Peggy Noonan

We are at a new point in the American experience of the Iraq war. It is also a decisive one: We have to decide, now, what to do. Stay. Go. Stay in a certain way, or at a certain size. But the mood of the moment, the mood of many Americans, is at odds with one of the demands of decision making.

Big decisions require a certain spirit, a certain do or die—the faith and wildness to roll the dice, throw ‘em, watch and roll again. That’s gambling, of course, not decision making, but many big decisions are to some degree a gamble. Our president must think this, for he so often doubles down. The Decider is The Gambler.

I was thinking this week about how the mood now, among normal people and political figures, is so different from the great burst of feeling that marked the early days of the war—the 17 days to Baghdad, the unstoppable Third Infantry Division, the dictator’s statue falling. The relief that Saddam didn’t use poison gas, as he had against the Kurds, that he collapsed like an old suitcase and got himself out of Dodge. There was a lot of tenderness to those days, too—the first tears at the loss of troops, the deaths of David Bloom and Michael Kelly. Still, the war seemed all triumph, a terrible swift answer to what had been done to us on 9/11.

Then occupation, the long slog, the beginning of bitterness. They thought they could do a war on the cheap? They thought shock and awe would stun ancient enmity into amity? And the puzzlements. Sometimes you looked at the war and wondered, Is Washington’s plan here that good luck began this endeavor and good luck will continue? But how can you lean so much on luck! At this point, about 18 months ago, Americans started thinking, It’s strange to assume good news. Bad news happens. Those guys in Washington must never have faced a foreclosure.

The American people are not impatient, but they are practical. They have a sense of justice and duty to which appeals can be addressed; they will change themselves to better themselves; and they are very proud of their country. But they have sacrificed in Iraq. And they didn’t do it to make it worse. It’s not that the U.S. hasn’t won quickly. It’s that the people of the U.S. can’t see a path to winning.

And so last week spirits on all sides and among all sorts of players were relatively low, and statements seemed less like a debate than a sigh. But great nations can’t sit around sighing, and all of us know this.

At the end of last week it seemed we knew the immediate future—the administration will get what it asked for, more time—but had no greater sense of long-term outcomes.

*   *   *

In a way, David Petraeus won the day when MoveOn.org came forth with its famous “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” ad. They shot themselves in the foot and deserve to be known by their limp. Republicans enacted fury (Thank you, O political gods, for showing the low nature of our foes!), and Democrats felt it (Embarrassed again by the loons!). No one—no normal American—thinks a U.S. Army four-star came back from Iraq to damage our democracy by telling lies.

Gen. Petraeus’s testimony was dry, full of data points and graphs. He gave the impression that everything he said was, to the best of his considerable knowledge, true. One sensed that like good witnesses everywhere, he was not saying everything he thought.

He was earnest, unflappable, and low-key to the point of colorless. Maybe he figures things are colorful enough. I felt relief that he was not wearing his heart on his sleeve or talking about our guys and gals. It was very Joe Friday: Just the facts, ma’am.

He clearly had a point of view, and it was, not surprisingly, in line with the administration’s. But I think the appearance of independence and straight dealing that was necessary to his credibility was lessened by the White House’s attempts to associate itself with him in the weeks leading up to his appearance.

The level of sophistication and seriousness shown by Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain and Chris Dodd was equal to the moment, and seemed to me patriotic. They were probing, occasionally strict, always respectful. At one point Gen. Petraeus was asked by Sen. John Warner if Iraq has made America safer and said, “Sir, I don’t know actually. I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind.” Later, invited to expand on this by Sen. Evan Bayh, he said he’d been surprised by Mr. Warner’s question and added that “we have very, very clear, very serious national interests” in Iraq.

That of course is the great question. History will answer it.

An unspoken part of the larger story is that Gen. Petraeus backed up the argument that our troops have been stretched painfully thin, and the postsurge presence cannot, practically, be maintained. Thus a seeming illogic in the general’s presentation: For the first time in years we’re making progress, therefore we should reduce troop levels to the same point at which we made no progress.

In seeming to stand pat and at the same time lower temperatures by bowing to public pressure and reducing troop levels, the administration has made a virtue of necessity. This was not unshrewd.

As for the president’s speech on Thursday night, it managed to seem both wooden and manipulative, which is a feat. For days conservative commentators had warned that the president should leave the week where it was, and not put on it his distinctive stamp. They were right. He said “the character of our people” is being revealed as we choose whether to back the Iraq endeavor. He said he would “explain” recent events there. He said the mission “will evolve.” It will. It has.

*   *   *

One felt at the end of the week that Iraq will continue as a long and ongoing story, that it is unlikely that we will find a perfect moment to leave, that it will always be too soon, the situation too delicate. It will always seem a place perched on a precipice over a canyon.

One sensed too that Iraq will in fact be issue No. 1 to be faced by the next president, whoever he or she is. That individual, in January 2009, will likely be faced by mischief makers of all stripes throughout the capital, with a question that is an artificial construct. “Did he see the mission through?” Or “Did he lose Iraq?” The latter would be most unjust, because we never had Iraq. We haven’t found it, in spite of our best efforts, because the people of Iraq never found it. And it was their nation to find. This seemed clearer than ever this week, which was part of the reason for the sighing.

This week the Republican candidates for the presidency tried to make it new again. Summer’s over, autumn’s here, they’re relaunching. I think they pretty much succeeded. Their debate Wednesday night had sparks and fire. And a new candidate moved in.

So while Barack Obama struggles with a big question of his candidacy—how to draw deep blood from Hillary Clinton without fatally endangering his future in the party and earning the enmity of its power brokers; and Mrs. Clinton figures out each day how to slow him and stop him but not right now squish him like a bug, which would highlight a reputation for ruthlessness and embitter a portion of the base—a look at the Republicans in what was a Republican week.

The debate was full of fireworks about Iraq, about its essentials—the rightness of the endeavor, and what should rightly be done now. From the libertarian Ron Paul a blunt argument against the war: We never should have gone in and we should get out. “The people who say there’ll be a blood bath are the same ones who said it would be a cakewalk. . . . Why believe them?” His foreign policy: “Mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend our country, defend our borders.” After Mr. Paul spoke, it seemed half the room booed, but the other applauded. When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something’s going on.

*   *   *

Ron Paul’s support isn’t based on his persona, history or perceived power. What support he has comes because of his views. As he spoke, you could hear other candidates laughing in the background. They should stop giggling, and engage in a serious way.

