There were at least five of them. The most notable were in Illinois, where Adlai Stevenson accused his opponent, Gov. James Thompson, of attempting to portray him as "some kind of wimp"; and in Maryland, where Larry Hogan accused Sen. Paul Sarbanes of being a "wimp and inept."

Now, how did "wimp" become the operative word of American politics? I know. Better than anyone else. Back in 1980, on Friday, March 14, to be precise, at 5:13, to be even more precise, I finished typing an editorial on a televised economics speech by President [Jimmy Carter]. I was not much impressed with the speech, which constituted yet another swerve in Carter economic policy and a wishy- washy one at that. But, bowing to the kinder collegial notions that govern editorial pages, I did not quite say so in the body of the editorial.

After all, the Baltimore Sun's Theo Lippman Jr., in a nationally syndicated column, called "Mush from the wimp" the second most famous newspaper headline of the 20th Century, supplanting "Ford to New York: Drop Dead" and bested only by the Great Crash headline: "Wall Street Lays an Egg."