the Founders.

I recently finished Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal. It is a discussion of the early days of the United States. To a certain extent it focuses on Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams, and the Adams presidency in particular. It seems like he wrote it in the waning years of the second Bush administration, as he decrys how the country has been ruined. At the end Vidal tells a story of how he was a family friend to the Kennedy's, and one evening they discussed why the political discourse is at such a lower level now. Vidal states that he still doesn't understand why the change happened, but he wrote this book to hopefully address it.

Now, fast forward a few years, and Obama is doing some of the same things that Vidal was complaining about Bush doing. Indeed, Vidal has fallen into a classic trap of thinking that the addition or removal of one person in the presidency will change everything. Further, by writing a deliberately partisan book, he has reinforced poor political discourse. Thus, it seems if Vidal wants the world to change, he needs to look in the mirror. It seems he doesn't realize where the problem is located because he is part of the problem.