Mike Huckabee, and for this I ♥ Huckabee, shot back that history will judge whether we were right to go in, but for now, “we’re there.” He echoed Colin Powell: We broke it, now we own it. “Congressman, we are one nation. We can’t be divided. . . . If we make a mistake, we make it as a single country, the United States of America, not the divided states of America.” David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network says he doesn’t know why Mr. Huckabee isn’t in the top tier. I wonder too. Maybe he is and we don’t know it.

John McCain seems liberated by loss. Once he was the front-runner, then he was over. Unburdened by the pressure to do well, he has rediscovered the pleasures of the trail. The other day when a student was impertinent, he pleasantly responded, “Thanks for the question, you little jerk.” It reminded me of the time Mayor Rudy Giuliani told an insistent radio caller who pressed for the legalization of ferrets that he probably cared about the issue because he was insane.

In the debate, Mr. McCain was spirited—we stay and fight in Iraq, “otherwise we face catastrophe and genocide in the region.” Fox News’s focus group said he won. As he retools, he should speak of Reagan in 1976, when he was washed up in South Carolina and said, “I’m taking this all the way to the convention, and I’m going even if I lose every damn primary between now and then.”

Mitt Romney is—well, he continues to seem like someone who’s stepped from the shower and been handed a dress shirt by his manservant George. He’s like a senior account executive on “Mad Men.” Still the most focused and disciplined of all the Republicans, he did fine the other night. But he should get shirt-sleeved, dig deeper, get to his purpose. He had the best quips about Fred Thompson’s decision to get in, telling reporters, “Why the hurry? Why not take a little longer to think this over? From my standpoint, if he wants to wait until January or February, that would be ideal.”

Rudy Giuliani proved it is possible to bang the gong too much on leading New York City. Enough already, we heard you, move on. Then come back to it in a few months and make it new again. For now, can he be thoughtful about foreign affairs? Not forceful, not pugnacious, not rote, but thoughtful. No one knows quite what he thinks, as opposed to feels.

Duncan Hunter was there. So was Tom Tancredo, who shouldn’t be. When you can’t compellingly break through with the issue that most roils the base, and on which you were a leader and in agreement with the roiled, then you should admit it didn’t work, and leave. But whom he throws his support to—who he decides has an immigration stand he can back—might have some significant impact on primary voters.

*   *   *

For Fred Thompson, spurning the debate and announcing on Leno was rude and shrewd. He loped on like a long, tall, folksy fella and got a good burst of applause from the audience when he said he was running. The Web video was fine, the 60-second commercial unveiled Wednesday too self-consciously presidential. A young journalist brutally remarked to me of the makeup and lighting, “He looks like a skull on a Disney pirate ride.”

He faces three big challenges. He has come in saying, essentially, I’m not the other guys. That’s good, but raises the questions: Who are you? And the reason you’re running for president would be . . .?

Second challenge: You can come to the rescue only when someone calls “Help!” You can save the drowning guy only when he falls through the ice; you can’t do it when he’s skating by and giving you a friendly nod. Three and six months ago, the Republican Party was looking at its slate of candidates and shouting, “Help!” Since then, the candidates have been out there making an impression, getting known, declaring their stands. They’ve found supporters.

Is the party still yelling “Help!”? Is it falling through the ice?

A third challenge, I think, is a certain dissonance in Mr. Thompson’s persona. He seems preoccupied, not full of delight that he’s at the party. John McCain has been having sly fun with the idea of Mr. Thompson’s sluggishness. When asked why Mr. Thompson didn’t come to the debate, Mr. McCain said “Maybe we’re up past his bedtime.”

I felt this week, and to my surprise, that the campaign was focusing itself, tightening in some way, getting serious. The next Republican debate, the first one with Mr. Thompson, is Sept. 17, in New Hampshire. The first real voting, in Iowa and New Hampshire, is in only four months. For all our complaints about the endless campaign, this one may catch us short. It may get decided when we aren’t watching—knowing, as everyone told us, that we had plenty of time to start paying attention. This could move quickly. Got to watch now.

What will be needed this autumn is a new bipartisan forbearance, a kind of patriotic grace. This is a great deal to hope for. The president should ask for it, and show it.

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report to Congress on Sept. 11. From the latest metrics, it’s clear the surge has gained some ground. It is generally supposed that Gen. Petraeus will paint a picture of recent decreases in violent incidents and increases in safety. In another world, that might be decisive: It’s working, hang on.

At the same time, it’s clear that what we call Iraq does not wholly share U.S. objectives. We speak of it as a unitary country, but the Kurds are understandably thinking about Kurdistan, the Sunnis see an Iraq they once controlled but that no longer exists, and the Shia—who knows? An Iraq they theocratically and governmentally control, an Iraq given over to Iran? This division is reflected in what we call Iraq’s government in Baghdad. Seen in this way, the non-latest-metrics way, the situation is bleak.

Capitol Hill doesn’t want to talk about it, let alone vote on it. Lawmakers not only can’t figure a good way out, they can’t figure a good way through.

But we’re going to have to achieve some rough consensus, because we’re a great nation in an urgent endeavor. The process will begin with Gen. Petraeus’s statement.

Particular atmospherics, and personal dynamics, are the backdrop to the debate. People are imperfect, and people in politics tend to be worse: “Politics is not an ennobling profession,” as Bill Buckley once said. You’d better be pretty good going in, because it’s not going to make you better. Politicians are individuals with a thirst for power, honors, and fame. When you think about that you want to say, “Oh dear.” But of course “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

*   *   *

All sides in the Iraq debate need to step up, in a new way, to the characterological plate.
From the pro-war forces, the surge supporters and those who supported the Iraq invasion from the beginning, what is needed is a new modesty of approach, a willingness to admit it hasn’t quite gone according to plan. A moral humility. Not meekness—great powers aren’t helped by meekness—but maturity, a shown respect for the convictions of others.

What we often see instead, lately, is the last refuge of the adolescent: defiance. An attitude of Oh yeah? We’re Lincoln, you’re McClellan. We care about the troops and you don’t. We care about the good Iraqis who cast their lot with us. You’d just as soon they hang from the skids of the last helicopter off the embassy roof. They have been called thuggish. Is this wholly unfair?

The antiwar forces, the surge opponents, the “I was against it from the beginning” people are, some of them, indulging in grim, and mindless, triumphalism. They show a smirk of pleasure at bad news that has been brought by the other team. Some have a terrible quaking fear that something good might happen in Iraq, that the situation might be redeemed. Their great interest is that Bushism be laid low and the president humiliated. They make lists of those who supported Iraq and who must be read out of polite society. Might these attitudes be called thuggish also?

Do you ever get the feeling that at this point Washington is run by two rival gangs that have a great deal in common with each other, including an essential lack of interest in the well-being of the turf on which they fight?

