Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as "a wise Latina" trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment - a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism.
The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.
The moment is ripe for an experienced businessman to talk practical, prudent economics to the electorate - which is why Mitt Romney's political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave.
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.
Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo.
