Dick Gephardt’s new book won’t get much attention since the ranking House Democrat decided several months ago not to run for his party’s presidential nomination. There’s probably no book quite so deservedly forlorn as the campaign biography without a campaign. Nonetheless, the Gephardt volume merits a footnote in the history of the genre for its ingenious title, An Even Better Place: America in the 21st Century. That “even better” is a piece of unparalleled craftsmanship. It manages the dual and seemingly confounding tasks of suggesting an upbeat “vision” for the future without being even microscopically critical of the present — i.e., the Clinton utopia, which it is now Democratic party dogma to praise as perhaps the finest epoch in American history. We salute the nameless dozens of Gephardt staffers responsible.
