All wars, even the noblest, bring a reckoning of means and ends.

The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.

Progress is seldom simple; it comes with costs and casualties, even challenges about whether a change represents an advance or a retreat.

In the case of the classic Western helicopter parent, it starts with Baby Einstein and reward charts for toilet training, and it never really ends, which is why colleges have to devote so many resources to teaching parents how to leave their kids alone.

George W. Bush, though a president's son, is cast as Reagan's heir even more than his father's.

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines.