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Kurt Anderson in Aspen:
...I neither loved nor hated Clinton when he was in office, but I have to say, watching him onstage in Aspen, I was, like the rest of the audience, staggered by his display of the virtues his successor so manifestly lacks—detailed knowledge, lucidity, intellectual agility, easy humor, comfort in his own skin.
Is it corny or pointless to wish we had a president like that? Or like Colin Powell? They are wise men. Their equally nonideological raps were of a piece with the event’s prevailing spirit of nuance, candor, dignity, and sober-sided uncertainty. One could imagine, in the clear, dry air of Aspen, that informative, even constructive discussion and debate is not an impossible artifact of a bygone age.