And so Safire bows out to pursue progress, oddly

Indeed, his exit from the political punditry scene is none too soon, mostly for him, I think, as he was not making converts from the left, and doing no good for the right. I sense that perhaps his otherworldliness may not stem from Alzheimer's so much as a need to believe in the positive, a drive to underscore the possible in even so skewed and damaged a system as ours. He has hopes for the future, and he is like a new father in his optimism about American politics. Well, let's hope for his sake that's what it is. For others, such as David Brooks, I would not spend the mental coin to break their fall, but at least for Safire, as a fellow lover of words, I'll look the other way for a moment.