Peggy Noonan

On Wednesday John McCain distinguished himself with a closely argued and eloquent address in which he spoke seriously and at length of his position on Iraq. He said America faces “an historic choice” with “ramifications for Americans not yet even born.”

“Many Democrats,” he said, view the war as “a political opportunity,” while Republicans view it as “a political burden.” But it is neither, he said. It is not a political question to be poll-tested but a challenge that bears on our continuance as a great nation. We must stay and fight and win.

“It may be standard-setting,” the Hotline said of the remarks the next day, “perhaps the most powerful plea a war supporter has . . . sent to the American people since the troop surge began. Has any other presidential candidate written a speech to persuade—importune—an audience to change their minds?”

You can agree or disagree with Mr. McCain, but where he stands is clear—and clarity these days, from our candidates, feels like a gift. As does certitude. He isn’t running from the war but owning it. A political rival might say, “He has no choice.” But there’s always a choice.

My larger point, however, is that he sounded like a serious man addressing a serious issue in a serious way. This makes him at the moment stand out.

*   *   *

There is a sort of stature gap in the presidential campaign so far, isn’t there? A lack of personal height among the candidates, a lack of the bearing that befits the office they seek.

Here was Rudy Giuliani this week in a speech in California. No one much noted it—he was lucky it was subsumed by the Imus wave. But this is how Mr. Giuliani opened a speech to citizens considering his candidacy for the American presidency. “Thank youse all very much for invitin’ me here tuh-day, to this meeting of the families from different parts’a California.”

He was imitating Marlon Brando in “The Godfather.” (The rendering comes from a Newsday report.) Actually the character of Don Corleone, as drawn by Mario Puzo, was possessed of a certain verbal elegance, but never mind. Mr. Giuliani’s imitation was clear enough to inspire in the audience a smattering of applause and, apparently, laughter.

Earlier in the week, in reaction to a spate of critical stories about his wife, Judith, he asked reporters to leave her alone: “I am a candidate. She’s a civilian, to use the old Mafia distinction.”

Ah. Can’t have enough candidates for president who whimsically employ the language of mobsters.

Rudy is No. 1 in the GOP polls, but he has been displaying the worst stature gap on the trail. He can’t see why his wife sets people’s teeth on edge; he can’t see why it would disturb us to have her at cabinet meetings; he assures us she actually won’t be at cabinet meetings. This was followed by his statement that of course he continues to be pro-choice on abortion, and yeah, actually, he’s probably also for taxpayer funding of abortion, but maybe not.

There is an embarrassing ad-hoc-ness, a bush-leagueness to this. It’s as if he hasn’t thought it through, as if he’s just deciding everything each day. But by the time you’re running for president you should have decided.

At the very least a major candidate should by now have absorbed and internalized that he is running for what is actually the presidency of the United States, and not, say, the Las Vegas City Council.

From Mike Huckabee this week, a similar contribution to the august nature of the endeavor. He said if Republicans don’t start judging the private lives of the Republican candidates for president they should just “apologize to Bill Clinton.” That’ll class things up. Mitt Romney at the same time was talking about shooting varmints with all the rifles he does or does not own.

None of these are as bad as what may be the worst moment in the entire campaign so far, that being Hillary Clinton’s adopting of a deep Southern drawl when she spoke at a church last month in Selma, Ala.

“Ah don’t feel no ways tarred, ah come too far. . . . And the chair of all the mares in the country, Mare Palmer from Trenton, New Jersey . . “

Oh my goodness. It was so embarrassing, so lead-footed and cynical, so patronizing. You know she was shocked that it didn’t go over because she’d seen her husband hop up his own accent and go with the sing-song cadences a hundred times in his career, a thousand times, and no one ever knocked him for it. But he was good at it. And he was, actually, a Southerner. He wasn’t adopting an entire new regional accent and calling it his own.

*   *   *

So what’s going on here? “Can’t nobody here play this game?” The presidency is an august office. Why are these candidates acting so small when the job they think they deserve is so big?

Maybe it’s just that people have less dignity these days, and so candidates do too. A few decades ago personal dignity became equated with stiffness and pretension. There was nothing in it for politicians anymore. (It all might have started in 1968, when Richard Nixon went on “Laugh-In” and said, “Sock it to me.” But that worked because he had actual personal dignity to spoof.) Maybe we’ve reached the point where anyone who’d run for president is almost definitionally strange. Maybe it’s that the candidates so far are just the kind of people who’d make it to the top of the greasy pole, scramblers by nature whose main talent is energy, not judgment.

But I have a different theory. I think it’s that all our candidates for president have met, or know well, too many former and sitting presidents. They’ve seen them up close, they know them, they have seen their flaws and mess and inadequacy. Knowing a lot of former presidents, and a lot of incumbents, will give you a too mortal sense of what the presidency is.

The problem with former presidents is that knowing them keeps you from being awed by the presidency. When you haven’t met them, you have a more austere and august sense of who they are, and what a president is.

Candidates on the trail today would be better off keeping as their template for the office Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln—the unattainable greats. It’s no good to just be thinking, At least I’m better than Clinton, at least I’m better than Bush.

Something to reach for even if you know it will exceed your grasp. But it’s good to be reaching upward, not stooping.

I will never forget the stunning Oct. 7, 1962, Time magazine cover that showed Franklin D. Roosevelt weeping, a shining tear snaking its way down his pale and sunken cheek as he surveyed the destruction wrought by the New Frontier—tax cuts, a Republican running Treasury. What an indictment of the Democratic Party; what a dirge for the New Deal.

Oh wait, that didn’t happen.

Well, I do remember the great Time cover of JFK sobbing as he looked down on a cartoon of dope-smoking hippies holding a banner that said “McGovern.” It was the summer of ‘72, and the little bubble over JFK’s head said “Amnesty, Acid, Abortion . . . that’s not A-OK!”

Oh wait, that didn’t happen either.

Could I be correct that they only front-page weeping Republicans, and only laud conservatives when they’re dead?

I refer of course to this past week’s Time magazine cover, which had a picture of Ronald Reagan with a tear drawn in, to illustrate a piece on the current Republican Party. Actually it was a good piece in that it suggested a simple truth: The portion of the Republican Party that is based in and lives off the American capital has lost its way. They used to stand for conservative principles and now they stand for—well, whatever it is they stand for. I’ve written the past few years that the modern Democratic Party has been undone in part by its successes, that it achieved what it worked for in terms of Social Security, the safety net and civil rights, and that a great coalition has now devolved into a mere conglomeration of interest groups. I don’t see why Time shouldn’t similarly indict the Republicans.

