Dobbs leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. "How to put it? Well, first, my constituents. The people of the great state of Connecticut are mainly interested in keeping the insurance industry happy and making sure that when ships and weapons get built, they get built in the great state of Connecticut, as a result of which I spend most of my time on the Banking and Armed Services Committees. In my spare time, I try to do an occasional favor for the United States. As far as personally goes, in 1963, I was at Yale. I'd worked on the presidential campaign in Hartford, and my family had some connections in the past with Jack Kennedy. I'd actually shaken his hand, once, when he was in the Senate. I remember I told him that I was interested in politics and that I was off to Yale that year, and he laughed and told me that if I worked hard I could overcome even that obstacle. I was in Dwight eating a sandwich when some kid ran into the dining room and yelled out that Kennedy'd been shot in Dallas. I went into shock-well, everybody did, really, but I guess I imagined mine was worse. My dad had just passed on that summer and I suppose I conflated the two losses in my mind. It was an extremely bad year for me; I nearly flunked out, as a matter of fact, and had to repeat the semester. Okay, that's personal aspects. There's a political aspect too. I think practically everyone understands that when Kennedy was assassinated, the country started on a downward slope. I think it had more of an effect on the country than Lincoln's did, because Lincoln had mainly finished his work and Kennedy had barely started his. Not that I'm comparing Kennedy to Lincoln-that's not the point. The point is that the country was tipped out of one track and into another, which we're still on and which is no good."