Quote/Unquote 2005 Oct.

The woman cutting my hair asked me what I do for a living. I told her I was about to start a brand new job as a history professor. I still grin every time I say that. No doubt the thrill wears off in time, but after mumble-mumble years of grad school and three consecutive bouts with the job market, I gotta tell you, it feels great to be a professor. OK, assistant professor, whatever. It’s faculty, baby, and it is fine by me.

“Wow,” the hairdresser said. “A history professor. You must be really good at math!”

That threw me. “Math? Why do you say that?”

“Oh, because of all the numbers you must have to remember.”

If 100 ... people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Ms. Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

[Doris Kearns] Goodwin's publicity blitzkrieg includes a visit to ''The Daily Show." I would love to see Jon Stewart prop up her book on his desk, as he often does with authors, and then swivel his chair toward his guest, sitting demurely on the couch. In my imagination, Stewart asks: ''So, Doris, tell me -- how much of this did you write yourself?" A man can dream, can't he?

No matter what Mr. Putin decides, there already are indications that time may ultimately do what no politician has yet achieved. The youngest Russian adults barely recall the Communist times, and some show little interest in looking back.

"Lenin," mused Natasha Zakharova, 23, as she walked off Red Square on Tuesday, admitting that she was not quite sure whose body she had just seen."Was he a Communist?"

As for Bush's intellect, he continually outfoxes his opponents. I liken him very much to George Washington during the combat in the Revolution, where he just seemed to be smart enough to avoid defeat until it was time to crush the enemy. Poor ol' Brer George. He just convinces the Dems to keep putting him in dat briar patch. They said the same things of Reagan that they say of Bush.

With the nomination yesterday of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, President Bush has fulfilled his promise to appoint Justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Or has he? The only person who can say for sure seems to be the President himself, who has known Ms. Miers for 20 years as his personal attorney and White House adviser. For the rest of us, the nominee is mostly a Texas mystery.