That '70s candidate: Jimmy Carter with helmet hair.

• Author: Pitney, John J., Jr.
• Position: Elizabeth Dole

The decade of the 1970s is like a low-grade virus: Whenever we think we're over it, the symptoms return. This past season, the Fox network launched That '70s Show, a sitcom whose plots revolve around such things as Todd Rundgren concerts. At every wedding reception I've attended lately, they've played "YMCA," triggering that obligatory dance where you're supposed to mime the letters. (I always do it wrong, and end up looking like Koko the sign-language gorilla.) Even flare pants are back.

And Jimmy Carter is running for president again - only this time, his name is Elizabeth Dole.

It stands to reason. In Watergate's wake, people wanted the most un-Nixonian leader possible, and they found him in a Georgia peanut farmer who spoke of love, bragged of his status as a Washington outsider, and could say with a straight face, "I'll never lie to you." A similar phenomenon is at work today. Although Clinton's job approval numbers soared throughout Monicagate, Americans correctly judged his character to be the moral equivalent of a toxic waste dump. So in place of the wizard of id, they might be seeking someone who is utterly self-controlled - a leader who would again make the White House safe for interns.

Who better than Elizabeth Dole? Not only is she a woman, but it is hard to picture an immoral thought taking root beneath her hair helmet. Like Carter, she sports a smarmy manner and humorless grin that spell "the opposite of sex."

At this point, you may be wondering whether the Carter comparison is overdrawn. Like Carter in 1976, Dole can claim moral superiority to the winner of the last election. But in 1999, so can every other candidate. In fact, so can nearly everyone else on this planet, with the possible exception of Charles Manson. And come to think of it, Manson hasn't bombed any aspirin factories lately.

In Dole's case, however, the similarity to Carter goes beyond the ability to surpass a pitifully low moral threshold. It is with words that presidents govern, and her words bear a creepy likeness to Carter's.

Start with slogans. After Dole filed with the Federal Election Commission, her homepage (www.edole2000.org) featured these words: "The United States of America deserves a government worthy of its people." That's mighty close to Carter's promise of "a government as good as its people." In her announcement speech, she said, "We're beginning to lose faith in our own institutions. It's only a short step to losing faith in ourselves, and...