Charting the Big Shift

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Said Hart in Birmingham last week: "I would say the principal difference is one of outlook. It's the formative experience an individual's generation goes through. For many people my age and younger, Viet Nam, the assassinations, Watergate...have been very powerful." He has a point: Mondale, 56, is a young member of the New Deal generation, while Hart, 47, is an old man in his 1960s cohort. Youngish voters clearly see Hart on their side of the epochal line. Charles Reed, 42, an aide to Florida Governor Robert Graham, was a bit cautious about Hart but not about the political winds he is riding. "We still don't know everything about Hart," Reed said. "But if he holds up under scrutiny, and this generation takes him as theirs, then it could be the start of a fire storm." —By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Sam All is with Mondale and Jack E. White with Hart, and other bureaus