THE POLITICS OF POLITESSE.(escalation of Presidential niceness)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 23-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

One of the most striking trends in American politics in recent years has been the steady escalation in niceness coming from the White House. The baseline was set by Johnson and Nixon, who were, dispositionally, at the historical norm. Then there was Jimmy Carter, who had a kind of Sunday-school-teacher bonhomie (although one suspects that, on the eve of the White House Christmas party, he spent a little too much time working out who had been naughty and who had been nice). After Carter, the trend line starts to move upward: we had the abundantly genial Ronald Reagan, with his jars of jelly beans; George H. W. Bush, the master of the handwritten thank-you note; and Bill Clinton, the most charming and prolix Presidential dinner...

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