Update
Here’s something that keeps coming back to me as we get closer to the inauguration — with a tempering effect. I won’t connect the dots. Enjoy . . .
“It was a glittering time. They literally swept into office, ready, moving, generating their style, their confidence — they were going to get America moving again. There was a sense that these were brilliant men, men of force, not cruel, not harsh, but men who acted rather than waited. There was no time to wait, history did not permit that luxury; if we waited, it would all be past us. Everyone was going to Washington, and the word went out quickly around the Eastern seacoast, at the universities and in the political clubs, that the best men were going to Washington.
“It seems long ago now, that excitement which swept through the country . . . that feeling that America was going to change, that the government had been handed down . . . to the best and brighest of a generation.”
- David Halberstam, The Best and The Brightest
