On from Liberalism

On a bright June day, under three tufts and puffs of cloud hanging breathless in a hot blue sky, the members of the Dover (N.H.) High School class of ’83 assembled on the infield of the freshly chalked track to receive their diplomas and attend to the words of Walter Mondale, commencement speaker, and seeker in seven and a half months of the votes of their parents. The graduates were less interested in him than in skimming mortarboards and hailing friends and family in the bleachers; probably friends and family were less interested as well. Mondale was not the only distraction. The mayor of Dover, a blunt-spoken man with a granite accent, also took the mantle of Nestor to tell the class of ’83 that they were crossing a divide; before, they had been the responsibility of others, chiefly their parents; but from that day on, they would be strictly on their own. “And heaven forbid,” the mayor warned, “you’ll ever have to ask your government to take care of you.” Mondale remained calm.

Run your fingers along your nose. Feel, a quarter of the way down the bridge, the indentations where the bones stop. That is where Walter Mondale’s voice emerges. I do not mock, I am a fellow sufferer. The Midwestern twang starts about Schenectady; I come from Rochester. Linguists know how far west it reaches; it surely peaks in Minnesota. Fortune also gave him baleful, fishy eyes; fortune and high-school football (at which he excelled), a nose that looks like a failed design for a can opener. He makes it up on his hair—once brown, now greying, smooth and handsome as a badger-tail shaving brush. On his hair and his smile, which lights up a face normally prone to overcast.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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On a bright June day, under three tufts and puffs of cloud hanging breathless in a hot blue sky, the members of the Dover (N.H.) High School class of ’83 assembled on the infield of the freshly chalked track to receive their diplomas and attend to the words of Walter Mondale, commencement speaker, and seeker in seven and a half months of the votes of their parents. The graduates were less interested in him than in skimming mortarboards and hailing friends and family in the bleachers; probably friends and family were less interested as well. Mondale was not the only distraction. The mayor of Dover, a blunt-spoken man with a granite accent, also took the mantle of Nestor to tell the class of ’83 that they were crossing a divide; before, they had been the responsibility of others, chiefly their parents; but from that day on, they would be strictly on their own. “And heaven forbid,” the mayor warned, “you’ll ever have to ask your government to take care of you.” Mondale remained calm.

Run your fingers along your nose. Feel, a quarter of the way down the bridge, the indentations where the bones stop. That is where Walter Mondale’s voice emerges. I do not mock, I am a fellow sufferer. The Midwestern twang starts about Schenectady; I come from Rochester. Linguists know how far west it reaches; it surely peaks in Minnesota. Fortune also gave him baleful, fishy eyes; fortune and high-school football (at which he excelled), a nose that looks like a failed design for a can opener. He makes it up on his hair—once brown, now greying, smooth and handsome as a badger-tail shaving brush. On his hair and his smile, which lights up a face normally prone to overcast.