To say Ross Douthat lacks that spark is like saying that a rainstorm lacks dryness. He’s going to have longtime 60 Minutes fans running to the Necronomicon to try and raise the spirit of Andy Rooney. Douthat saw himself as a bulwark against the elite consensus, a sort of fifth columnist within its highest temple. [Elite consensus] blundered in foreign policy because it didn’t expect the non-Western world to push back so hard against its plans. This is one hell of a sentence to write when we’re mired in Donald Trump’s foreign policy of violent bullying and random undeclared wars.