I think many of us would agree both parties seem like exhausted little volcanoes, and that they are driven more by hunger than belief.

The Time story turned the discussion again to Reagan and the shadow he casts, and that’s what people are talking about: What would Reagan think, what would Reagan do? So let’s posit the obvious. Reagan was great, a one-man hinge of history. He led and encouraged a national effort to rethink the relations of the individual and the federal establishment, to rethink what was owed to and legitimately expected of the state. He increased our security by increasing our strength and removing from the historical stage an evil ideology that had become an evil empire. “The Soviet Union fell.” It didn’t fall, somebody pushed it.

Here we should stop, for here things become confused. There seems to be a temperamental difference between the two parties regarding their heroes. Democrats are inspired by their greats (FDR, JFK) and spooked by their failures (McGovern, Carter). Republicans ignore their failures (who talks about Hoover?) and are spooked by their greats.

And when you’re spooked by someone, or have been beaten by someone, resentment creeps in.

Democrats look back and think Reagan was magic, or rather had some strange and secret magic. The smile, the charm, the humor—that’s why he looms! It was Mike Deaver and the balloons! It was his optimism! But Reagan never said he was optimistic. He wasn’t “optimistic,” he was faithful and practical. He said we could turn around the economy and beat communism. Then we did it. Which left everyone feeling optimistic.

Reagan should be an inspiration for every person in politics who stands for something at a cost and because it is right.

But he should inspire, he shouldn’t demoralize. Republicans should stop allowing the media to spook them with his memory. Democrats should stop resenting him and dreaming up new reasons behind his success.

*   *   *

For Republicans especially he should be a reorienting memory. He was modern conservatism. If they are for more government, more spending, a more imposing state, what are they?

For Democrats he should function as a reminder that ideas and philosophy count, that they give politics meaning.

Republicans should take heart from his memory but not be sunk in him or spooked by him. Life moves. Reagan’s meaning cannot be forgotten. But where does it get you if it’s 1885, and Republicans are pulling their hair out saying, “Oh no, we’re not doing well. We could win if only we had a Lincoln, but they shot him 20 years ago!” That’s not how serious people talk, and it’s not how serious people think. You face the challenges of your time with the brains and guts you have. You can’t sit around and say, “Oh what would Lincoln do?” For one thing it is an impractical attitude. Lincolns don’t come along every day. What you want to do with the memory of a great man is recognize his greatness, laud it, take succor from it, and keep moving. You can’t be transfixed by a memory. Hold it close and take it into the future with you.

Reagan himself wasn’t spooked by his predecessors. He wasn’t trying to emulate FDR, the giant of his youth. He just took some tricks from him. (You can use this thing called mass media to talk over the heads of power brokers directly to the people.) Reagan wasn’t trying to be Barry Goldwater or Robert Taft or JFK. He was just being Reagan. He thought that was enough.

It was.

In fairness, he didn’t deal with a mainstream media mischievously comparing him, to his disadvantage, with those who came before him. But the point still stands that the candidates this year should be who they are, and if they have any greatness in them, they should find it, and move us all by being themselves.

*   *   *

Should the media be in mourning that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no Sam Rayburn? Maybe. One could argue Sam Rayburn lived in the real world and was a man of generally moderate views, at least for his time, who knew what he thought and why. But I can’t imagine it does Speaker Pelosi any good to wake up each morning knowing she’s no Sam Rayburn. And, interestingly enough, it doesn’t seem to serve anyone’s agenda to continually make the comparison. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, can call herself the JFK of the race all she likes, but that doesn’t make her look even remotely like that cool and ironic practitioner of politics. It makes her look like a ditzy poseur.

Doesn’t matter what you call yourself, matters who you are. Reagan wasn’t magic. He was serious, farsighted and brave about the great issues of his time. Republican candidates could try that. If they did, it would have a secondary benefit. They’d start respecting themselves instead of merely being full of themselves. This would help them stop being spooked.

It was a sparkling and unusual event, a dinner that was as interesting as a Democrat’s (the talk was culturally broad, if sober— “life is real and earnest”) and as handsomely done as a Republican’s (the flowers were white, crisp, so expertly arranged they seemed a natural outgrowth of the mirrored table. Life should be not only grumbled about but celebrated).

In New York, in the Second Gilded Age, the age of the thousand-dollar pizza, wealthy Democrats, when they entertain, seem careful not to have things too physically perfect. It might suggest they’re unserious, that their thoughts are not always focused on the oppressed. Wealthy Republicans, on the other hand, will go all out to make it lovely. “The oppressed? I make jobs for them!” As for being thought unserious, one senses it does not trouble them. They made money in the world; they correctly apprehended the lay of the land and moved. That serious enough for you?

We were marking a birthday. I was seated next to a politically experienced businessman, an acquaintance of many years. He kept talking about the presidential race. I asked who he’s supporting. He was surprised I had to ask. “Hillary,” he said.

I nodded. “Tell me why,” I said.

“I’ve known her for years,” he said. “I’m a loyal person.”

I waited for him to say more. But he didn’t.

“Your reason for backing her is that you’re loyal?”

“Yes,” he said.

As if that were enough.

I was puzzled. You’re loyal. So what? You have a virtue, good. But that doesn’t mean the person you’re loyal to should be my president. That’s not enough.

And I said this, in a more polite and less concise way.

Which made him defensive. “You should talk,” he said. “You were loyal to Reagan.”

“No, I wasn’t,” I said. “I agreed with him.” I didn’t know Reagan when I went to work with him; I only knew his views and philosophy and supported them. I wanted him to succeed because I wanted what he stood for to succeed. In time I came to feel personal loyalty. But agreement came first. And if, in his presidency, Reagan had turned into some surprising, weak, tax-raising, government-growing, soft-on-Soviets guy, I would have stopped backing him. I would have thought him very nice and a bit of a dope, like Jerry Ford. I wouldn’t feel I had to hold high his memory and meaning.

Loyalty has nothing to do with it, not if you’re serious.

Or rather personal loyalty has nothing to do with it.

*   *   *

But the loyal are all over the place this year. There is a blight of them, the old friends and colleagues and neighbors, the former roommates. They’re bundling from downtown to the Bronx. They’re leading the cheers in the audience.

