I know lots of people don’t like sound bites,
but if they are carefully chosen, they can be very nourishing.
My choice from the first television debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, for
example, would be the revealing replies of the two candidates
when Jim Lehrer asked them for a summing up of “the one thing
that you would like for voters to have in their mind” about them.
Dole said: “I think the best thing going for Bob Dole is that Bob
Dole keeps his word.” Clinton, by contrast, began by saying: “I’d
like the American people to know that I have worked very hard …”
It was enough. Here was a perfect summing up of the differences between them.
My deadline intervened before the third debate, but I can’t
imagine a better example of how Dole appeals to honor, Clinton to good
intentions. It is the old-fashioned, masculine culture versus
the newfangled, “feminized” therapeutic culture.

Clinton’s language in the debate was reminiscent of the time when, after
less than a month in office, he explained that he could not honor
his promise of a middle-class tax cut. “I’ve worked harder than I
ever worked in my life,” he began, as if it was churlish of
us to expect him to do as he said after he had suffered so much.
Elsewhere in the debate he said, “I take full responsibility for
what happened in Somalia, but …” and then proceeded to try to
shift it in