Of Myth and Memory

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Ronald Reagan, a genius at this kind of thing, managed to recrystalize the national morale through his evocations of a simple and virtuous small-town America. He performed an optical illusion that was the equivalent of having Mickey Rooney, as Andy Hardy, standing tall in the saddle. That has been one trouble with Reaganistic good feeling: a suspicion that it was based upon camera angle.

The evocations of the election of 1960 are a somewhat more youthful play upon the illusion, and more self-serving. Those candidates who have evoked the 1960 election were calling back not a time or place so much as a glamorous man -- John Kennedy.

James Joyce had a lovely phrase in Finnegans Wake: "The hereweareagain gaieties." A Kennedy campaign always had the hereweareagain gaieties, that Irish quality of politics as frolic, overlaid with a unique elegance and a ruthlessness that advanced upon you with the brightest of teeth. No wonder that in the presidential campaign of 1988, Americans feel a nostalgia for the festive in their politics. American politics used to be fun. Once upon a time, lively, funny people practiced the art. In a priceless line about the 1988 race, Robert Strauss, former Democratic Party chairman and an accomplished humorist, said Dukakis reminded him of Cary Grant. Depressingly, Strauss was not trying to be funny.

In gloomy moments, one believes that some alchemy of television packaging and American decline in the world has ruined presidential politics and turned it into a dreary and cynical transaction. After eight years of a former actor in the White House, perhaps it is just as well that neither candidate this time behaves remotely like an entertainer. Who ever said that the President of the United States had to be charming?

The example of John Kennedy said so, and the message is implanted in the collective memory.

BUSH: INTO THE COUNTRY

Chet Atkins, on a stage in the bright sunshine of Jackson, Tenn., is warming up the crowd. He stands with Pat Boone in front of the Old Country Store in Casey Jones Village, named for the famous train engineer who lived there at the turn of the century. Atkins, the genius of American country guitar, is singing now: "Would Jesus wear a Rolex?"

George Bush and Dan Quayle materialize on the stage in brilliant early fall sunshine. Great cheers, but little warmth for Quayle, who walks on like an inexplicable mistake in the illusion.