The three words you are least likely to hear from an academic are “I was wrong”. My profession makes a virtue of consistency to the extent that always being wrong is considered superior to just occasionally changing your mind.

“The press takes Trump literally, but not seriously. Voters take him seriously, but not literally.” This, by Salena Zito, was the smartest thing written about the 2016 election and deserves a place in every dictionary of quotations.

“The business of America is business,” said President Calvin Coolidge. “What is good for General Motors is good for the country and vice versa,” said Charles “Engine Charlie” Wilson, President Dwight Eisenhower’s defence secretary.

What a Kissinger-inspired strategy might look like.

A radical change in US foreign policy by the incoming president could lead to fresh alliances between the three superpowers and the ruthless dropping of old allegiances

With Hillary Clinton’s lead in national polls erased by the return of her email server to the front pages, a ghastly question tortures my liberal friends — not to mention those of us on the other side who signed the “Never Trump” letter back in March: could Donald Trump become the 45th president of the United States?

The race was tightening even before Friday’s surprise — the news that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s classified emails was not dead, just resting. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, her lead over Donald Trump is 4.6 points, down from 7.1 two weeks ago.

The presidential duel looks different when viewed from Asia, where I spent last week.

Increasingly, as his presidential campaign flames out, Donald Trump is the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 of US politics — a phone so hurriedly assembled that it spontaneously combusts.