Does Bill Clinton have Ben Franklin's mystique?

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

Benjamin Franklin, whose 300th birthday several weeks ago is prompting exhibits, documentaries and events in Philadelphia and beyond, is such a celebrated national figure because his life was characterized by a quintessentially American combination of substance and style, says Gerald Wilson, history professor at Duke University, Durham, N.C. Franklin embodied the virtues popularly attributed to Americans: the entrepreneurial spirit of a self-made publisher, a pragmatic approach to science that produced the lightning rod and bifocals, and practical wisdom doled out in Poor Richard's Almanac.

"There was a great deal of substance there, but it was also well-packaged," explains Wilson, the senior associate dean of Duke's Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. He points to the writing in Poor Richard's Almanac--"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise"--as an early example of an American style that later would be exemplified through author Mark Twain's...