‘Oops. I Told the Truth.’: “The one thing that has gone totally missing, not only from this election, but from American politics, is national leaders who are actually ready to level with the public and even criticize their own constituencies. The columnist Michael Kinsley once observed that in American politics ‘a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.’ We could use a few really big gaffes right now. Because we have not one, but three baby booms bearing down at us, and without a massive injection of truth-telling they could all explode on the next president’s watch.” — Thomas Friedman (New York Times op-ed)