*   *   *

Not only hearts and minds are invested in a particular stand. Careers are, too. Candidates are invested in a position they took; people are dug in, caught. Every member of Congress is constrained by campaign promises: “We’ll fight” or “We’ll leave.” The same for every opinion spouter—every pundit, columnist, talk show host, editorialist—all of whom have a base, all of whom pay a price for deviating from the party line, whatever the party, and whatever the line. All this freezes things. It makes immobile what should be fluid. It keeps people from thinking.

What is needed is simple maturity, a vow to look to—to care about—America’s interests in the long term, a commitment to look at the facts as they are and try to come to conclusions. This may require in some cases a certain throwing off of preconceptions, previous statements and former stands. It would certainly require the mature ability to come to agreement with those you otherwise hate, and the guts to summon the help of, and admit you need the help of, the other side.

Without this, we remain divided, and our division does nothing to help Iraq, or ourselves.

It would be good to see the president calming the waters. Instead he ups the ante. Tuesday, speaking to the American Legion, he heightened his language. Withdrawing U.S. forces will leave the Middle East overrun by “forces of radicalism and extremism”; the region would be “dramatically transformed” in a way that could “imperil” both “the civilized world” and American security.

Forgive me, but Americans who oppose the war do not here understand the president to be saying: Precipitous withdrawal will create a vacuum that will be filled by killing that will tip the world to darkness. That’s not what they hear. I think they understand him to be saying, I got you into this, I reaped the early rewards, I rubbed your noses in it, and now you have to save the situation.

His foes feel a tight-jawed bitterness. They believe it was his job not to put America in a position in which its security is imperiled; they resent his invitation to share responsibility for outcomes of decisions they opposed. And they resent it especially because he grants them nothing—no previous wisdom, no good intent—beyond a few stray words here and there.

And here’s the problem. The president’s warnings are realistic. He’s right. At the end of the day we can’t just up and leave Iraq. That would only make it worse. And it is not in the interests of America or the world that it be allowed to get worse.

*   *   *

Would it help if the president were graceful, humble, and asked for help? Why, yes. Would it help if he credited those who opposed him with not only good motives but actual wisdom? Yes. And if he tried it, it would make news. It would really, as his press aides say, break through the clutter.

I don’t see how the president’s supporters can summon grace from others when they so rarely show it themselves. And I don’t see how anyone can think grace and generosity of spirit wouldn’t help. They would. They always do in big debates. And they would provide the kind of backdrop Gen. Petraeus deserves, the kind in which his words can be heard.

Once I went hot-air ballooning in Normandy. It was the summer of 1991. It was exciting to float over the beautiful French hills and the farms with crisp crops in the fields. It was dusk, and we amused ourselves calling out “Bonsoir!” to cows and people in little cars. We had been up for an hour or so when we had a problem and had to land. We looked for an open field, aimed toward it, and came down a little hard. The gondola dragged, tipped and spilled us out. A half dozen of us emerged scrambling and laughing with relief.

Suddenly before us stood an old man with a cracked and weathered face. He was about 80, in rough work clothes. He was like a Life magazine photo from 1938: “French farmer hoes his field.” He’d seen us coming from his farmhouse and stood before us with a look of astonishment as the huge bright balloon deflated and tumbled about.

One of us spoke French and explained our situation. The farmer said, or asked, “You are American.” We nodded, and he made a gesture—I’ll be back!—and ran to the house. He came back with an ancient bottle of Calvados, the local brandy. It was literally covered in dust and dry dirt, as if someone had saved it a long time.

He told us—this will seem unlikely, and it amazed us—that he had not seen an American in many, many years, and we asked when. “The invasion,” he said. The Normandy invasion.

Then he poured the Calvados and made a toast. I wish I had notes on what he said. Our French speaker translated it into something like, “To old times.” And we raised our glasses knowing we were having a moment of unearned tenderness. Lucky Yanks, that a wind had blown us to it.

That was 16 years ago, and I haven’t seen some of the people with me since that day, but I know every one of us remembers it and keeps it in his good-memory horde.

He didn’t welcome us because he knew us. He didn’t treat us like royalty because we had done anything for him. He honored us because we were related to, were the sons and daughters of, the men of the Normandy Invasion. The men who had fought their way through France hedgerow by hedgerow, who’d jumped from planes in the dark and climbed the cliffs and given France back to the French. He thought we were of their sort. And he knew they were good. He’d seen them, when he was young.

*   *   *

I’ve been thinking of the old man because of Iraq and the coming debate on our future there. Whatever we do or should do, there is one fact that is going to be left on the ground there when we’re gone. That is the impression made by, and the future memories left by, American troops in their dealings with the Iraqi people.

I don’t mean the impression left by the power and strength of our military. I mean the impression left by the character of our troops— by their nature and generosity, by their kindness. By their tradition of these things.

The American troops in Iraq, our men and women, are inspiring, and we all know it. But whenever you say it, you sound like a greasy pol: “I support our valiant troops, though I oppose the war,” or “If you oppose the war, you are ignoring the safety and imperiling the sacrifice of our gallant troops.”

I suspect that in their sophistication—and they are sophisticated—our troops are grimly amused by this. Soldiers are used to being used. They just do their job.

We know of the broad humanitarian aspects of the occupation—the hospitals being built, the schools restored, the services administered, the kids treated by armed forces doctors. But then there are all the stories that don’t quite make it to the top of the heap, and that in a way tell you more. The lieutenant in the First Cavalry who was concerned about Iraqi kids in the countryside who didn’t have shoes, so he wrote home, started a drive, and got 3,000 pairs sent over. The lieutenant colonel from California who spent his off-hours emailing hospitals back home to get a wheelchair for a girl with cerebral palsy.

The Internet is littered with these stories. So is Iraq. I always notice the pictures from the wire services, pictures that have nothing to do with government propaganda. The Marine on patrol laughing with the local street kids; the nurse treating the sick mother.

A funny thing. We’re so used to thinking of American troops as good guys that we forget: They’re good guys! They have American class.

And it is not possible that the good people of Iraq are not noticing, and that in some way down the road the sum of these acts will not come to have some special meaning, some special weight of its own. The actor Gary Sinise helps run Operation Iraqi Children, which delivers school supplies with the help of U.S. forces. When he visits Baghdad grade schools, the kids yell, “Lieutenant Dan!”—his role in “Forrest Gump,” the story of another good man.

