ABSTRACT
Gusts of December wind were blowing a stiff, dirty candy-wrapper scratching across the runway when in 1971 a straight, tall, self-contained man, his head slightly inclined, eased himself down the ramp from the Eastern shuttle at La Guardia. It was the end of 1971, and after a full year of campaigning to become a symbol of return to moral idealism in America, George McGovern was still gathering only 3 or 4 percent in the polls. The "new politics" is the old politics using new moral symbolism according to the tastes, affectations, and scruples of a new educated class. To understand the current relations between morality and moralism one must grasp the character of this growing class of voters, the "constituency of change". In an age when the media have commercial reason to stress what is "new", intelligent self-defense requires skepticism about the depth and the reality of "change".