The other night at a big Giuliani fund-raiser in midtown Manhattan, when he said, “and if I become the president—,” a woman standing in the middle of the audience jumped up and bellowed, “You will!” to great applause, and I thought: I bet she worked with him at Justice.

A few months ago I had coffee with a new acquaintance who’s a longtime friend of a Republican candidate. He wanted to tell me of his candidate’s virtues, offer insight. His guy was honest, a leader. They’d been young men together. He’d seen him up close.

I didn’t doubt his sincerity. But so far I didn’t see why the candidate’s virtues were dispositive.

Why, I asked, should he be president?

The man was surprised and said, “Well, he’s a great guy!”

What does he want to do as president? I asked. What exactly will he do?

The man blinked and looked away. “I want to think about that,” he said. He thanked me for bringing it up. In a half hour more of talk he never answered.

Why is the Personal Loyalty Blight a problem? One reason is the one Hannah Arendt pointed out, the obvious one. “Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.”

But another is that the personally loyal seem more powerful than ever. Money is more important than ever. A big war chest leaves a candidate able to intimidate and communicate. The war chest comes from money raisers. The money raisers are often the personally loyal. And the loyal are driven not by a seriousness about ideas, proposals or policies but by a seriousness about the candidate himself, and what the candidate will do for the contributor once he’s elected president. Ambassador Smith . . . No, FCC Chairman Smith . . . Smith, head of the American delegation told reporters . . .

It’s all human, and traditional, and understandable. But this year of all years it’s not enough. And it’s certainly not enough for the candidates. It’s never enough for them. There is the story of the politician who accused a follower of never being loyal. The follower was nonplussed. “But I always support you when I think you’re right,” he said. “Anyone can do that,” said the politician. “I want people who support me when I’m wrong.” They’re all like that. And they all have reason for being like that. They’re in a hard business.

*   *   *

In the past, personal loyalty has been more a Democratic thing than a Republican one. Democrats used to like politics more than Republicans, so it’s no surprise they’d like its practitioners more. Republicans used to be conservatives; conservatives think politics is a duty, not a joy.

Democrats took their leaders more seriously as personalities, as people. They emotionally invested more in them. FDR’s people gave themselves to the boss, and went on to write the wonderful compelling story: Franklin and Eleanor, he a flighty state rep, she a flutey-voiced duckling, both of them born to and comfortable in wealth, then illness, growth, personal drama; he gets sick and finds his strength, she becomes independent and finds her voice. How many books, films and made-for-TV movies have we seen of it? All written by Democrats, who were more eager to see the life as a reason for their loyalty.

Republicans used to be a cooler sort. They got excited by the philosophy, by what the guy would do in office. If he pleased them in these areas, they were more than happy to find he’d lived an interesting and inspiring life, and tell you about it in books.

It is better to see activists driven by philosophy than by personalities. Better to be faithful to the cause than to individuals with whom you merely have a history. Better to have fidelity to principles, and not to political figures, no matter how interesting or compelling they are.

Here is what has been said the past week or so that sparked argument: Bill Maher, on HBO, said a lot of lives would be saved if Vice President Cheney had died, and Ann Coulter, at a conservative political meeting, suggested John Edwards is a “faggot.”

She was trying to be funny and get a laugh. He was trying to startle and get applause.

What followed was the predictable kabuki in which politically active groups and individuals feigned dismay as opposed to what many of them really felt, which was grim delight. Conservatives said they were chilled by Mr. Maher’s comments, but I don’t think they were. They were delighted he revealed what they believe is at the heart of modern liberalism, which is hate.

Liberals amused themselves making believe they were chilled by Ms. Coulter’s remarks, but they were not. They were delighted she has revealed what they believe is at the heart of modern conservatism, which is hate.

The truth is many liberals were dismayed by Mr. Maher because he made them look bad, and many conservatives were mad at Ms. Coulter for the same reason.

I realized as I watched it all play out that there’s a kind of simple way to know whether something you just heard is something that should not have been said. It is: Did it make you wince? When the Winceometer is triggered, it’s an excellent indication that what you just heard is unfortunate and ought not to be repeated.

In both cases, Mr. Maher and Ms. Coulter, when I heard them, I winced. Did you? I thought so. In modern life we wince a lot. It’s not the worst thing, but it’s better when something makes you smile.

*   *   *

One of the clearest statements ever about the implied limits of legitimate political discourse was made by the imprisoned Socrates in his first dialogue with Crito, when he said, “That’s not nice.” Actually, it was your grandmother who said “That’s not nice.” She’s the one who probably taught you the wince. It is her wisdom, encapsulated in those three simple words, that is missing from the current debate.

We tie ourselves in knots trying to explain why it is, or why it isn’t, always or occasionally, helpful or destructive to use various epithets, or give full voice to our resentments. But the simple wisdom of Grandma—“That’s not nice”—is a good guide. (I should say that when I was a kid, grandmas were older people who had common sense. They had observed something of people, had experienced life directly, not only through books or TV. Almost all of them had religious faith, and had absorbed the teachings of the Bible. Almost all of them sat quietly at the kitchen table, and even when I was a kid they were considered old fashioned. They were often ethnic and had accents. As a matter of fact, all of them were.)

I think that as America has grown more academic or aware of education, the wisdom of Grandma has been denigrated. Or ignored. Or stolen and dressed up as something else. For instance, Rudy Giuliani’s success in cleaning up and reviving the city of New York is generally attributed to his embrace of what is called, in academic circles, the broken-window theory. It holds that when criminals see that even small infractions are met and punished, they will understand that larger infractions will be met and punished. It also holds that when neighborhoods deteriorate, criminals are emboldened. People from Harvard won great prizes for these insights.

But all of broken-windows theory comes down to what Grandma always knew and said: “Fix the window or they’ll think no one cares! When people think no one cares, they do whatever they want.” There was not a single grandmother in America circa 1750-2007 who didn’t know this. But no one wants to quote Grandma. She’s so yesterday. And her simple teachings have been superseded by more exotic forms of instruction.

*   *   *

Fifty years ago, no one speaking at a respected political gathering would say, would even think of saying that Adlai Stevenson is a faggot. Nor would Arthur Godfrey or Jack Paar have declared on their television shows that we’d be better off if Eisenhower died. Is our discourse deteriorating? Yes, it is.

