See?

When Jimmy Carter addressed a labor audience in Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago, he made effective use of a familiar rhetorical device. "I see an America that has turned its back on scandals and shame," he said. "I see an America that does not spy on its own citizens." And so on.

To many listeners, the device recalled Martin Luther King's 1963 Washington speech: "I have a dream . . ." Some, however, thought that Carter's "I sees" were equally reminiscent of a 1968 speech given by Richard Nixon: "I see a day when our nation is at peace . . ." And so on. As New York Timesman William Safire confessed in his column last week, he wrote the Nixon speech and had borrowed the idea from a speech delivered by Franklin Roosevelt in 1940; F.D.R.'s speechwriter, in turn, confessed to Safire that he had borrowed it from an address given by Politician-Author Robert Ingersoll at the time of the American Centennial in 1876.

Stick around. Maybe somebody will unearth a manuscript by Thucydides quoting a 5th Century B.C. speech given by Alcibiades: "I see an Athens at peace with her neighbors ... I see an Athens that has achieved detente with Sparta . . ." And so on.

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