Jim Carignan is a virtuoso on his four-note piano. The notes are racism, higher taxes, teachers’ unions and – that old favorite – Bush bashing.

In his last column (March 3), after a brief introduction on the racism key, he segued smoothly into a piece about, on the surface, Lincoln and the qualities of his greatness. The real subject was his perception that President Bush lacks all those qualities.

I found Carignan’s piece readable and instructive, where he stuck to Abe. But he knew from long experience at Bates that he couldn’t hold the wandering attention of his pupils with just a history lesson. So he added a liberal sprinkling of his literary smirks.

His column suffers most from the fault that the good professor has demonstrated time after time: He finds what’s wrong, in his opinion, but offers no suggestions at all on how to fix it. Just how do we “create the modern Lincolns?” Mercifully, he restrained himself from calling for higher taxes and more union pandering.

Maybe he will give the answer in his next piece. Let’s hope that it has more depth than his one-note samba: Get rid of Bush and elect Democrats.

Michael LeBlanc, East Wilton