When archaeologists from Alpha Centauri alight on earth and begin excavating the rubble of our world, they will be astonished to find, on reaching the stratum circa 1996, that they have stumbled upon a civilization that at the same time produced 1) Dick Morris and 2) pictures of Jupiter's largest moon (430 million miles away) taken from a distance of 162 miles.
Our quadrennial immersion in the ridiculous that is the American election campaign tends to overshadow the occasional eruption of the sublime in our national life. Yet three such eruptions have occurred this year. All three will be remembered long...