Stumbling Along with Carter

The word fans out over the media from Washington and suddenly an impression, crystallized in a few phrases, is perceived as an established condition. It cannot be traced back to particular events or a single source, and sometimes it seems to reflect a collective solipsism creating its own nonreferential truth. One can understand the disposition of political paranoiacs of both the far left and far right to believe that somewhere there is a center coordinating the opinions relayed by TV broadca...