RALEIGH — Because I spend much of my time encouraging constructive engagement across political difference, through such programs as Duke University’s North Carolina Leadership Forum, readers sometimes ask me if I think political differences are more appearance than reality — that if we just tried
In this case, however, my inspiration came not from the realization that something I wrote might deserve to be trashed. I’d already had that realization decades ago after penning one of my first columns, when its subject complained to me that I’d misquoted him, misunderstood his point, and even misspelled his name. Other than that, it seems, the article was decidedly mediocre.