Part of the reason is that Grandma had more sway in the public sphere 50 years ago, which is to say common sense and a sense of decorum had more sway. Another part is that privately people felt they had more room to think or say whatever they wanted without being shamed or shunned. It let the steam out. We think of the 1950s as buttoned up, but in a way America had more give then. Men were understood not to be angels.

Our country now puts less of an emphasis on public decorum, courtliness, self-discipline, decency. America no longer says, “That’s not nice.” It doesn’t want to make value judgments on “good” and “bad.” We have come to rely on censorship to maintain decorum. We are very good at letting people know that if they say something we don’t like, we’ll shame them and shun them, even ruin them.

But censorship doesn’t make people improve themselves; it makes people want to rebel. It tells them to toe the line or pay a price. People who are urged in the right direction and taught in the right direction will usually try to discipline and improve themselves from within. But they do not enjoy censorship from without. They fight back. They are rude in order to show they are unbroken.

This is human. And Grandma would have understood this, too.

*   *   *

I think the atmosphere of political correctness is now experienced by normal people—not people who speak on TV, but normal people—as so oppressive, so demanding of constant self-policing, that when someone says something in public that is truly not nice, not nice at all, they can’t help but feel that they are witnessing a prison break.

As long as political correctness reigns, the more antic among us will try to break out with great streams of Tourette’s-like forbidden words and ideas.

We should forbid less and demand more. We should exert less pressure from without and encourage more discipline from within. We should ask people to be dignified, hope they’ll be generous, expect them to be fair. When they’re not, we should correct them. But we shouldn’t beat them to a pulp. Because that’s not nice.

Wednesday night John McCain made it official. “I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States,” he told David Letterman, adding that this was actually an announcement that he will make a formal announcement in April. Best line of the night came from bandleader Paul Shaffer: “He’s doing the formal announcement on Leno.”

Why did he do the Letterman show? To get his name in the paper, or rather to get his name in the paper followed by the word “announces” as opposed to the word “over.” A year ago he was pretty much on top, the past few months he’s lost steam.

Why was he once so hot and now so not?

Politics is like show business: Nobody knows anything. Everyone’s guessing. Everyone’s waiting to find out. Then, when it’s over, they tell you at great and knowing length why it happened.

Maybe the McCain story is as simple as what he’s always known, what he was taught, and what he experienced in war: The more time you spend in the air, the more you get dinged.

*   *   *

Everyone knows his bio, but when you stop and look at it again, you realize it’s even more impressive, more moving, than you remember. John Sidney McCain III, born in the Panama Canal Zone on Aug. 29, 1936, third in a string of high-spirited men who would serve their country heroically. His father was active-duty Navy, his mother the daughter of an oil wildcatter in Texas and Oklahoma. Both Mr. McCain’s father (he liked subs) and grandfather (he liked ships) rose to the rank of admiral, the latter promoted posthumously from vice admiral in 1945.

John McCain III goes to Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., attends the U.S. Naval Academy (class of 1958), becomes an aviator (he likes planes), is sent to Vietnam in the spring of 1967, and, on his 23rd bombing mission, on Oct. 26, 1967, is shot down by a surface to air missile. He ejects, breaking both arms and legs, is captured, is sent eventually to the infamous Hanoi Hilton where he spends much of his imprisonment in solitary. He refuses special treatment as the son of an admiral, is beaten and tortured, as are the others.

On March 14, 1973—34 years ago this month—he is freed, along with almost 600 other American prisoners. He receives the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. He stays in the Navy, works as liaison on Capitol Hill, goes home to Arizona, and is elected to Congress from the First District, replacing John Jacob Rhodes. In 1986 he wins the Senate seat of Barry Goldwater. He is re-elected in landslides in 1992 and ‘98 and runs for president in 2000. His Straight Talk Express gets slammed at a South Carolina crossroads by a bullet train called The Inevitability of Bush. He is re-elected to the Senate in 2004 with 77% of the vote and runs now, again, for president.

What a life.

*   *   *

In all, as he came up, he would have been an organic conservative, schooled in the old American rigors of duty and honor, shaped in a world that was competitive, aware of the existence of evil. A world in which not to be a conservative was like announcing, “I don’t understand life.” His patriotism, the patriotism of his family, was acted out and lived, as opposed to put on like a hat, or merely claimed.

No one in modern national-level politics has a better life story than his. In retrospect it is almost amazing that it didn’t beat that of George W. Bush, who wryly admitted to friends and supporters in 2000 that he was “a little light on the résumé.”

But Americans don’t elect résumés, they elect men. Here some aspects of Mr. McCain’s highly individualistic nature hurt him. He is funny, quick, brave, colorful. He is emotional, has a temper, carries grudges, harbors resentments. If the latter set of traits were not true, the former set would have won the Washington political establishment. As it is he has a portion of it, but many were hired, for money, as political advisers. This is a traditional, but at this point old-fashioned, way to spend money. All the advisers disagree; all of them gossip to reporters; most of them can define a problem but not a solution; and again, most don’t know anything. They were born for cable, always an interesting place, but one where you pay little price for being wrong.

*   *   *

There is the sense in Mr. McCain that he came to believe his résumé gives him special latitude. George W. Bush in 2000 felt he had to seem down-the-line conservative (though this involved some head faking). He had to tell you who he was because you couldn’t see it by looking at his history. I suspect Mr. McCain knew no one could question his life, that it showed who he was, and so he could do what he wanted in terms of policy and not jeopardize his support. After all, his whole life was a testament to conservative principles, so he could go against general conservative thinking on campaign reform, on immigration. He could hang with the liberal boy journalists on the bus—”My base!” he jokingly, truthfully, called them in 2004.

In 2000 he felt he could take on Christian conservative leaders in the South. Bad timing. In 2000 they were at the peak of their 20 years of power. Now their followers are tired and questioning after a generation of political activism. And many leaders seem compromised—dinged after all that time in the air. Mr. McCain could rebuke them now and thrive. Instead he decided to attempt to embrace them.

And there is Iraq. The war was generally popular from 2002 through roughly 2006, and Mr. McCain won broad credit from conservatives for standing with the president. But now that support, heightened by the surge debate, is costing him, not only with the general public but in a subtle way, I think, with Republicans. Republicans don’t abandon a Republican president in time of war, and they have a special relationship with this president, a simple admiration for who he is. At the same time, they don’t precisely want another W. for president, another man who seems just as convinced, stubborn, single-minded, invested.