*   *   *

Some say we’re the Roman Empire, but I don’t think the soldiers of Rome were known for their kindness, nor the people of Rome for their decency. Some speak of Abu Ghraib, but the humiliation of prisoners there was news because it was American troops acting in a way that was out of the order of things, and apart from tradition. It was weird. And they were busted by other American troops.

You could say soldiers of every country do some good in war beyond fighting, and that is true enough. But this makes me think of the statue I saw once in Vienna, a heroic casting of a Red Army soldier. Quite stirring. The man who showed it to me pleasantly said it had a local nickname, “The Unknown Rapist.” There are similar memorials in Estonia and Berlin; they all have the same nickname. My point is not to insult Russian soldiers, who had been born into a world of communism, atheism, and Stalin’s institutionalization of brutish ways of being. I only mean to note the stellar reputation of American troops in the same war at the same time. They were good guys.

They’re still good.

We should ponder, some day when this is over, what it is we do to grow such men, and women, what exactly goes into the making of them.

Whatever is decided in Washington I hope our soldiers know what we really think of them, and what millions in Iraq must, also. I hope some day they get some earned tenderness, and wind up over the hills of Iraq, and land, and an old guy comes out and says, “Are you an American?” And they say yes and he says, “A toast, to old times.”

Whenever I think of war, I think of this: It was 1982 or ‘83, I was in Northern Ireland, and a local reporter was showing me around Derry, then a center of the Protestant-Catholic conflict. The neighborhood we were in was beat up, poor, with Irish Republican Army graffiti on tired walls. There were some scraggly kids on the street.

Suddenly an armored British army vehicle slowly rounded the corner, and the street came alive with kids pouring out of houses, grabbing the heavy metal lids of garbage bins, and smashing them against the pavement. They made quite a racket.

A woman came out. She was 35 or 40, her short hair standing up, uncombed. It was late afternoon, but she was in an old robe, and you could tell it was the robe she lived in. She stood there and smirked as the soldiers went by. She’d come out to register her dislike for the Brits, and to show the children she approved of their protest.

As I watched this nothing sort of scene, I thought: That’s where it comes from. That’s what keeps it alive.

I knew what kind of person she was. She was lost, neglectful; she was what would come to be called dysfunctional, and whichever of the kids were hers you could tell she wasn’t giving them order or safety, not often.

But here at this moment she was being responsive to something—the presence of the enemy. And she was showing an emotion: hatred.

And I thought: Those kids banging the lids on the pavement, they are going to wind up like her, and for some utterly human reasons. To get her notice and approval. To ally themselves with her grievances—if they can’t have access to any other part of her, at least they can have her resentment. To be part of her world, of any world.

They would grow up and assign their misery to outside forces. The boy humiliated because he’s never sent to school with a clean shirt will turn that into “Britain Get Out of Ireland.”

*   *   *

I know I’m being broad here. But we often think it is large and abstract forces that drive history, when it is personal forces, too. The headlines on today’s paper, whatever they are—stock market decline, bomb blast—are in their essence personal stories. Somebody bought, somebody sold, somebody made the fuse. People make history.

I remembered the woman in Northern Ireland this week while reading the New York City Police Department’s report “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.” It is an interesting piece of work. (You can find the 90-page report here.)

We associate terrorism with a threat from overseas, but since 9/11, terror plots have tended to be planned by homegrown terrorists. These young men have tended to be “unremarkable” local residents who came to look to a radical form of Islam for inspiration and meaning. Terror acts are preceded by a radicalization process in which young men are recruited to jihad.

The report traces the creation and development of terror cells throughout the West—in America, Western Europe and Australia. Young recruits are often middle class, and their interest is often sparked by an immediate or protracted crisis—the loss of a job, a change in family circumstances. They do not necessarily come from anything particular lacking in the family, but they have nothing to hold onto until this absolute thing, this fundamentalist belief, and its grievances, comes by. Their rage is tended and encouraged by spiritual and operational leaders who offer a sense of community, of belonging and of approval.

*   *   *

The report suggests an evolution in thinking. “We’re very good at capturing these guys after a terror incident,” John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, told me, “but in the past we haven’t spent as much time at the front end—how do they get to be terrorists.” He said terrorists “are changing their profile. . . . Al Qaeda knows what we’re looking for. They’re not dumb.” The terrorists of our future will likely be more credentialed, and here legally; they will be “integrated into American life.”

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told me, “I want a better understanding on the part of all law enforcement as to how radicalism takes place. This report connects the dots.” It is also meant to heighten awareness. If the terror of the future is homegrown, local eyes will see it first. Cofer Black, former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, told me that an important message of the report is similar to the signs on New York subways and in train stations: “If you see something, say something.”

Mr. Black repeated one of the report’s main warnings: about the increased use of the Internet in the radicalization of young men. Everyone knows about these sites, but recruitment videos have become “more extreme,” and their number has proliferated in only the past few years. More and more they feature “Hollywood techniques—music, heroic images—to basically seize the imagination of isolated youths.”

*   *   *

All who follow American antiterrorism efforts closely wind up looking to what they call “the New York model.” The city consistently seems more advanced than the feds in this area. There are reasons New York is so good. They’ve already had a catastrophe, which sharpens the mind. They know they’re still and always a target. New York has a lot of money, a lot of cops, a lot of capability, and a citizenry with a heightened awareness. Because the city has a low crime rate, it can shift resources.

Part of the reason for New York’s effectiveness has also been solid leadership in the form of a popular mayor, Mike Bloomberg, and his police commissioner, Mr. Kelly. Mr. Black calls Mr. Kelly “hard charging and no-nonsense.”

So that’s the latest report on young men and how they become drawn to terrorism. It’s also the latest on what terror networks are up to, and how they’re planning to move. The only thing I’d add is that all modern young people come from two environments. The first is the immediate family, which is human and therefore by definition imperfect, sometimes to a serious and destructive degree. The other is the broader culture in which we all live, and which includes everything from schools to the neighborhood to the media. It’s not a new thing to say but it’s still true that the latter, which is more powerful than ever, is wholly devoted to the material. People are money winners or luxury item enjoyers. They just want stuff. It is soulless.

The view we show of life to ourselves, and to whatever lost young men are watching, is not broad and inspiriting. It is limited and dispiriting. It is every man for himself.

We make it too easy for those who want to hate us to hate us. We make ourselves look bad in our media, which helps future jihadists think that they must, by hating us, be good. They hit their figurative garbage bin lids on the ground, and smirk, and promise to make a racket, and then more than a racket, a boom.

In the lives of interesting people, there are bound to be interesting events. This is about one in the life of Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Gen. Petraeus of course will be all over television in September, reporting to Congress on the war, and America will be getting used to him. He is not in an easy position. The left and most Democrats are invested in the idea of Iraq as disaster. The right and most Republicans placed their bets on the president and the decision to invade.

