Speaking of empathy, which nobody has so far in the Supreme Court nomination of the Wise Jewess but just you wait, I came across this in the archives while searching for something else. Empathy, it seems, is another of those things that are only O.K. If You’re A Republican.

Let’s take a stroll down history lane with Irving Kristol’s little boy Billy, okay?

In other words, this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country. Conservatives and the Republican Party will have a real chance for a comeback — unless the skills of the new president turn what was primarily an anti-Bush vote into the basis for a new liberal governing era.

Those were my thoughts when, a few minutes into his victory speech, just after midnight, Obama told his daughters, “And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.”

I gulped.

Not out of my deep affection for dogs, fond of them though I am. But because while we’ve all known that Obama is a very skillful politician, he hasn’t until now been a particularly empathetic one. Competence plus warmth is a pretty potent combination. Suddenly visions of the two great modern realigning presidents — Franklin Roosevelt (with his Scottish terrier Fala) and Ronald Reagan (with his Cavalier King Charles spaniel Rex) — flashed before my eyes. Maybe a realignment could be coming.

(Ed. note: FDR wasn’t a Republican, of course, but then nobody ever accused Kristol of coherence.)