One suspects Mr. McCain knows this but is stuck where he’s stuck and stands where he stands. What is his promise, his potential? It’s that he’s John McCain. In a changing world, he is a constant. He’s earned it. His promise is that he’s Moe Greene—he made his bones when the rest of them were out chasing cheerleaders.

Republicans and conservatives have been trying to sink Mrs. Clinton for years, but she keeps bob-bob-bobbing along. “Oh those Clinton haters, what’s wrong with them?”

Only a Democrat could hurt her, and a Democrat just did. Hollywood titan David Geffen, who now supports Barack Obama, this week famously retagged the Clintons as an Ivy League Bonnie and Clyde. Bill is “reckless,” Hillary relentless—”God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary?” In an interview that seemed like an audience, with the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd, Mr. Geffen said, “Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.” In this he was, knowingly or unknowingly, echoing Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator, who said in 1996 of the then-president, “Clinton’s an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize that?” Mr. Kerrey suffered for the remark and was shunned within his party for a while, but didn’t retract.

In her column Ms. Dowd labeled the campaign operation “Hillary Inc.” but Mr. Geffen got closer to the heart of it: It is the Clinton “machine” and it “is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective.”

He’s probably about to find out how true that is.

Mr. Geffen should be braced for a lot of bad personal box office—negative press, searching profiles, strained relations. We’re probably about to see if the Clinton Machine can flatten him. Little doubt it will try. John Dickerson wrote in Slate this week of Bill Clinton’s generously sharing his campaign wisdom: “Your opponent can’t talk when he has your fist in his mouth.” Among some Democratic political professionals this kind of talk is considered tough and knowing, as opposed to, say, startlingly belligerent and crude.

But the outcome of the Geffen-Clinton episode is worthy of watching because it is going to determine whether it is remembered as the moment in the 2008 campaign when it became clear you are allowed to criticize Hillary—or as the moment it became clear you are not.

*   *   *

Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman and an emerging dark prince among political operatives—he is, in the strange way of Washington, admired by journalists for his ability to mislead them—quickly responded with a challenge: If Mr. Obama is a good man, he’ll renounce Mr. Geffen and give back the money he contributed in his famous Hollywood fund-raiser. This was widely considered a brilliant move. Is it? Now everyone who follows politics even cursorily will have to have an opinion on whether Mr. Obama should apologize, which means they’ll have to know exactly what Mr. Geffen said, which, again, boiled down, is: I’ve known them intimately for almost 20 years, and they’re bad people and bringers of trouble. It’s good for Mrs. Clinton that America is going to spend the weekend discussing this? It’s good that Mr. Geffen’s comments, which focused on the area on which she is most touchy and most vulnerable—the character issue—will be aired over and over again? Mr. Wolfson might have been better off with, “We’re sorry to hear it, as Mrs. Clinton thinks the world of David.”

Mrs. Clinton has never gone after a fellow Democrat quite the way she’s going after Mr. Obama, and it’s an indication of how threatened she is not only by his candidacy but, one suspects, his freshness. He makes her look like yesterday. He makes her look like the old slash-and-burn. I doubted he could do her serious damage. Now I wonder.

What Mrs. Clinton is trying to establish is this: to criticize her—to speak of her critically as a human being, as a person with a record and a history and a style and attitudes—is, ipso facto, to be dirty, and low, and destructive. To air and raise questions about who she is, how she operates, and what can be inferred from her past actions is by definition an unjust act.

But Americans have always—always—looked at and judged the character and personality of their candidates for president. And they have been right to do so. It mattered that Lincoln was Honest Abe, Washington had no personal lust for power, that FDR was an optimist and a manipulator, that Adams was a man of rectitude and no small amount of stubbornness. These facts, these aspects of their nature, had policy implications and leadership implications. They couldn’t be more pertinent. They still are.

*   *   *

At the Democratic forum in Carson City, Nev., on Tuesday, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Mrs. Clinton if Mr. Obama should renounce Mr. Geffen’s remarks. She answered, “I want to run a positive campaign” and referred to “the politics of personal destruction.” Every time she gets in a spot, she pulls that one out. And for good reason: It has always worked. It works because it confuses people. Is this the boys beating up the girl? Are they sticking her pigtails in the ink well? Is Geffen mean? If Obama is nice, shouldn’t he make sure everyone is nice?

It’s not so much a diversion as a non sequitur. Mrs. Clinton is like the little girl who steals the boy next door’s candy and hits him on the head with a hammer. He runs, “Mommy, she stole my Snickers and hit me on the head!” She turns to the mother, hammer in hand, and gestures at the boy. “This . . . is the politics of personal destruction.”

As I say, it’s always worked in the past. The question is, will it work in the future? One senses one thing that is new.

In the Nevada forum Mrs. Clinton had a hard act to follow when she came on after Sen. Chris Dodd, who spoke with energy and concentration, and whose look is striking, sort of Old American Ethnic in a Brooks Brothers suit. He’s like a cardinal with his thick white hair and furious eyebrows. He hit the crowd’s erogenous zones on Iraq, and took a hard shot at Mrs. Clinton: “Why is it so hard to say you’re sorry?”

Mrs. Clinton came out after him, and amid the Geffen flap, so it’s not surprising that she was a little off her game. She spoke the way she speaks—”renew the promise of America . . . give people the services and support they need . . . hardworking families”—but the flat voice seemed flatter, more grating. She seemed diminished by the fact that the event hadn’t been built around her, didn’t star her, wasn’t arranged by her. There were other people there, other candidates on the stage, and she looked like she was in a contest for a change.

Usually Mrs. Clinton is a tough little tank, but on Tuesday she seemed less large, less formidable. If only for a moment, less inevitable.

“Why do you think everyone is obsessing on the presidential race so early?” The question came from a friend who works in magazines. I told her I’d been thinking about the exact same thing. We’re barely less than two years out and yet paying attention to presidential politics as if it were October 2008.

Part of the reason is structural: A technological revolution spawned a media revolution; new media is determined to win the day, old media is desperate to keep up. Large investments are at stake. Competition forces its own dynamism; everyone’s filing, live, on cable, on the Internet, from Manchester, N.H., or Ames, Iowa. The chatter is everywhere.

