f a modern-day de Tocqueville paid a millennial visit to America, he might well conclude that when it comes to political ability, Southerners tower above their countrymen.
If you define the political South as the rough area of the old Confederacy, or as the Southern states that have set their presidential primaries on the same day to maximize regional clout, the area's domination is staggering to behold.
The president, of course, is a Southerner, as is the vice president.
Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, hails from Mississippi. Majority Whip Don Nickles comes from Oklahoma.
In the House, Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois presides, but Majority Whip Tom DeLay, a rock-ribbed Texas conservative, prevails. The majority leader's post is held by another right-leaning Texan, Richard Armey, while the House's chief budget-maker is Bill Archer, yet another Texas conservative.
Back to the presidency, four of the last six men elected -- Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, and Bill Clinton -- have hailed from the South or got their political start there.
So is geography destiny? Perhaps not. Although this year's front-runners, Republican Governor George W. Bush of Texas and Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee, are from that region, both are facing unexpectedly stiff challenges from men from other regions -- Arizona Senator John McCain and former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley.
Add to that the fact that this year, unlike in the recent past, pivotal primaries will occur before Southerners go to the polls en masse to vote their preferences. That is a key difference that could work to the advantage of McCain and especially Bradley.
What's undeniable is that more than a drawl separates the South from the rest of America. Kevin Phillips, who devised Richard Nixon's so-called ''Southern strategy'' in 1968, puts the difference this way: As a region, the South remains more agricultural, more patriotic, more religious, and more racially focused than the country as a whole.
Bill Carrick, former executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party and now a California-based political consultant, says a deep suspicion of government, a deeper patriotism, an antipathy toward government programs that benefit minorities, and a Protestant churchliness also help shape the politics of the South. (It's hard, for instance, to imagine a Northeastern candidate wearing his religion on his sleeve the way Bush and Gore have chosen to.)
Now, to be sure, Southern influence has had different effects on the two parties. ''In the case of the Democrats, the South has pulled the party toward the center,'' says political analyst William Schneider. ''In the case of the Republicans, the South has pulled the party away from the center.''
Still, if today's Southern Democrats tend to be mainstream moderates, they have been on a regional mission: In the 1980s, this group dedicated itself to taking the party back from Northern and Midwestern liberals. Thus Super Tuesday - the early March set of Southern primaries - and the Democratic Leadership Council, the political organization dedicated to a mainstream policy agenda - were created to forward that goal.
The Southerners can make a strong argument their political path paid off. President Clinton is the first twice-elected Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his success has left the Democrats stewards of a booming economy.
On the other hand, the Clinton-Gore era has hardly been a time of wine and roses for liberals, once a core Democratic primary constituency. The last seven years have seen the president endorse the notion that big government is bad, abandon a traditional Democratic commitment on welfare, and, as historians James MacGregor Burns and Georgia Sorenson point out in their book ''Dead Center,'' conduct a rear-guard rhetorical presidency that eschewed bold steps in favor of small, symbolic measures.
That's why it's noteworthy that the surprisingly strong challenge to Gore has come from a Democrat who has struck unapologetically liberal stands on health care, race relations, child poverty, and gun control.
If to be an elected Southern Democrat is to be a politician comfortable with minorities and coalition politics, to be a Southern Republican is to be a member of an overwhelmingly white party that has prospered in no small part as a conservative reaction to the civil rights movement.
The backlash against the Republican Congress that drove Clinton's reelection in 1996 and Democratic gains in 1998 illustrates the problem, and the question, for George W. Bush, whose family has roots in New England, but who, like his father, has made a business and political career in Texas: Have Southern Republicans become too far out of step with the rest of the country to be elected nationally?
Part of Bush's appeal is that, with his proven reach to Latinos, he seems to break that mold. And he's taken pains to distance himself from the excess of the Republican Congress.
Yet several of the stands Bush has taken as governor of Texas - signing a ''right to carry'' law legalizing concealed weapons, for example, or opposing a hate-crimes bill - could come back to haunt him in the general election. (As could Houston's worst-in-the-nation air quality; remember Pere Bush's use of polluted Boston Harbor against Michael Dukakis is 1988?)
On both sides, it's a changed primary calendar that may let those disagreements and doubts come into full relief.
The South has long played a pivotal role in the primaries, boosting Carter early in 1976 and sustaining him in 1980, for example. But the advent of Super Tuesday made the nomination process center around one preemptive question: Can a candidate play in the South?
If the answer was no, the curtain soon fell. In 1992, Paul Tsongas entered Super Tuesday as a leading contender, only to be swamped by Clinton's seven same-day Southern victories.
''Super Tuesday was meant to eliminate somebody like me,'' Tsongas said. He was right. But this year, in the rush to go early, other states have hopscotched over the South.
The big Southern primary day is March 14, when Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Mississippi all hold their contests.
Before those states have their say, however, March 7 looms. On that day, all of the New England states save New Hampshire hold their primaries, as do Ohio, Missouri, Maryland, and Georgia.
But the big prizes on March 7 are California and New York, the nation's most and third most populous states. They are the big reason that the day may well reshape this year's campaign.
Should the Southerners lose those states, candidates that had been considered front-runners will find themselves facing grave doubts about their electability.
For Gore, losing New York and California would be a torpedo to his plausibility, since a Democrat will likely need both states to prevail in November. With a New Hampshire win, Bradley would be posed to sweep New England and lock in New York, where he is currently about even with Gore.
Thus California is key, says Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
''If Bradley loses there, then the Southern states will solidify the nomination for Gore,'' he says. ''But if Bradley wins California, it means a contest all the way to June.''
One national Democratic strategist puts it more starkly: ''If Bradley wins in New Hampshire, sweeps through New England and New York, and wins California, then Gore is reduced to simply being a Southern candidate, and he can't be nominated.''
Gore has been trapped in that perceptual box before. Although he won five Southern states on Super Tuesday in 1988, his inability to score a significant victory outside the South left his campaign mired in Dixie and tractionless elsewhere.
Nor are Southern candidates natural fits in California. Compared with the South, ''California is much more socially liberal on issues like abortion, school prayer, gun control, and environmental protection,'' says Carrick.
That said, Clinton has fared well in California, and Gore remains comfortably ahead there - so far.
McCain faces a somewhat different challenge, in part because the Republican primary calendar is different from the Democratic schedule. He needs perfect execution of an interregional stepping-stone strategy that leads from New Hampshire on Feb. 1 to South Carolina on Feb. 19 and then to Arizona and Michigan on Feb. 22.
It's a long shot, yes. Still, McCain is on the move, and wins in those four states would leave him poised for a big day on March 7.
For either Bradley or Gore, winning will require running a strong campaign against an establishment-backed front-runner whose institutional support will help him survive a stumble.
And yet, despite all that, the seminal fact is this: This year, unlike in campaigns past, the pivotal primaries will take place before the South weighs in. And that's changed the burden of proof: This year, there's a real and early burden on the Southern candidates to prove they can win outside Dixie.
''If Bush and Gore lose California, they are in bad shape,'' says Schneider. ''If they lose there, can the South save them? I am skeptical.''
