I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t been too impressed by LeCarre’s overall body of work, but “Tinker Tailor” and “Smiley’s People” always leave me depressed because they’re so damned good.

Any one with any hopes of becoming a writer can’t help but be crushed when exposed to that level of competition. The TV miniseries starring Alec Guinness were more than up to the task of adapting the material for the screen, too. I stand in awe of both.

BTW, the recent theatrical feature with Gary Oldham wasn’t bad at all, but it really doesn’t come close to the TV series.

Peter Guillam: So Karla’s fireproof. He can’t be bought, and he can’t be beaten.

George Smiley: NOT fireproof! Because’s he’s a fanatic! I may have acted like a soft dolt, the very archetype of a flabby Western liberal but I’d rather be my kind of fool than his. One day that lack of moderation will be Karla’s downfall.

The indecision is unnecessary. No matter how much the Hard Right distrusts Romney, they loathe Obama more. Those votes are secure and the Liberal Obama loyalists will never be persuaded to vote GOP. Romney should be going after the middle, the swing voters. Instead, he seems to be doing everything he can to alienate them. Romney crushed the wingnut Right during his campaign for the nomination, but he apparently learned nothing, except to fear them.

When you are surrounded by True Believers, you gradually come to be persuaded that the world is filled with True Believers, with only a tiny cadre of your fanatical opponents determined to stop the inevitable march of History and Truth. The same zealotry that Romney seeks to exploit will be his undoing.

As Smiley said about Karla ‘He CAN be defeated, because he is a fanatic, and the fanatic is inflexible.”