In 1959 Teddy White stood in the snow by himself in New Hampshire and got to . . . reflect. Now ten thousand Teddys flood the zone. Of course they’re reduced to counting Barack Obama’s nose hairs. Actually they’re reduced to scrambling over each other for the sound bite from the man on the street when they know, actually, that there is no man on the street anymore in terms of . . . innocence, ingenuousness, “my first time seeing a speech by a guy who could be president!” Every voter’s a vet.

The most dismaying thing I’ve noticed the past 10 years on television is that ordinary people who are guests on morning news shows—the man who witnessed the murder, the housewife who ran from the flames—speak, now, in perfect sound bites. They also cry on cue. They used to ramble, like unsophisticated folk, and try to keep their emotions to themselves. Anchors had to take them in hand. “But what happened then?” Now the witness knows what’s needed, and how to do it. “And when she didn’t come home, Matt, I knew: this is not like her. And I immediately called the authorities.”

Why does this dismay? Because it’s another stepping away from the real. Artifice detaches us even from ourselves.

*   *   *

Earlier this week I heard a minister quote a spiritual genius: “All the problems in the world are caused by man’s inability to sit quietly in a room by himself.” We’re restless and need action, which in a modern media world means information. We need the busy buzz—the Internet, TV, instant messages, magazines and newspapers, the beeps and boops and bops. Rudy’s up in Iowa. Hillary’s stuck. We want to be among the first to have this information and the first to share it. And we want it not because it’s crucial but because it distracts us from the crucial. It takes our minds away from what is most important. Who you are, for instance, or what we are about. It’s a great relief not to think about the important. It’s a relief to focus on factoids.

And there’s this: By obsessing on the presidential race—and I mean here not only journalists and editors and professional schmoozers but normal humans—by turning our attention to the contests for the nomination and focusing on it and pondering how our neighbors experience Edwards or McCain, we help convince ourselves that the next guy can solve it all. The next president will save us. That’s why it’s so important, because the next president will turn it all around. We like thinking this. And I don’t blame us. I like thinking it too. Even though I know it isn’t true. Because our next president will not have magical powers.

But that’s not a manageable thought. What’s manageable is knowing how Rudy’s doing in Ames.

That’s our problem, the observer’s problem. What about the observed? What is the greatest problem with and for the candidates who are running so far?

There are many. Having journalists set up boot camp among your nose hairs is one. It is hard to be observed and real. But here’s a bigger problem: You remember the story, from Genesis, of the famished brother who gave up his birthright for food. “He sold his soul for a mess of pottage.” The problem in national politics this year is the number of candidates of whom it could plausibly said, “He sold his soul for a pot of message.” He became something else, adopted new views, took stands the opposite of what he’d taken in the past, because he thought that if he didn’t he could not win a base in the base. (“He” here includes “she.”) Candidates take new views to create a new message. You “sell your soul” to put on the policy skin media professionals fashion for you. In this way you make yourself into someone else. (And it’s not as if the strategists will like you for your flexibility. Once I asked a political professional if he’d come to like and care about the candidates he’d worked with, and he barked the old Cynical Strategist’s line, “Rule one: Never fall in love with the meat!”)

*   *   *

The discomfort felt by candidates who do this must be great. And echoes into the body politic. Does he mean what he’s saying here? When he said the opposite three years ago, did he mean that? Maybe he was lying three years ago and is telling the truth now. Does that make me like him more or less? If he repositions himself now will he reposition himself later?

These questions leave us scratching our heads.

The problem is not that people don’t change their minds. They do. And it’s not that they don’t have a right to change their minds. They do. But it’s understood as a sincere act only when it is explained—when a change in stance is accompanied by an explanation about a change in thinking, in approach, in weighing new data or old truths.

Otherwise it’s confusing, and mildly disheartening. A pragmatist might say it shouldn’t be. After all, if a candidate is pro-choice in 2004 and pro-life in 2007, at least you know one thing: He won’t be changing his mind again! Everyone gets to change his mind once, but on the big issues you only get one bite of the apple.

But it must be uncomfortable to walk around in a skin that isn’t really your own. It must be really damaging to your soul, if you have a soul, and not just appetites, or a rugged, rocky little sense of what you deserve.

Maybe the candidates would do themselves good by leaving the trail a few days and trying to sit quietly in a room, by themselves, with no distractions, and think about big things, such as who they are.

According to polls, Hillary Clinton holds an early and significant lead among Democratic voters (43%, compared with 22% for Barack Obama in a Fox News poll 10 days ago). She is of course the killer fund-raiser of the race, with one of her contributors crowing this week that she’ll raise more money than all the other candidates combined. So let’s call her the likely Democratic nominee, even though Mr. Obama hasn’t even announced yet. On the Republican side it’s Giuliani time, with Fox News putting him at 34% among GOP voters and John McCain coming in second with 22%. He hasn’t announced yet either, but this week he filed all the papers.

So at the moment, and with keen awareness that not a vote has been cast, it is possible to say the state of New York is poised to become the home of both major-party presidential candidates. This is not unprecedented, but it is unusual. It happened in 1904, when New York was the home of the hero of Oyster Bay, President Theodore Roosevelt, and reluctant Democratic nominee Alton Parker, a judge on New York’s Court of Appeals, who carried only the solid South. It happened again in New York in 1944, when Teddy’s cousin Franklin sought a fourth term against the bland and mustachioed Thomas Dewey, the New York district attorney unforgettably labeled by Teddy’s daughter, the chilly and amusing Alice Roosevelt Longworth, “the little man on the wedding cake.” In 1920 both the Democratic and Republican nominees were from Ohio; Sen. Warren Harding, who seemed boring but proved sprightly, landslided Democrat James Cox, a dreamy Wilsonian who thought America wished to hear more about the League of Nations. (Illinois was the first state to enjoy dual nominees when Republican Abraham Lincoln beat Stephen Douglas, the official but not the only Democratic candidate that year.)

Right now New York, our beloved, overtaxed, postindustrial state, is the red-hot center of the political map.

*   *   *

These are exciting times, with rival gangs roaming uptown and down looking for money and support. The styles of the two tongs are different. Hillary’s people are cool and give away nothing; they’re all business. They’re like a captain from an army about to crush you. Why should he bother to charm you?

Rudy’s people are more like old-style New Yorkers: They are pugnacious, and if you express reservations about their guy, they give you the chin. They don’t make the case or try to persuade; they tilt their chins up and try to argue you into conceding he can win. As if they think it’s all on them, and if they can win the conversation, he will win the nomination.

