Invention rarely occurs in an intellectual vacuum, and Marsalis knows it.

Where Moynihan would prove superior was in bringing his understanding to bear on debates that otherwise might have taken place in a kind of historical and intellectual vacuum.

Many here say that as a result, teachers simply drive away after their classes, leaving a social and intellectual vacuum on campus.

"There is an intellectual vacuum," said Yossi Olmert, a spokesman for the last Likud Government.

By now, it's no surprise to see Dan Quayle depicted as an intellectual vacuum.

"Do you realize that you managed to find perhaps the one place in the whole country that's an absolute intellectual vacuum?"

It represents not a foreign policy doctrine but an intellectual vacuum.

I think he did not mind living in an intellectual vacuum at home as long as he was physically comfortable there.

"Vanna leaves an intellectual vacuum, which can be filled by whatever the predisposition of the viewer happens to be," Koppel told me.

In that intellectual vacuum your party's foreign policy has been reduced to two crude, atavistic impulses, neither of which constitutes a coherent strategic vision.