Congratulations to Ross Douthat, who will be replacing Bill Kristol at The New York Times. It's a great choice for many reasons, but what I've come to appreciate most in Ross's writing and look forward to most in his column is his deeply held and well-defended faith. One of the great failings of political commentary is the rarity with which the religious conservative viewpoint is articulated on its own intellectual terms. That is, I imagine, because deeply-held religious beliefs are relatively rare -- and even considered somewhat uncouth -- among the urban elites who dominate the pundit class. At the end of the day, Bill Kristol was culturally much closer to me than to a churchgoing conservative, and his engagement with that chunk of the GOP -- a huge chunk, incidentally -- was limited to defending the legitimacy of their political power rather than providing insight into their beliefs. But that insight is important, and Ross, I think, will be able to help provide it. The other point worth making is that though Ross has, of course, written two books and a bevy of magazine articles, he's also spent the last five-odd years as a dedicated and brilliant blogger, and his ascension to the Times op-ed page suggests that the medium's respectability has come a very long way in a very short time.
