Someone once wrote that if you keep a diary and look back at what you wrote 20 years ago, you often find the stuff you thought was peripheral actually turned out to have been the most important. For example, you may have filled pages mooning over a now-forgotten Ralph or Susie, and just noted in passing a job that began your professional career. News is like that too. We don’t always see what’s most important. Most of us, so far as I can tell, are so focused on the daily clown show in Washington