Sizing up the current presidential campaign, he wrote: “I take fiendish delight in watching my overcaffeinated colleagues proclaim the startling, astonishing, breathtaking rise and fall of . . . whoever it is this week. It reminds me of a carful of kids in the back seat, demanding of their parents as the car pulls out of the driveway, ‘Are we there yet?’ We’re not. Let somebody vote, for heaven’s sake. Also, no president has ever been re-elected in the face of this economic atmosphere (and don’t tell me about F.D.R. in ’36, because things were way better than in ’32). Does that mean Obama can’t win? No, it doesn’t. We’re not there yet.”