Normal Americans just want Iraq handled. They want America to succeed: for the war to end in a way and time that prove if possible that the Iraq endeavor helped the world, or us, or didn’t make things worse for the world, or us. My hunch: The American people have concluded the war was a mistake, but know from their own lives that mistakes can be salvaged, and sometimes turned to good.

Whatever Gen. Petraeus says, it will be used politically, by politicians. “They’ll be trying to fit his round facts into their square holes,” as the novelist Tom Clancy, who has followed Gen. Petraeus’s career, put it.

But Gen. Petraeus is also in a good position. America is still open to good news that is also believable news. They will welcome hope that is grounded in data.

They have no faith in Republican boosterism or Democratic pandering. They’re tired of blowhardism on all fronts. But if Gen. Petraeus comports himself like what he is, a professional soldier, if he seems to be giving it to you straight, if he sounds as if he didn’t get rolled by the White House or pressured by the political atmosphere, if he seems to be thinking clearly, he can make a big and even decisive impression. And he will buy time.

I write as if we can guess what he will say, and to some degree we can, because he’s already said it in interviews: The job is not done and won’t be done for some time.

Gen. Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974, 10th in his class, and his career has been the very model of the new Army: a master’s in public administration, Ph.D. in the lessons of Vietnam, a fellowship in foreign affairs at Georgetown. Wrote the book, literally, on counterterrorism. Ten months in Bosnia. Time in Kuwait. Fought in Iraq, in Karbala, Hilla and Najaf, and became known and admired for rebuilding and administrating Mosul. Academically credentialed, bureaucratically knowing, historically well read. Also highly quotable. Of his use of discretionary funds for public works in Mosul, he said, “Money is ammunition.” He is said to have asked embedded reporters after Baghdad fell, “Tell me where this ends.” That was the right question.

He is decisive. Which gets us to the interesting story.

*   *   *

It happened on Sept. 21, 1991, when Gen. Petraeus was commanding the Third Battalion of the 101st Airborne in Fort Campbell, Ky. He was at a live-fire training exercise. A soldier tripped on his M-16, and it discharged. The bullet hit Gen. Petraeus in the chest.

He was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. A local surgeon got beeped and called in. He was told there was a Life Flight helicopter coming in with a guy with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was hemorrhaging.

The surgeon rushed to Vanderbilt and arrived before the helicopter. It landed, the elevator doors opened, and the surgeon saw a soldier on a gurney with a tube in his chest. A uniformed man was next to the patient, along with a nurse carrying bottles of blood draining from the wound.

Doctors at busy Vanderbilt hospital were used to treating gunshot wounds, and the fact that the patient was military was “a nonissue,” as the surgeon said the other day in a telephone interview.

What was an issue was that the patient had lost a lot of blood, was pale, and was losing more.

The surgeon had to decide whether to open Gen. Petraeus up right away or stabilize him. The general was conscious, so the surgeon said, “Listen, I gotta make a decision about whether to take you straight to surgery or stabilize you first, give you blood.”
Gen. Petraeus looked up at the surgeon and said, “Don’t waste any time. Get it done. Let’s get on with it.”

“That’s unusual”, the surgeon told me. “Usually patients want to stabilize, wait.” This one wanted to move.

*   *   *

At this point I’ll note that the surgeon that day 16 years ago was Dr. Bill Frist, who later became Sen. Frist, and then Majority Leader Frist. He had never met Gen. Petraeus before.

Dr. Frist got Gen. Petraeus to the third-floor operating room, opened his chest, removed a flattened bullet that had torn through the top of a lung, stopped the hemorrhaging, took out part of a lung.

The operation was successful, and within 24 hours Gen. Petraeus asked Dr. Frist if he could be transferred back to the base hospital so his soldiers wouldn’t be too concerned. “As soon as he was stable, we got him over there. His soldiers were first and foremost in his mind. That’s why they like him so much.”

Gen. Petraeus, says Dr. Frist, now describes his wound to troops as damage done by a round “that went right through my right chest—happily over the ‘A’ in Petraeus rather than over the ‘A’ in U.S. Army, as the latter is over my heart.”

Over the years, Dr. Frist and Gen. Petraeus became friends. They found they’d both done graduate work at the Woodrow Wilson school at Princeton, where Dr. Frist is about to return as a teacher. They ran the Army 10-miler in Washington together—”He left me in the dust!” exclaims the doctor—and the Frists spent time with Holly Petraeus when her husband was fighting in Baghdad.

The majority leader also visited Gen. Petraeus in Iraq, and wound up, three years ago, standing with him “on a hot, dusty compound” where the general was leading exercises training young Iraqi soldiers.

Mr. Frist says that after observing the young recruits carry out their exercises, Petraeus gathered them around and told them what happened on that fateful day in 1991. He introduced the senator and told them of the role he’d played. “He didn’t say we got the majority leader of the Senate here, he said, ‘This was my doctor.’” Why was he telling them the story? “The point was to tell them, ‘Listen, if you’re not perfect right now you can grow, you can make mistakes, people are forgiving, you’ll grow.’” The point was also to thank the soldiers at Fort Campbell who cared for them in the minutes after he was shot.

*   *   *

What does it all mean? Life is interesting, mysterious, and has an unseen circularity. You never know in any given day what’s going to happen or who’s going to have a big impact on you and on others. A future military commander got shot, and a future leader of the Senate stopped the bleeding.

What Mr. Frist, a supporter of more time for and renewed commitment to Iraq, gets from the story is this: What he saw and heard that day 16 years ago, is what he’s seen from Gen. Petraeus in the years since: “straightforward decisiveness” and a “call for action with results.”

It’s gotten catty out there. Jeri Thompson is a trophy wife, as is Cindy McCain. Michelle Obama is too offhand and irreverent when speaking of her husband, and Judith Giuliani is a puppy-stapling princess. Even Hillary Clinton was a focus, for wearing an outfit that suggested, however faintly, that underneath her clothing she may be naked, and have breasts.

Why these stories? Because it’s August and no one wants to think. Because the campaign is too long and reporters have to write about something. Because cable news has an insatiable need for guests, and if you write a story cable producers can easily find tape for, you get to go on Olbermann or O’Reilly and seem to publicize your paper, which will please your bosses, with the added benefit of giving you personal face time, which essentially asserts, in the world of high-level politics, that you exist.

