RICHARD COHEN

I have been around long enough to know that when large amounts of money are donated to politicians, something besides good government is expected in return.

After his reelection defeat [for Governor of Massachusetts] Dukakis had an empathy transplant. He emerged a more humane man, a person more amenable to the give-and-take of politics.

In a television age, the record is lame; it never catches up.

The assumption has to be that members of Congress are, like eunuchs in a harem, physically incapable of a conflict of interest.

[Ross Perot] thinks that proclaiming honesty is the same as being honest.

We simply cannot insist that race should not matter when everything in life argues that it does.

How can we decide matters of public policy when we cannot understand them?

The more Scott Walker campaigns, the more he proves he is not intellectually fit for the office he's seeking. He asserts innocent ignorance on matters he should by now know something about - a way of masking his apparent bigotry.

Much worse than the unavoidable inefficiencies of large government is the failure to fund the government we need.

Trump is unloved in his own house. A figure of ridicule, a theatrical creation, he is almost sympathetic. He was told by the greedy and the outright stupid that he would make a swell president. The Liar's Paradox has spun out of control, with liars lying to a liar who believed the lie. What would that be called? Fox News, I think.

Being an American is life-threatening. For various reasons, men and women here don't live as long as men and women in about two dozen other countries, including the ones we defeated in World War II - Japan, Germany and Italy.

Trump lies when confronted with the truth, since any crack in his narcissism might spread like an Ebola of the soul, and he would deflate like one of Macy's balloons on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.

I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry - and anger is discomforting. We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This, of course, is nonsense.

Large government is inevitably inefficient, but so, too, is large private enterprise.

Iran may or may not be the existential threat to Israel that Netanyahu insists it is. But a lessening of U.S. support for Israel certainly would be. With an indifferent America, Israel would become a lonely, frightening place.

The NRA has led the way in the mainstreaming of a demented gun ideology.

It is not true that Trump is nobody's fool. He is the GOP's.

Evil comes in through the cable and through the Internet. We look forward to the advent of driverless cars. But they can be hacked. You could be riding along, and some 14-year-old in Romania takes over your car, so you end up running the lights and losing your brakes or, worse, listening to Eminem. What's the purpose?

A presidential candidate needs a slogan.

With a sinking feeling, I have come to a horrible conclusion: I am addicted to Donald Trump.

I value my education, but I cannot put a value on it. I know it has been worth some money to me - I don't think 'The Post' would have hired me if I had lacked a degree - but I probably could have earned about the same if I had stayed in the insurance business, where I worked while going to college at night.

Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He's got his eye on 2020.

Trump critics such as myself have been accused of living in a bubble. On the contrary, it is Trump's supporters in the 1 percent who breathed their own fumes.

The ultimate question is whether the name Donald Trump will be attached to an era - whether he will so change America that it will never be the same afterward.