Have you met Phil Neal, the former dean of the University of Chicago Law School? I discuss him in Impromptus today. He is a reader, and came to an NR/NRO event in Chicago last week. Dean Neal is Harvard College, Class of 1940 — same as JFK. The two young men served on the Union Committee together. And, in a race for student council, Neal beat him, badly. It was the only race JFK ever lost.

Neal clerked for Justice Robert Jackson, and this prompted a discussion between us of the old liberalism versus the new. Jackson was a marvelous old-style liberal, and it is my opinion that he would be regarded as a raging, Cheney-esque conservative today. And what about JFK? Would he have stayed his kind of liberal, or would he have evolved, along with his party? Another way of putting this is: Would JFK have ended up like EMK? A McGovernite (to use a convenient shorthand)?

I was reminded of something my friend and comrade Mike Potemra came up with, a long time ago: the Jacksonian Theory of the Democratic Party, whereby the Democrats went from Andrew Jackson to Scoop Jackson to Jesse Jackson. Mike said that in the 1980s, I believe. Who will be the next Jackson?