For a culture careening from right to left in search of societal values, Patricia Beard offers the moral lessons learned by New Jersey politician Christine Todd Whitman during her formative years. "Family came first. Then came the farm.... Then the community: other farmers and neighbors around Oldwick.... The way my family, and many others, practiced politics grew out of this sense of interdependence," Whitman explains. Later, she invented the Republican National Committee's Listening Program, in which she interviewed poor people, radicals, and others about their political positions. Whatever success Whitman attains, rest assured these lessons are a foundation not overburdened with the excess baggage of ideological polemics.
