The price of freedom may be eternal vigilance, but it also requires a high tolerance for folly, a willing retention of disbelief, the patience to endure the seasonal inflations of rhetoric and emotion at election time. No campaign pleases everyone, and some seem to satisfy no one. The election battle just past certainly could not have pleased those who feel a desperate need for calm and reasoned debate of the issues.
For such citizens, this was a disheartening campaign. Sometimes it seemed as though the Republicans had nothing to cheer but fear itself (to twist a long-forgotten F.D.R. slogan), and...