None of these stories have come from blogs but from Pulitzer Prize winners at major newspapers and veteran journalists at magazines. For all their harrumphing about the crucial role they play in democracy (and it is crucial) and the seriousness of their professional intent (and it is sometimes serious), the mainstream media is full of the cattiest human beings in history with the exception of the vast political consulting/advising class of Washington, i.e., the gargoyles with BlackBerrys in the back of the SUV, whose job is not only to help their guy but hurt the other guy. Their email gossip reminds me of Johnny in the movie “Airplane!” When the frantic wife of a pilot rushes into the control tower, Johnny solicitously removes her coat and then reveals his actual interests: “Where did you get that dress?”

However. It is also true the press is paying attention to prospective first ladies because in an age in which presidents are always in your face, first ladies are often in your face. It actually matters if people like them, and it can hurt, on the margins, if they don’t. And these days wins are marginal.

The challenge for the spouses of modern candidates is that what is expected of women in general has changed. This is reflected in the first lady’s role, and the role of the candidate’s spouse.

Mamie Eisenhower was a housewife, Bess Truman so ordinary that she didn’t want to live in Washington preferring the more normal humans of Missouri. Lady Bird Johnson lived for Lyndon. Eleanor Roosevelt was the exception, a groundbreaker. But Jackie Kennedy shivered at the thought of being compared to Mrs. Roosevelt, and said Jack doesn’t want to talk politics when he comes home.

First ladies were once more or less average, and were expected to be. Now they are accomplished, worldly, and expected to be. Candidates for the first lady’s job have to find a balance. It’s delicate. Strong is good, aggressive not. A person who cares, yes; a person who pushes an agenda, no.

*   *   *

Some old rules apply as the transition from old style to new style continues.

• Americans would prefer a first lady who doesn’t seem like she ever hungered for it. They don’t want someone who needs the job, they want someone who puts up with it with grace. This gets us to Laura Bush, who seems from the beginning to have had no particular desire for the White House. She always telegraphs that she’d have been happy staying home, smoking cigarettes, and admiring her family. First lady is an elevated title. We’d rather elevate someone who’s making a sacrifice, not someone who’s grabbing a rung.
• Detached good nature goes far. From the beginning of her public life, Mrs. Bush has operated as if she had an invisible shield around her, her own invisible popemobile with thick plastic windows that kept her from getting the gunk on her. She never let it touch her. “Your husband is the savior of mankind”—she’d smile pleasantly and not let it touch her. “Your husband is the spawn of Satan”—she’d smile and not let it touch her. This took profound discipline, some wisdom, and perhaps a natural detachment. Mrs. Bush should be studied. She never attacked, rarely defended, and only carefully shared. Connected to this:
• “They do not want your drama. They do not want your mess.” The presidency is a complicated job. Since we have to have presidents, we’d prefer they come with something like domestic peace. They don’t want unneeded temperament, high jinks, vanity or acting out. If you can’t be normal, imitate normal.
• Just because it’s true doesn’t mean we have to know it. We do not want to hear all that much about your relationship. We actually do not want you making out in the pages of Harpers Bazaar. On so many issues the unspoken American attitude, and not only on the romantic aspects of your life but on most of the private life of their leaders is: Get a room. Put your grievances, vanity and temperament in it. Close the door.
• We don’t want to think you’re a policy maven too deep in the game. We don’t want to think you’re leading the inside movement to get rid of the veep or the spokesman. At the same time we like to think, and assume, that you have views that you share. It’s your job. But we want you to know we elected him, not you, and that you know it. This of course was Mrs. Clinton’s problem: she thought it was also about her. She took on an extraconstitutional role in the White House. Ever since, she’s had to work to overcome the impression made in those days.
• People respect you when it gets out that there are areas of your life that are off-limits. Pierre Salinger had to wait until Mrs. Kennedy was out of town on vacation to get the kids in a picture. Mrs. Bush has made it clear that her girls deserve a private life. The Clintons protected Chelsea. At the same time, never say “off-limits.” Forget those words. Just tell the press guy no, and in time everyone will get the message.
• Redirect the spotlight. There is a famous TV journalist who, whenever she is photographed with her husband going to something swell, does not walk forward smiling in a beautiful dress. Instead she pauses and drapes an arm around him, subtly redirecting the cameras toward him. Redirecting the camera is a form of love. People like to see love, and respect it when they see it.

*   *   *

Is Bill Clinton an exception? Of course. He’s always been an exception, that’s his history. He’ll never dodge the spotlight. If his wife is elected, he will speak at conferences and be ambassador to the world. Will he bring drama and mess? Yes. He brings drama wherever he goes because wherever he goes, there he is. Will he bring the particular drama everyone expects? He is officially and forever The Rogue. If Americans hire her as president they will do it knowing he is going to bring his Billness with him.

So we are agreed. We are living in the second great Gilded Age, a time of startling personal wealth. In the West, the mansion after mansion with broad and rolling grounds; in the East, the apartments with foyers in which bowling teams could play. Or, on another level, the week’s vacation in Disneyland or Dublin with the entire family—this in a nation in which, well within human memory, people with a week off stayed home and fixed things in the garage, or drove to the beach for a day and sat on a blanket from one of the kid’s beds and thought: This is the life.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit 14000. The wealthy live better than kings. There isn’t a billionaire in East Hampton who wouldn’t look down on tatty old Windsor Castle. We have a potential presidential candidate who noted to a friend that if he won the presidency the quality of his life would go down, not up.

The gap between rich and poor is great, and there is plenty of want, and also confusion. What the superrich do for a living now often seems utterly incomprehensible, and has for at least a generation. There is no word for it, only an image. There’s a big pile of coins on a table. The rich shove their hands in, raise them, and as the coins sift through their fingers it makes . . . a bigger pile of coins. Then they sift through it again and the pile gets bigger again.

A general rule: If you are told what someone does for a living and it makes sense to you—orthodontist, store owner, professor—that means he’s not rich. But if it’s a man in a suit who does something that takes him five sentences to explain and still you walk away confused, and castigating yourself as to why you couldn’t understand the central facts of the acquisition of wealth in the age you live in—well, chances are you just talked to a billionaire.

*   *   *

There are good things and bad in the Gilded Age, pluses and minuses. I write here of a minus. It has to do with our manners, the ones we show each other on the street. I think riches, or the pursuit of riches, has made us ruder. You’d think broad comfort would assuage certain hungers. It has not. It has sharpened them.

Here’s a moment in the pushiness of the Gilded Age. I walk into a shop on Madison Avenue daydreaming, trying to remember what it was I thought last week I should pick up, what was it . . .

“Hi! Let me help you find what you’re looking for!” She is a saleswoman, cracking gum with intensity, about 25 years old, and she has made a beeline to her mark. That would be me.

