They have a dream. For months now, Republicans have been nursing the hope that déjà vu may be on order, that their favorite year may be making a comeback, and that their nominee, after numerous trials, may be riding a late-breaking wave. Democrats scoff, and predict the mirage will dissipate in the night mists of November 6. There are auguries pointing in both directions. Let us look at them, and see.

The Democratic president, a trim man in his 50s, was elected four years before as a long shot and novice; got his big boost in Iowa (Jimmy Carter practically invented the Iowa caucus), and campaigned on a promise of moral renewal: Carter as the corrective to the Watergate scandals, and a symbol of healing as one of a new wave of integrationist southern governors; Barack Obama as a semi-messiah far above politics and, being the son of an African father and a white mother from Kansas, as a symbol of healing made flesh. The Republican challenger, a fit man in his sixties with a great head of hair, had a major career in his past (as a venture capitalist, and as a film star) before turning to politics and becoming a governor. In the last cycle he was runner-up to a nominee who lost the general election, and he began his new run for president the minute the last vote was cast.