Perspective

I was thinking of writing about how last week it was revealed that the president’s aides had been talking up John Roberts for more than a year to build the ground work for his nomination. Or maybe I was going to rant about how the New York Times printed a column using the word “scarily.” And I certainly wanted to mention today’s Post article about William Donald Schaffer again making nice with Ehrlich and remind readers that he endorsed George H.W. Bush for president all those years ago.

But I saw an exhibit at the Sackler Gallery about the caravan civilizations of the Arabian peninsula, their dynasties and kings, cultures and peoples. I had heard few of the names and know almost nothing of substance of the history. Truth be told, few of us can have a substantive discussion about more than a handful of things (if we’re lucky) that happened more than a couple of hundred years ago. And if we want to be really brutal in our honesty, we realize that few know well the greatest leaders of the generation past or know more than vaguely the lessons learned by history in the past few decades. So in a hundred years or in a thousand, what will we remember?

It kind of puts our politics in perspective.