Prairie fire

Speaking of elitism, the Bush campaign has done a pretty good job of portraying John Kerry as a snooty, French-speaking Ivy Leaguer. John F. Kennedy -- whom you write very fondly about -- was from an even more privileged New England, but he had a gift for electrifying the American public. What can today's JFK learn about campaigning from the 1960s JFK?

John F. Kennedy had a love of history and language. He came to politics by way of literature, and that was electrifying to me in the fall of 1960. He was a war hero who had a gift of public grace and utterance, which was quite remarkable, compared to the huffing and puffing of Richard Nixon, a cartoon pol. John Kerry has a similar gift of grace; you listen to him and you know there's somebody home, the lights are on, the elevator is working. This is electric, compared to George W. Bush, who is the shallowest man to occupy the White House since Calvin Coolidge. Kerry is a real trouper. He had to overcome a ton of dismal press last winter, is up against the Republican radio machine, which didn't exist in 1960, seems to enjoy crowds and hoopla, and compared to Mr. Bush, the Speaker of Very Short Sentences, Mr. Kerry is positively Churchillian. I think his snoot is a pretty regular snoot.

You write that "this is the year for passion." But that's not a word widely associated with John Kerry. This week, for instance, Kerry repudiated MoveOn.org's passionate TV ad against George Bush's cushy and spotty military service. And it took him weeks to fire back at his Republican swift boat critics. Do Democratic presidential candidates tend to be too reasonable and too reluctant to get down in the muck of electoral politics like the win-at-any-cost Republicans?

You're thinking about Gov. Dukakis [in 1988] and maybe President Carter in 1980. John Kerry has plenty of passion, but there's no need to spend it on trivia like Mr. Bush's military record, which is only important to Michael Moore and the carpet chewers. (And someday to the historians.) No need to expend passion on the Republicans' attempt to trash Mr. Kerry's military record either -- that speaks for itself. What is worth being passionate about is the tide of inequity in America, the ritual bleeding of the middle class, our national insecurity, and the administration's bullheaded ignorance in foreign policy that has gotten us -- not irredeemably, I hope -- into a religious war against Islam that could easily occupy us for the next 20 years and change our lives in a hundred ways, including the reintroduction of the military draft.

What a disaster this shallow and deceitful president has been! But Mr. Kerry is wise enough to know that reasonableness and high principle must anchor his campaign. Anger doesn't play so well as a theme in presidential politics. And much depends on fate. He is jousting, showing the colors, rallying the faithful, and biding his time.

You write eloquently about the importance of public institutions -- like schools, libraries and transportation -- and how in the age of Republican privatization they have become an endangered species. Why is it so essential for Americans to fight to preserve them?

Without them, we begin to slide backwards down the slippery slope toward a country of walled compounds like in the Middle Ages, in which the nobles and gentry live in fear of bloodthirsty peasants with their big cudgels and roving brigands and the hated infidels. I'd rather live in St. Paul.

You suggest that all social progress in the past century -- civil rights, women's rights, clean air -- is the work of Democrats. Can you think of one important contribution made by the Republicans?

Many. Richard Nixon was a good deal responsible for the Environmental Protection Agency and the push to clean up the Great Lakes. The conservation movement that paved the way, so to speak, for the whole Green agenda was very much a Republican thing. The Americans With Disabilities Act, which gave us Handi-vans and wheelchair-accessible facilities and those little ramps carved into the curbs, was brought about by Republicans (and Democrats). Republicans have been good critics of government, and good satirists at times. Republican libertarianism is a useful antidote to our Democratic/neurotic tendency to want to put up a warning sign on uneven terrain and make cowboys do their whooping in designated whooping areas. Republicans used to contribute a lot, back before they let the fanatics and teeth grinders take over and turn their party into the Leave Me Alone party, intent on proving that government is inherently inept, and they've done such damage to America in the past decade that will take a century of saints to fix.

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