Bring Back Warren Harding

All Coolidge had to do in 1924 was to keep his mean trap shut, to be elected. All Harding had to do in 1920 was repeat ''Avoid foreign entanglements.'' All Hoover had to do in 1928 was to endorse Coolidge. All Roosevelt had to do in 1932 was to point to Hoover.

History is cyclical, and it would be foolhardy to assume that the culture wars will never return.

The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly 'changed everything,' slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable.

No one is better placed or more philosophically suited than Obama to construct the new counter narrative as we go forward in our new New Deal. But many masters of the old universe, including quite possibly his chief economic adviser, can't recognize that the world has changed or should change.

In that sense, when a Bush or a Gore, or whomever, goes on David Letterman, that's the news, too.