Two years ago, the young son of a British friend of mine asked a question that aston- ished and delighted his mid- die-aged father. "Daddy," the boy inquired, "can a man ever become prime minister in this coun- try?" From the boy's standpoint, it was a perfectly valid inquiry. A child of the 1980s, born after Margaret Thatcher's first elec- tion in 1979, entering nursery school around the time of her second electoral tri- umph in 1983, and old enough to scan the newspapers...