Blithering nonsense like the suggestion that a politician advancing his career is an insult Hamilton s own generation indeed spent a great deal of time asserting that politicians did not have careers nor advance them but were bashful Cincinnati feebly resisting the importunities of their friends We are not writing for the eighteenth century but for the twentyfirst we need not keep up the act especially when discussing such comparatively modern politicians as Lodge or Vandenberg it would of course be equally true of Democrats like Cleveland or Bryan or Truman The suggestion that this is a liberal POV displays all too clearly the defensive partisanship that Equinox brings to this discussion PMAnderson