she said. ''I don't want to sound embarrassing, but he looks sensual.

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.

'The bully pulpit' is somewhat diminished in our age of fragmented attention and fragmented media.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?'

I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.

Where's the progress that we're going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling.