The last time I saw Bob Bork was the Sunday before Election Day. His familiar baritone was faint. You had to sit close to hear him, and he seemed to have a little difficulty following the conversation.

I'm in the camp that believes Republicans have no choice but to agree to raise taxes on the top 2 percent of earners. The party has been successfully caricatured as the servant of the rich.

Discussing the role of single people in the election of 2012 on my weekly podcast with Jay Nordlinger "Need to Know" (available on Ricochet.com or Nationalreview.com), your humble columnist chose the insensitive way to address it.

The incomparable Walter Russell Mead, writing in the American Interest, offered a glimpse into the coming dystopia:

Post-election season is a time for healing, for putting aside the rancor of a long campaign and rediscovering what unites us. It has not been that way this year.

Realistic Republicans understand that President Obama and the Democrats head into fiscal cliff negotiations in a far stronger bargaining position now than in 2011.

Our large cruise ship sailed within view of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a gathering of conservatives sponsored by National Review magazine considered the wreckage of the 2012 election.

The pundit world will now eviscerate Mitt Romney, a man who, had he garnered just a few hundred thousand more votes in a few key districts, would have been hailed as a political genius.

"I don't know," a very wise and skeptical Washington political analyst confided to me on Sunday as I limned the Romney victory I foresee. "I'd like to believe it," she said, "but I have to overlook a lot. If you're right, then a whole lotta state polls have to be wrong."

The first statements from the Obama administration about what happened in Benghazi seemed plausible.