“Mmmm, actually—”

“We have summer sweaters on sale. What size are you?!” Her style is aggressive friendliness.

In another shop, as soon as I walk in the door, “How are you today? How can I help you?” Those dread words.

“Oh, I’m sort of just looking.”

“I like your bag!”

“Um, thanks.” What they are forcing you to do is engage. If you engage—”Um, thanks”—you have a relationship. If you have a relationship, it’s easier for them to turn you upside down and shake the coins from your pockets.

It is like this in all the shops I go in now, except for the big stores (Macy’s, Duane Reade drugstore), where they ignore you.

There are strategies. You can do the full Garbo: “Leave me alone.” But they’ll think you’re a shoplifter and watch you. Or the strong lady with boundaries: “Thank you, if I need help I’ll ask.” But your reverie is broken. Or the acquiescent person: “Take me under your leadership, oh aggressively friendly salesperson.” But this is bowing to the pushiness of the Gilded Age.

*   *   *

You leave the floor for the street and meet the woman with the clipboard. “Do you have two seconds for the environment?” Again, not a soft question but a challenge. Her question is phrased so that if you don’t stop and hear her spiel, you are admitting you won’t give two seconds for the environment, or two cents for it either. You give the half-smile-nod, shake your head, walk on. She looks at you as if you’re the reason the Earth is going to hell.

Do they know they’re being manipulative? If they have a brain they do. Their trainers certainly know. Do they know it’s also why no one quite trusts them? Do they care? Why would they? They’re the manipulators on the street.

Or: I’m in a local restaurant with a friend. We sat down 40 seconds ago and are starting to catch up when: “What do you want to drink?” An interruption, but so what? We order, talk, my friend is getting to the punch line of the story when: “We have specials this evening.” Not, “Let me know when you’re ready to hear the specials.” We stop talking, listen. The waiter stands there, pad in hand. “You ready?” If you ask for a minute, he’ll nod and be back in exactly one minute. “Do you know yet?” Again, this is not a request. One is being told to snap to it. Get ‘em in, get ‘em out. Move ‘em.

It’s funny. In a time of recession, you’d think salespeople would be more aggressive, because so much might hinge on the sale—a commission, a job. In a time of relative wealth, you’d think they might be less aggressive. But the opposite seems true.

*   *   *

Technology has not helped in this area. Cellphones are wonderful, but they empower the obnoxious and amplify the ignorant. Once they kept their thoughts to themselves. They had no choice. Now they have cellphones, into which they bark, “I’m on line at Duane Reade. Yeah. Ex-Lax.” Oh, thank you for sharing. How much less my life would be if I didn’t know.

BlackBerrys empower the obsessed. We wouldn’t have them if the economy weren’t high and we weren’t pretty well off. Once, a political figure in New York invited me to a private dinner. I was seated next to him, and as the table conversation took off he leaned back, quietly took out his BlackBerry, and began to scroll. It occurred to me that if I said something live in person, it would not be as interesting to him as if I’d BlackBerryed him. It occurred to me that if I wanted to talk to him I’d have to BlackBerry him and say, “Please talk to me.” And then he would get the message.

It is possible that we are on the cellphone because we are lonely and hunger for connection, even of the shallowest kind; that we BlackBerry because we hope for a sense of control in a chaotic world; that we are frightened of stillness and must interrupt conversations; that we are desperate to make the sale in the highly competitive environment of the Banana Republic on 86th Street and must aggressively pursue customers.

It’s also possible we have grown more boorish. I think it’s that one. Many things thrive in the age of everything, including bad manners.

Robert Novak’s new memoir of 50 years in journalism, “The Prince of Darkness,” is 638 pages of storytelling and score settling by a Washington institution who paints himself, convincingly, as churlish, brave, resilient, petty and indefatigable. I got it as soon as it came out and found it entertaining and, in spite of the usual pitfalls of such books—a rote “When Clinton came in second in New Hampshire I was not surprised” unspooling of year-by-year events—human, and frank. It’s not a big book, but it tells you, or reminds you of, a few things, and those new to Washington might learn things from it. As in:

Washington in the 1950s was a pretty wonderful place to be. It seems in almost everyone’s memoirs, certainly this one, to have been the last time Washington was fun. It was “shabbier and less pretentious” than today, but it was also an easier place, a more human one, in part, apparently, because everyone in the White House, on the Hill, and in the newspaper bureaus was drunk. (In fact, that would explain the ‘50s, wouldn’t it?) In the Washington young Mr. Novak enters, senators plot over whiskey and cigars; reporters knock back scotches while trading tidbits at the press-club bar; lunches with sources begin with doubles; the Senate majority leader is soused in the lobby, singing to himself. Beehived women chain-smoke with the boys and listen to their tales of woe.

Members of Congress had real accents and actually varied backgrounds. These were the last days when it mattered if you came from California as opposed to North Carolina. It meant you had different experiences growing up, you brought those differences to the Capitol, and they made it richer in human terms.

The ‘50s have gotten a bad rap. For all the decade’s flaws, it was a human time, and freer than ours of a certain Perrier- sipping, blog-surfing, post-workout puritanism. Mr. Novak makes you miss the era even if you never knew it.

*   *   *

What rules now in Washington is teamism. Not so much fierce partisanship, but a partisanship that is as belligerent as it is meaningless. “I am a Democrat and we’ll do anything to win.” “I am a Republican and we’ll smash the foe.”

In fact, the point is to be a conservative or a liberal or something else; parties are the vehicle by which your views are instituted. But conservatism and liberalism are philosophies. Parties are clubs. They are teams. They are needed, their very existence is clarifying, and they provide the troops without which a movement does not move. But they are not the meaning of the struggle. “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much,” says JFK. That seems in retrospect one of the most important things he ever said.

Political reporters don’t ponder why some people do not talk to them. In the book Mr. Novak shows no sign of understanding that people in government and business are often leery of reporters because they have reason to be. Say the wrong thing in a loose moment, and you can lose your job, your income, your standing. You can also wind up indulging a passing mood and hurting people. Mr. Novak belongs to the tough school. When H.R. Haldeman was unsettled by personal bad press, he didn’t invite Mr. Novak to lunch. Mr. Novak says he treated Haldeman “more harshly because he refused any connection with me. He made himself more of a target than he had to be by refusing to be a source.” This is honest, and unlovable.

What is a good source? Mr. Novak says it’s someone who doesn’t lie to him. This marks the first time I ever thought of him as naive, if that’s the word. Mr. Novak surely knows the most experienced leakers don’t have to lie and are careful not to. To say of a source, “He never that I know of lied” is to say, “He did me the favor of not passing on immediately provable lies, which allowed me to accept the information he gave with full credulity.”

