CITIZEN DOCTOROW

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Citizen Doctorow
as a conservative. We jogged in place during their terms of
office. Nobody in America can remember where they were
during Mr. Carter’s term, or what they were doing, or if
they had any waking life at all. Mr. Carter’s biblical fundamentalism
gave him exceptional patience in the negotiation
of a peace between Israel and Egypt, but Washington
looked nothing like the Sinai and did not inspire him. The
ancient Near East was his glory and, with the failed desert
operation to rescue the hostages in Iran, his downfall. He
did define human rights as a factor in international relations,
but did not become an honorable champion of the
idea until he had left office. His vapidity is remembered,
like the nervous smiles flitting across his face, as an invitation
to the electorate to bring in the wolves of the right
who had all this time been pacing back and forth and fitfully
baying in the darkness beyond the campsite.
And so in 1980 we found ourselves living the mystery
of Ronald Reagan.
With not much more than his chuckles and shrugs and
grins and little jokes, Mr. Reagan managed in two elections
to persuade a majority of the white working/middle class to
vote against their own interests. The old self-caricaturing
B-movie actor had the amazing capacity to destroy people’s
lives without losing their loyalty. He was said to go blank
without a script, and his political opponents could think of