He didn't even take his shoes off. Nowadays national politicians, with one or two exceptions, all seem to have been pulped and pressed and rolled out from the same vat of mush, so that Al Trent Lamar John Gore Lott Alexander Kerry is indistinguishable from Chuck Don Tom Evan Hagel Nickles Harkin Bayh, or any other politician who might aspire to their lofty perch. Even in the sub-genus Southern Demagogue, the best that contemporary politics can offer up is David Duke, a creepy little pretty boy so starved for respectability that he's submitted to cosmetic surgery and campaigns with a blow drier in his car. Governor Wallace, needless to say, was a Brylcreem man. Jack Germond laments the change, not only in the quality of our pols but in the character of the journalists who cover them.
Politicians get the reporters they deserve.
Germond says, generously and perhaps not accurately, that today's generation of political reporters is every bit as skilled as his own. But their lifestyles are more disciplined. They tend to drink white wine or beer rather than Irish whiskey . . . Judging from my own, more limited experience, I do believe it, and the transformation has long been in train. Germond was in the bar, and one or two others, but every one else was in the hotel gym, queuing up for the StairMaster.