shrum on television, I came away liking him, but this is testimony less to his virtues than to my weakness for happy scurrility.