The city, as we say in the state, is full of people who’ve met both candidates, know them, had dealings with them. The other night I bumped into a veteran journalist who talked about Iran. The journalist said, “I wrote Hillary and gave her good advice but she didn’t write back!” I went to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee speech Mrs. Clinton gave last week, and the higher geopolitical meanings of the event aside, the crowd ate dinner as she spoke and didn’t seem unduly impressed. They’d seen her before and would see her again.

*   *   *

What a boon the race is for the tabloid press and the mainstream media: If New York’s at the center, they’re at the center. The tabloids had fun with the formal debut, via a Harper’s Bazaar interview, of Judi Giuliani. The Post famously front-paged The Kiss, a posed and mildly creepy smooch—it was a bigger story in New York than the mad astronaut—and her recent reflections that the presidential race is “a journey” they can make “together.” It left one observer—that would be me—saying, “Oh no, please no.” In politics, in the world of political life, the proper attitude of a third wife is modesty.

Mrs. Clinton also has an interesting spouse.

Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton seem in a way to represent two different New Yorks, two different templates of what it is to be a New Yorker. Rudy as mayor: An embattled pol bickering with reporters trying to bait him. A Western European ethnic from the outer boroughs with a slight hunch to his shoulders. He does the chin too, or did. His people probably got it from him. He was the government-prosecutor son of a Brooklyn guy, a Republican in a Democratic town, a man who had ideas—convictions!—about how to cut crime and stop the long slide, and who had to move entire establishments (and if there’s one thing New York knows how to make, it’s establishments) to get his way. And he pretty much did, winning progress and enmity along the way. On 9/10/01 he was a bum, on 9/11 he was a man, and on 9/12 he was a hero. Life can change, shift, upend in an instant.

Mrs. Clinton is not ethnic or outer-borough. She’s suburban, middle class; she was raised in a handsome town in Illinois and lived an adulthood in Arkansas and Washington. She founded the original war room, is called “The Warrior” by some of her staff, has been fierce and combative in private, but obscures it all now under clouds of pink scarves. She literally hides the chin.

Both candidates seem now almost…jarringly happy. As if they’ve arrived and it’s good, which they have and it is. But good fortune distances. They are both rich now, and both have spent the past six years being lauded and praised. In both it seems to have softened their edges—the easy, ready smile. We’ll see if it’s softened their heads.

*   *   *

But it is significant that in Mrs. Clinton’s case, for the past 30 years, from 1978 through 2007—which is to say throughout most, almost all, of her adulthood—her view of America, and of American life, came through the tinted window of a limousine. (Now the view is, mostly, through the tinted window of an SUV.)

From first lady of Arkansas through first lady of the United States to U.S. senator, her life has been eased and cosseted by staff—by aides, drivers, cooks, Secret Service, etc. Her life has been lived within a motorcade. And so she didn’t have to worry about crime, the cost of things, the culture. Status incubates. Rudy Giuliani was fighting a deterioration she didn’t have to face. That’s a big difference. It’s the difference between the New Yorker in the subway and the Wall Street titan in the town car.

Next Tuesday would have been Ronald Reagan’s 96th birthday, which is amazing when you consider he is, in a way, more with us than ever: his memory and meaning summoned in political conversation, his name evoked by candidates. I remember 10 years ago when there was controversy over the movement to name things for him—buildings and airports. I was away from home at the time, and I realized that to talk to people in Washington about it, I’d have to land at JFK, take the FDR Drive and go through the Lincoln tunnel.

This is America; we remember our greats. You tell yourself who you are by what you raise a statue to.

The other day a friend asked: What do you think made him so likable to many who disagreed with him and who look back with nostalgia on his White House?

It’s funny that people like to talk about this even though they know the answers. There was the courage to swim against the tide, to show not a burst of bravery but guts in the long haul. The good cheer and good nature that amounted to a kind of faith. The air of pleasure Reagan emanated on meeting others, and his egalitarianism. He thought everyone, from Nobel Prize winners to doormen, equal. Not that he wasn’t aware of status. When he stood behind Errol Flynn for a still photo to promote “Santa Fe Trail,” he knew of Flynn’s towering reputation. Between shots, Reagan kept quietly pushing little piles of dirt together. When he had a mound, he stood on it so that he was, literally, of equal stature. He told the story on himself for years because it was funny, and he believed in laughter. He was a little like Art Buchwald in this; he thought laughter was a value of its own. I think he thought that people who shared a laugh had in fact just voted for something together: something funny and human just got said or done.

*   *   *

Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” was CBS’s White House correspondent during the Reagan administration, and I asked her what she remembered most. She said, “We reporters would stake out ‘the driveway’ to see who was going in to see the president. In the first few years there was a stream of people who came to argue against his budget-cutting proposals. They would march up that driveway in a huff, smoke coming out of their nostrils as they rehearsed their angry arguments about why he was destroying the lives of poor people, or schoolkids.

“I remember specifically a group of mayors from big cities, livid about cuts to their welfare programs, school-lunch programs, etc. They were there to give the president a scolding; they were going to tell him. And in they’d march. Two hours later, out they came. We were all ready with the cameras and the mikes to get their version of the telling off. But they were all little lambs, subdued. . . . He had charmed them. . . . The mayors told us Reagan agreed with them. That they had persuaded him. . . .

“Thirty minutes later Larry Speakes was in the press room telling us the numbers would not in fact change. The mayors had ‘misunderstood’ the president. Still, I’ll bet anything if you talked to those mayors today, they would tell you Reagan was a great guy.”

She mentioned “his personal touch, his gallantry.” You knew he was a good man and you knew he meant it. So you understood how he could be the biggest supporter of FDR and the New Deal in 1944, and the most persuasive voice for Barry Goldwater in 1964. He’d thought it through and changed, not overnight but in time and with effort. He could change his mind on abortion in the same way, and not because he feared the base. Reagan was the base.

*   *   *

Last week I was at a gathering of old Reagan hands and I asked aloud if something that I’d heard might be true. It was that Mikhail Gorbachev now lives in California and has a pool. The minute I said it, a longtime Reagan friend laughed. He knew where I was going. Reagan always said what he really wanted to do with a Russian premier was get him in a helicopter, ride over Southern California, point down at the million little houses and million little pools, and say “Mr. Gorbachev, that’s how the proletariat lives in America.”

