Four More Years

television is never in itself decisive. I learned this in 1972, when New York’s most notorious TV operative confided to me how he would make John Lindsay president. In ’84, the two debates showed Ronald Reagan as a man whose touch with reality is tenuous. Mondale, on the other hand, pulled himself together with grace, bite, and self-control once the nightmarish Democratic selection process was over. The voters preferred Reagan, not because his voice was more soothing, but...