The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians: A Revisionist History By David Leon Chandler Doubleday, 373 pp., $10 One hundred pages into this paean to Jimmy Carter’s metapolitical ancestors, I recalled the scene from Mel Brook’s first classic, The Producers, in which a manic postwar Nazi loon goes berserk when someone mentions Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler in the same breath. “Shurshill!” he explodes. “Let me tell you somezing. Shurshill was never in Hitler’s class. Hitler was a better dresser than Shurshill, Hitler was a better dancer than Shurshill, Hitler could tell a better joke than Shurshill!”
If you’re a reader who takes book titles lightly, be forewarned that, yes, it is David Leon Chandler’s thesis that Daniel Webster was never in John C. Calhoun’s class; that Jefferson was a better dresser than Hamilton; that John Randolph was a better dancer than John Quincy Adams; and that, more recently, Sam Ervin could tell a better joke than Ev Dirksen.
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