ABSTRACT
Like humans in other ages, people tend to go along with the stories current in their culture. Even the exception proves the rule: a legend strong in the mythology is the story of the maverick, the lone individual bucking the tide of society, finding his own way, attracting one's interest as a prophet or a symbol or a warning. The story of politics as conflict has distorted and diverted Presidential politics repeatedly. The transformation of the election from an event to a saga set the stage for the appearance of new militant vocabularies, as campaign organizations maneuvered over the expanded primary terrain, month after month, exercising their logistics and strategies to build momentum and avoid erosion. Political observers of the "realist" school are forever underrating the problem of conciliation in American democracy. The vision of the intellectual in America has too often in recent years been narrowly focused on technical specialities or diffused in romantic or cynical generalities.
