It all started when the late, great Lloyd Stevenson said to me, "Oh, how Whiggish of you!" I was all of twenty-five years old, making some silly point about the originality of someone else's research and Dr. Stevenson was quick to point out how completely wrong I was, like a Whig who measured the past using today's yardstick.

I grew up in a Republican family that read National Review, benefited from political patronage working at Jones Beach State Park every summer after high school, and then somehow, turned into a Democrat by the time I was in graduate school.