At First Glance

Suppose the Golem had been made, not of the clay that legend has it, but of plastic: what would have been his fate? Well, he might have been elected president and as he acquiesced in the engineering of a depression that has thrown mil- lions out of work and cut off vast numbers of children from lunch programs, some people would still have said, “But he’s a nice guy.”

Why? Because he smilingly remembers one-liners from the days he made speeches for General Electric, on...