"No character" --quote from Heller's "Catch-22"

Thanks to singer-comedienne Bette Midler for circulating this quote from Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22, in which he describes one of his characters thus:

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all.   It merely required no character.” — Joseph Heller, Catch-22

I ran across this just after finishing the post summarizing David Brooks' comments about Barack Obama's character.   What a difference -- and what a difference it makes in a president.

Ralph