Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.

I rarely meet a politician that I don't like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.

Now, do I think the baby boomers tend to be self-absorbed? I do.

America is not doctrinaire. It's hard for an American politician to come up with an ideological position that is permanently unforgivable.

The baby boomers' politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there's been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.

You're not a baby boomer if you don't have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate.