THE POLITICS OF POLITESSE.(escalation of Presidential niceness)

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 guest of the postwar era.

Now we have George W. Bush, who earlier this month sent out a million Hallmark Christmas cards to donors and Party stalwarts, each one tastefully adorned with a painting of the White House grand piano and an inscription, from Psalm 100, about the Lord's mercy and truth enduring "to all generations." What could be nicer? Clinton, in his final year, sent out four hundred thousand cards, and Eisenhower, who pioneered the tradition, sent out just eleven hundred, which means, for those of you connecting the dots, that the growth of Presidential niceness has not been merely linear. It has been exponential. And we are now in the steep part of the curve.

Just why our Presidents have been acting nicer is a good question, particularly since lots of thoughtful people (many, one suspects, of the sort to have made the President's Christmas-card list) maintain that as a society we've lost our manners. Presidential niceness--the explosion of personal touches and gracious notes-- is evidently counter-cyclical; or, more precisely, the matter of their niceness is unrelated to the matter of our niceness.Our movies are becoming more and more tasteless; our culture grows debased. We're getting coarser. They're getting nicer.

Nor is this niceness the traditional politician's politesse. Politics is about favors and privileges exchanged for votes. Politicians are generous toward us when it is in their interest to be so. It is the generosity of the salesman toward a customer. In politics, relationships are instrumental, and you could be as grouchy and sour as Richard Nixon and still play this game to perfection. The escalation of Presidential niceness represents something else: the rise of the politician as friend, whereby our ...