That didn’t mean he was an ill-natured or entirely uncharitable man, just one who seemed to have a hole in his thinking. He had not been a good father to his children. Through either selfishness or ineptitude, he often left them to their own devices, even when they foundered on the wayside. I had never understood this obvious character defect in him. I sometimes wondered if the blood he had shed had made him incapable of love. He hid behind flippancy and cynicism. He rated all politicians “somewhere between mediocre and piss-poor.” His first wife had “a face that could make a freight train
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