Great men seem to disappear suddenly, and minds withdraw into themselves.
But the lust for public office remains permanently intense, Tocqueville noted. Then they might pretend to represent more than just their own ambitions. Then they might claim to embody an actual Philosophy. It isn't much. Two weeks ago in Washington, Democratic Leadership Council president Al From held a press conference to report, as he is periodically wont to do, that President Clinton, the New Democrats' man among men, has been the dominant personality in American politics in the 1990s.