I am happy to read that David Cameron, the Tory leader, considers himself an optimist by nature (“On Optimism,” October 13, 2007). I am also happy to read that optimism is the only way for Tories to go if they ever wish to come back on top of the British political scene. After all, that is obvious enough. But I am far from happy to read an entire diatribe on optimism as such in support of Cameron’s perfectly predictable ways. You go as far as to raise optimism to a treacherous fetish. Even Churchill, who preferred the past to the present and the present to the future, would prefer one future to another, and thus be an optimist in some sense of that word. Optimism in this, trivial, sense is perforce part of every human action, including preparations for political elections that are nigh impossible to win. Which is Cameron’s case, anyhow.