"You must have been a beautiful baby."
Hard to believe, but Paul Simon was, and his mother saved the yellowed newspaper clipping to prove it. Simon, then three, was voted the "prettiest boy baby" by his hometown paper, the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard, in 1932.
"But, baby, look at you now."
Not even Hans Christian Andersen could invent a presidential candidate as ugly-duckling as Simon: floppy earlobes, horn-rimmed glasses, a putty-like face and a bow tie. Yet the rumble-voiced Illinois Senator has magically emerged as a swan in the Democratic race, partly by playing on his rumpled lack of glamour. Staring into the camera at the end of the first Democratic debate in July, he intoned, "If you want a slick packaged product, I'm not your candidate. If you want someone who levels with you, who you can trust, I am your candidate." Something in that simple Simon sermon resonated with Democratic voters: authenticity in an age of image.
But there is a message that goes with the lack of packaging, one that appeals to a loyal segment of the Democratic Party weary of constant neo- identity crises. In late 1949, when Simon became eligible to vote, he wrote a column for the tiny weekly newspaper in Illinois that he published, explaining why he had become a Democrat. The year before, he had endorsed Republican Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman. His change of heart, the youthful Simon explained, came because he preferred the Democrats' commitment to "world peace" and "genuine world free trade" and faulted the Republicans for their backsliding on "civil rights" and their antilabor sentiments symbolized by the Taft-Hartley Act. The same thoughts and phrases echo in his speeches today. What distinguishes him in the current campaign is that, from his bow tie to his emphasis on creating jobs, Simon, 58, has remained faithful to Truman and to bedrock Democratic Party values.
The somewhat surprising result is that this first-term Senator from downstate Illinois, a college dropout whose education came as a crusading small-town newspaper editor, is suddenly no longer viewed as a presidential ego-tripper, the 1988 version of Alan Cranston. At least for the moment, he is running with Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt and Jesse Jackson at the front of the Democratic pack.
More than almost any other contemporary politician, Simon has left a paper trail of his philosophical career. For nearly 40 years, he has written weekly newspaper columns. Odd as it may seem in an as-told-to era, he has also written eleven books, banging them out on an ancient Royal typewriter that he inherited from his parents. Jeanne Simon, his wife, speculates that the books may be Simon's way of compensating for his lack of a college degree. "I think Paul in his writings is saying, 'I know what I'm doing,' " she explains. The range of book topics captures Simon's eclectic enthusiasms: an insightful chronicle of Abraham Lincoln's years in the Illinois legislature; a critique of Americans' disinterest in learning foreign languages; and a 1967 primer, written with Jeanne, a Roman Catholic, titled Protestant-Catholic Marriages Can Succeed. Several of his books capture Simon's earnest belief in self- improvement. A 1986 guide for young people, Beginnings, recommends these antidotes for loneliness: "walk through three stores . . . write a poem . . . take a shower."