Television has made places look alike, and it has transformed the way we see. A whole generation of Americans, maybe two, has grown up looking at the world through a lens.

Television has changed how we choose our leaders. It elected Ronald Reagan and a host of Kennedy-look-alike congressmen with blow-dried hair and gleaming teeth. It destroyed Senator Joe McCarthy by showing him in action and it created Jerry Falwell.

There is a curious relationship between a candidate and the reporters who cover him. It can be affected by small things like a competent press staff, enough seats, sandwiches and briefings and the ability to understand deadlines.

Children, for whom suburban life was supposed to make wholesome little Johns and Wendys, became the acid-dropping, classroom-burning hippies of the 1960s.

Discount air fares, a car in every parking space and the interstate highway system have made every place accessible - and every place alike.

Television has made places look alike, and it has transformed the way we see. A whole generation of Americans, maybe two, has grown up looking at the world through a lens.

Politics as battle has given way to politics as spectacle.