McCain gave a terrific concession speech Tuesday evening, as you know. What made it so good? One reason could be this:

Taking The Tics Out Of Politics In an earlier post we commented on the stunning array of tics, twitches and jaw-clenches that played across John McCain's face during the campaign. If you study the tape of his concession speech on election night, though, you'll see very little of that kind of body language. Why? Where did it go? The answer is simple but has profound consequences for health and happiness. The reason McCain's facial flickers were so quiet is that he wasn't trying to be two people at once. It requires body tension to feel anger but pretend it isn't there. It takes effort to seal off fear, and even more effort to whistle along pretending it was never there. "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways," says the Book of James, and during the campaign, McCain's instability played across his face incessantly. Now, though, John McCain does not have to pretend to be anything he isn't. He doesn't have to be an honorable man trying to live inside his skin with a fear-mongering alien bent on winning by sowing seeds of hate. He's the better for it, and so are we.