The New New Democrats

FOR AN inauguration present, a friend gave me a paperback he had picked up at a used bookstore: The Miracle of Jimmy Carter, written by Howard Norton and Bob Slosser during the campaign of 1976.

As Bill Clinton’s inaugural week— or was it a month? —wore on, I found myself returning to The Miracle again and again. Of course I’m not the first fellow to note the similarities between Jimmy Carter and our new President. For all the JFK mannerisms—the jabbing finger, the soaring cadences, the roving eye—the ties that bind Bill Clinton to the man from Plains are far more portentous. None of us who slogged through the late Seventies can forget the steely wife and the pre-hippie daughter; the quotes from Bob Dylan; the tales of the bumpkin background (no indoor toilets!) packed with characters of extraordinary moral ardor.

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FOR AN inauguration present, a friend gave me a paperback he had picked up at a used bookstore: The Miracle of Jimmy Carter, written by Howard Norton and Bob Slosser during the campaign of 1976.

As Bill Clinton’s inaugural week— or was it a month? —wore on, I found myself returning to The Miracle again and again. Of course I’m not the first fellow to note the similarities between Jimmy Carter and our new President. For all the JFK mannerisms—the jabbing finger, the soaring cadences, the roving eye—the ties that bind Bill Clinton to the man from Plains are far more portentous. None of us who slogged through the late Seventies can forget the steely wife and the pre-hippie daughter; the quotes from Bob Dylan; the tales of the bumpkin background (no indoor toilets!) packed with characters of extraordinary moral ardor.