Weekly Column

A winning candidate for 2020

Finally we see some spring in Minnesota, temperatures edging into the 50s, maybe 60s, snow gone except in the crevices, green grass, the miracle of going outdoors in shirtsleeves. It's like the Rapture except that everyone gets to enjoy it, not just the select few. We who were brought up not to complain have been moaning for a month, and we feel bad about that and intend to atone for it by being good to people who have not been nice to us, if we can think of any.

James Comey has come and gone, an example of the danger of oversell. After seeing him everywhere all the time for a week, there was little need to buy his book. I own a bookstore and it only sold 24 copies: people had already heard six times what he had to say. As the gentleman knows, he did at least as much as the Russians did to elect No. 45, and he certainly has a right to try to make amends, but when he told The New Yorker at length about the "emptiness" of the man — good Lord, when did FBI directors acquire X-ray vision? Leave emptiness to the Buddhists.

This, you understand, is coming from a cranky old liberal who is tired of hearing about the #real and prefers to talk about the #imaginary. I go to dinner with Democrats and when I hear somebody say, "I can't believe the way T—" I am out of my seat the moment their tongue hits the back of their teeth to make the T. There are plenty of smart people who are paid to talk about him and to say new and interesting things and I wish them well. But not at the dinner table, please.

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