If challenged to do so, relatively few Americans could probably findNorth and South Dakota on a map, let alone correctly name, spell,and pronounce the capitals of the two states. Nor would they be ableto recall anything interesting about the Dakotas, whose main touristattractions, besides Mount Rushmore, are a drug store, a civic arenafestooned in corn, and a peace garden. Although one of the Dakotasbills itself as “The Land of Infinite Variety,” its socioculturaldiversity consists primarily of different synods of Lutherans whoengage in endless disputation with one another because they are sosimilar. Dakotans prefer their food bland—they consider ketchupdaringly spicy—and their politicians low-key. When they encountersomething new, they call it “different,” which they rarely mean as acompliment, and they wait for it to go away—which, because there isso little to hold it in the Dakotas, it probably will do. They keeptheir opinions to themselves (a typical Dakotan being the fellowfrom Sioux Falls who loved his wife so much that he almost toldher), and they do not like it when people make a fuss aboutthemselves or anything else. Thus, when South Dakotans perceived thepreviously popular Senator George McGovern as having gotten too bigfor his britches by seeking the presidency in 1972, they saw to itthat he would fail to carry his home state, and three decades laterthey voted long-time Senator Tom Daschle out of office as soon as herepeated McGovern's mistake of seeing a president whenever he gazedinto a mirror.