I know lots of people don’t like sound bites, but if they are carefully chosen, they can be very nourishing. My choice from the first television debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, for example, would be the revealing replies of the two candidates when Jim Lehrer asked them for a summing up of “the one thing that you would like for voters to have in their mind” about them. Dole said: “I think the best thing going for Bob Dole is that Bob Dole keeps his word.” Clinton, by contrast, began by saying: “I’d like the American people to know that I have worked very hard …” It was enough. Here was a perfect summing up of the differences between them. My deadline intervened before the third debate, but I can’t imagine a better example of how Dole appeals to honor, Clinton to good intentions. It is the old-fashioned, masculine culture versus the newfangled, “feminized” therapeutic culture.

Clint ...

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