As you approach the presidency, no one seems worthy of it, since it wasn't designed for a human in the first place. - Wilfrid Sheed

I myself have not met a self-confessed liberal since the late fifties (and even then it was a tacky thing to admit, like coming from the middle class or the Middle West, those two gloomy seedbeds of talent), yet hardly a day passes that I don't read another attack on the "typical liberal" — as it might be announcing a pest of dinosaurs or a plague of unicorns.

Through the burgeoning university network, it was suddenly possible to think of oneself as a national poet, even if the nation turned out to consist entirely of English departments.

It's the old case against symbols: if you get them, they seem obvious and artificial, and if you don't, you miss the whole point.