But it wasn’t true. Mr. Gorbachev lives in Moscow, where he has a think tank, a former cabinet secretary told me. Mr. Gorbachev had given the secretary a tour, and proudly noted that he paid for the building by renting out two floors. “Gorbachev has discovered the free market,” the secretary said.

It was almost as good.

This led the Reagan intimate to remember being on a private plane with him one day. They had a steak and fine wine. “Reagan said to me, ‘You know, I believe everyone in America can have these things.’ I said, ‘You really believe that?’ Reagan said, ‘Yes, I do.’ “ The intimate said to me, “See, I don’t believe that, that anyone here can do it.” Then he paused. “But it’s good to have a president who does.”

*   *   *

Lately we are hearing of President Reagan’s famous 11th commandment: “Speak no ill of a fellow Republican.” It’s a good rule for both parties, but it’s good also to remember how he approached it in practice. Ronald Reagan turned his own party upside down, enraged its establishment, and threatened its immediate future when, in 1976, he mounted a fierce challenge to an incumbent Republican president. He ran full and hard against Jerry Ford and it was bitter—the stakes were high, the issue freedom at home and abroad. Reagan lost, his challenge doomed Ford in the general election, and four years later Reagan roared back. And when he won the nomination he turned around and seriously considered as his running mate . . . Jerry Ford.

When he ran against Ford, it wasn’t personal. And when he almost picked Ford as his vice president, that wasn’t personal either. It was more like this: This is America. We have been arguing about everything for 200 years. It’s what we do. It’s our glory.

Our politics then were grimmer yet had a lighter touch. The Soviets could nuke us tomorrow; let’s have a hellacious brawl. It was a serious time, but I don’t think we were in general so somber, so locked in. The 11th commandment meant the fight should never be mean, low or unnecessarily injurious to the person, or the party. But a fight could be waged—should be waged—over big, big things.

That he knew that is part of why we remember him as great. It’s part of why when you next fly to Washington, you’ll land at Reagan National Airport.

We all complain, and with justice, about the falseness of much that is said in Washington, and the cowardice that leaves a great deal unsaid. But I found myself impressed and grateful for the words of Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, in a meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. Because his message was not one Republicans or Democrats would find congenial, it may be accidentally dropped down the memory hole, so I’ll quote at some length.

The committee was nearing a vote on what was, essentially, an announcement of no confidence in the administration’s leadership in Iraq. Specifically it was a nonbinding resolution opposing the increase in troops the president has requested. This was not significant in a concrete way: The president has the power to send more troops, and they are already arriving. But as symbols go, it packed a punch. You couldn’t watch it on television or on the Internet and not see that Mr. Hagel was letting it rip. He did not speak from notes or a text but while looking at his fellow senators. There seemed no time lag between thought and word. He was barreling, he was giving it to you straight, and he’d pick up the pieces later.

This is what he said: Congress has duties; in the case of the war, meeting those duties was not convenient; Congress did not meet them.

And so: “The Congress has stood in the shadow of this issue, Iraq, for four years. As [John] Warner noted . . . we have a constitutional responsibility as well as a moral responsibility to this country, to the young men and women we ask to go fight and die and their families. . . . This is not a defeatist resolution, this is not a cut-and-run resolution, we’re not talking about cutting off funds, not supporting the troops. This is a very real, responsible addressing of the most divisive issue in this country since Vietnam.

“Sure it’s tough. Absolutely. And I think all 100 senators ought to be on the line on this. What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why are you elected? If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes.

“This is a tough business. But is it any tougher, us having to take a tough vote, express ourselves . . . than what we’re asking our young men and women to do? I don’t think so.”

Later: “I don’t question the president’s sincerity, his motivations in this. I never have. . . . Part of the problem that we have, I think, is because we didn’t—we didn’t involve the Congress in this when we should have. And I’m to blame. Every senator who’s been here the last four years has to take some responsibility for that.

“But I will not sit here in this Congress of the United States at this important time for our country and in the world and not have something to say about this. . . . I don’t ever want to look back and have the regret that I didn’t have the courage and I didn’t do what I could. . . .

“I would go back to where I began, and pick up on a point that Chairman [Richard] Lugar mentioned: coherence of strategy. I don’t know how many United States senators believe we have a coherent strategy in Iraq. I don’t think we’ve ever had a coherent strategy. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan. I happen to know Pentagon planners were on their way to the Central Com over the weekend. They haven’t even Team B’d this plan. . . . And I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators, to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don’t hide anymore; none of us.

“That is the essence of our responsibility. And if we’re not willing to do it, we’re not worthy to be seated right here. We fail our country. If we don’t debate this . . . we are not worthy of our country.”

*   *   *

Whenever the camera shot broadened to show the other senators, I wondered what they were thinking. For a few it might have been, Well done, Chuck. For others, Hey, righteous indignation is my act. And some would have been thinking, That’s good, ol’ buddy, and no matter how long I have to wait, I’ll get you for putting me on the spot, for making us look bad, for getting on your high horse and charging.

But Mr. Hagel said the most serious thing that has been said in Congress in a long time. This is what we’re here for. This is why we’re here, to decide, to think it through and take a stand, and if we can’t do that, why don’t we just leave and give someone else a chance?

Mr. Hagel has shown courage for a long time. He voted for the war resolution in 2002 but soon after began to question how it was being waged. This was before everyone did. He also stood against the war when that was a lonely place to be. Senate Democrats sat back and watched: If the war worked, they’d change the subject; and if it didn’t, they’d hang it on President Bush. Republicans did their version of inaction; they supported the president until he was unpopular, and then peeled off. This is almost not to be criticized. It’s what politicians do. But it’s not what Mr. Hagel did. He had guts.

*   *   *

A note too on John Kerry, who, on the floor of the Senate, also talked about Iraq this week, and said he would not run for president. Clearly he saw the lipstick writing on the wall: This is the year of the woman. He also might have been acting on the sense that this is a time of ongoing and incipient political flux. The major parties seem as played out as they are ruthless, and the arc of political fame is truncated: nobodies become somebodies become has-beens before half the country knows their name. The Democrats have no idea what they stand for, the Republicans only remember what they stood for.

But there was Mr. Kerry, liberated by the death of a dream and for once quite human as he tried to tell it the way he actually saw it. Took the mock right out of me. Good for him, and for Mr. Hagel. I wonder if we are seeing the start of a new seriousness.