Mr. Novak seems to have decided that if you spoke to him off the record or not for attribution, but in the ensuing years had the poor taste to die, your identity can be revealed. He outs Sen. Thomas Eagleton (D., Mo.) as the source of the putdown of George McGovern as standing for acid, amnesty and abortion. He fingers others. Is this fair?

Human nature trumps all. Reporters come to like people who are their sources. They become friends. This is a little like a banker befriending dollar bills. The source gives information that is turned into columns that are turned into a career that is turned into money. But it is not true only that the reporter is using the source. The source is also using the reporter, as Mr. Novak notes: These are “symbiotic relationships.” The source seeks to advance himself, his friends, his agenda, which will produce for him power and profit. In their mutual dependence, sympathies arise. They are concerned, or know to act out concern, when the other meets misfortune. What do they really feel? I thought of Samuel Johnson: He feels the same degree of pain as the cow feels when the mare miscarries.

*   *   *

Washington is a small town. New York is many small towns, but Washington is one small town. Everyone knows this, but Mr. Novak somehow makes it vivid. The first priest to impress Mr. Novak in his journey to religious conversion made him “comfortable.” Was it the depth of his theology? No. Earlier the priest had been a lawyer on the Hill and “a source for the Evans and Novak column.”

Workaholism is a good way to rise but not a good way to live. Mr. Novak’s book is full of people who work hard. They are in the office, they are working it, they’re in early and stay late. Woody Allen said 90% of life is just showing up, but that is not true, and if it was true of Mr. Allen, it was because he was so gifted. For the rest it’s show up and work. Mr. Novak castigates himself for not taking much note of his children until they were teenagers, and interesting. He suggests that if he had it to do over again, he’d shift emphasis. Reading this, I remembered the great line in the movie “Spanglish.” The merry, fatalistic grandmother says to the young mother: “I lived for myself. You live for your daughter. None of it works!”

Never spin your friends, it adds distance. Rowland Evans was Mr. Novak’s partner in their successful column for 30 years. They complemented each other, Evans the patrician Democrat and Mr. Novak the rougher-edged Republican. But Mr. Novak says Evans, who died in March 2001, misled him about the depth of his friendship with frequent column subject Robert F. Kennedy, and the frequency of their contacts. Mr. Novak found out while researching his book, and from Evans’s own mouth: the oral histories he left behind. Mr. Novak speaks of Evans in the book with a correct, careful and unmistakably cool affection.

It’s been a slow week in a hot era. I found myself Thursday watching President Bush’s news conference and thinking about what it is about him, real or perceived, that makes people who used to smile at the mention of his name now grit their teeth. I mean what it is apart from the huge and obvious issues on which they might disagree with him.

I’m not referring to what used to be called Bush Derangement Syndrome. That phrase suggested that to passionately dislike the president was to be somewhat unhinged. No one thinks that anymore. I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find, a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who’d previously supported him. She said she’d had it. “I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.” I was startled by her vehemence only because she is, as I said, rock-ribbed. Her email reminded me of another, one a friend received some months ago: “I took the W off my car today,” it said on the subject line. It sounded like a country western song, like a great lament.

As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president’s seemingly effortless high spirits. He’s in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn’t seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn’t Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president’s since polling began. He’s in a good mood. Discuss.

Is it defiance? Denial? Is it that he’s right and you’re wrong, which is your problem? Is he faking a certain steely good cheer to show his foes from Washington to Baghdad that the American president is neither beaten nor bowed? Fair enough: Presidents can’t sit around and moan. But it doesn’t look like an act. People would feel better to know his lack of success sometimes gets to him. It gets to them.

His stock answer is that of course he feels the sadness of the families who’ve lost someone in Iraq. And of course he must. Beyond that his good humor seems to me disorienting, and strange.

*   *   *

In arguing for the right path as he sees it, the president more and more claims for himself virtues that the other side, by inference, lacks. He is “idealistic”; those who oppose him are, apparently, lacking in ideals. He makes his decisions “based on principle,” unlike his critics, who are ever watchful of the polls. He is steadfast, brave, he believes “freedom isn’t just for Americans” but has “universal . . . applications,” unlike those selfish, isolationist types who oppose him.

This is ungracious as a rhetorical approach, but not unprecedented. There’s something in the White House water system. Presidents all wind up being gallant in their own eyes. Thursday I was reminded of President Nixon, who often noted he was resisting those who were always advising him to “take the easy way.” Bill Safire used to joke that when he was a Nixon speechwriter, part of his job was to walk by the Oval Office and yell in, “Mr. President, take the easy way!”

I suspect people pick up with Mr. Bush the sense that part of his drama, part of the story of his presidency, is that he gets to be the romantic about history, and the American people get to be the realists. Of the two, the latter is not the more enjoyable role.

*   *   *

Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country, and the beacon it can be for the world, and what the Founders did. But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities.

With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He’s the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it’s weird.

Americans hire presidents and fire them. They’re not as sweet about it as they used to be. This is not because they have grown cynical, but because they are disappointed, by both teams and both sides. Some part of them thinks no matter who is president he will not protect them from forces at work in the world. Some part of them fears that when history looks back on this moment, on the past few presidents and the next few, it will say: Those men were not big enough for the era.

But this is a democracy. You vote, you do the best you can with the choices presented, and you show the appropriate opposition to the guy who seems most likely to bring trouble. (I think that is one reason for the polarity and division of politics now. No one knows in his gut that the guy he supports will do any good. But at least you can oppose with enthusiasm and passion the guy you feel in your gut will cause more trouble than is needed! This is what happens when the pickings are slim: The greatest passion gets funneled into opposition.)

We hire them and fire them. President Bush was hired to know more than the people, to be told all the deep inside intelligence, all the facts Americans are not told, and do the right and smart thing in response.

That’s the deal. It’s the real “grand bargain.” If you are a midlevel Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey, this is what you do: You hire a president and tell him to take care of everything you can’t take care of—the security of the nation, its well-being, its long-term interests. And you in turn do your part. You meet your part of the bargain. You work, pay your taxes, which are your financial contribution to making it all work, you become involved in local things—the boy’s ball team, the library, the homeless shelter. You handle what you can handle within your ken, and give the big things to the president.

And if he can’t do it, or if he can’t do it as well as you pay the mortgage and help the kid next door, you get mad. And you fire him.

Americans can’t fire the president right now, so they’re waiting it out. They can tell a pollster how they feel, and they do, and they can tell friends, and they do that too. They also watch the news conference, and grit their teeth a bit.