Peggy Noonan

“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.

The president’s State of the Union Address is Tuesday night, and right now his speechwriters are likely still caught in staffing hell, receiving last-minute suggested changes from agencies and offices throughout the government. The speech is probably frozen—writers have been working on it since before Christmas, and this is an orderly White House—but in the days before a big speech, everyone works out his unfocused anxiety through last-minute tinkering.

Someone at just about this moment is suggesting changing the opening—“My fellow Americans”—to “Fellow citizens.” And someone else is penciling in “My brothers and sisters.” Down the hall someone is writing, “Why don’t we make it new, edgy—how about ‘Hey Dawg?’ “ Somewhere a speechwriter is screaming.

The small things are overthought. The big things are underthought. This is the way of government.

*   *   *

An administration official told me he’d just had the busiest week of his life—meetings and meetings to schedule meetings and decisions. Landon Parvin, the eloquent and elegant veteran of the last three Republican White Houses, reminded me that the speech forces policy decisions to be made. “Remember how we couldn’t write things because the decisions hadn’t been made yet? Here we were running around trying to put a speech together, meanwhile the policy wonks elsewhere were running around trying to put a policy together.”

I asked the administration official how the speech looks. He said he’d only seen part of it, that each agency now receives for review only the section of the speech that is pertinent to it. This surprised me. In the Reagan White House, the whole speech was sent out to the agencies. This caused problems of its own—a poet at Treasury might accidentally rewrite American foreign policy—but it allowed the speech to emerge with a certain definable character.

The change suggested two things. One is that the new way might account for the increased choppiness of such addresses over the years. It’s hard to maintain a flow if each section bears different marks. The other is that the administration must be very anxious about leaks, worried that the guy in the Office of Management and Budget will leak the foreign-affairs section or the guy in Commerce will leak the references to immigration. It’s difficult to run a government when you have to operate with such anxiety.

State of the Union speeches run long—they announce an administration’s plans and proposals for the coming year, and that takes time—and by nature they have a lot of boring parts. It’s not a straight arrow of a speech with a theme and a destination, but something that pongs and bounces for 50 minutes. I continue to think the White House should issue two States of the Union simultaneously. The first would be a lengthy written document containing all plans and proposals for each agency, and a review of where we are. The second would be the address, a thematic speech devoted to the great and pressing issue of the day. Just having a White House decide what the issue is would be illuminating. In 1962, for instance, John F. Kennedy might likely have spoken either of the struggle with Soviet communism or of the rise of the American civil-rights movement. Whichever he chose, and how he spoke of it, would say worlds about where we were going and who he was. History would respect it, as opposed to wading through it. And normal people would listen.

*   *   *

The big thing I’d like to hear the president say this year? There are areas toward which he can point with pride, most especially the still not fully recognized triumph of the U.S. economy, a jobs-making, wealth-making dynamo. That it is so strong, so high, five years after 9/11 is amazing, and moving, too: A lot of individual toil went into that. How did it happen, what cultural implications does it hold, what are we doing wrong, what will strengthen growth, what will undermine it? Serious and textured thoughts are, here, overdue.

But there is no denying that Iraq is, still, subject No. 1. In connection with that, I wish the president would take time to acknowledge and think aloud about the bitterness that has come to surround the entire postinvasion American polity. The feeling of mutual sympathy that swept America’s political class in the days after 9/11 has dissipated, if not disappeared. And this is true not only in government but in newspapers, on the Internet, in the culture.

It’s been an era of soft thinking and hard words. Those who opposed the war were weak and craven; those who supported it were dupes and bullies; those who came to oppose the war were cowards bowing to polls; those who continue to support it love all war all the time. Some of this was inevitable—the stakes could barely be higher; passions flare. But it’s not getting us anywhere. And it’s limiting debate. It’s making people fearful.

It is time for a kind of verbal amnesty in which thoughts are considered before motives are judged. An admission that the White House is as responsible for this situation as everyone else would help clear the air—and just might prompt some soul-searching in members of the audience. An honest plea here could break through the cement that has hardened over the debate. Who could answer harshly when a president who loves his country admitted the problem and pleaded for change? That’s what might really hit reset.

*   *   *

Connected to that, a small thought. Part of the reason the air is so charged now, so highly emotional, is that many of the leaders in the drama seem, lately, to be re-enacting. One senses a number of antiwar politicians are thinking: This is my Bobby Kennedy moment. We are re-enacting 1968. See how I jab the air as I speak against war. On the other side it is 1939, and they are Churchill. See the bulldog gaze and hear the repetition of rhetoric that even then was on occasion overripe. (I know—sometimes overripe fruit has the sharpest taste and smell. And at least you know it’s in the kitchen.)

All this re-enacting is understandable—we are human, imaginative, damaged. But however legitimate it feels or is, it also further charges the atmosphere. And the atmosphere is charged enough. The great struggle of life is that you are you and this is now. The inspiration of that is that you’re not just remembering history, you’re making it. It’s a blank page. You can fill it with good things.

I had the odd and wholly unexpected experience of feeling supportive of a troop increase until I saw the president’s speech arguing for it. What a jarring, furtive-seeming thing it was.

Surely the Iraq endeavor and those who’ve fought in it and put their hopes in it deserve more than collapse, withdrawal and calamity. But . . . 20,000 more troops, who’ll start to arrive over the next few months, and we’ll press the Iraqi government to be tougher? A young journalist who is generally supportive of the president said, “So this is it? The grand strategy is to repeat a strategy they weren’t able to execute the first time they tried it?”

What a dreadful mistake the president made when he stiff-armed the Iraq Study Group report, which had bipartisan membership, an air of mutual party investment, the imprimatur of what remains of or is understood as the American establishment, and was inherently moderate in its proposals: move diplomatically, adjust the way we pursue the mission, realize abrupt withdrawal would yield chaos. There were enough good ideas, anodyne suggestions and blurry recommendations (blurriness is not always bad in foreign affairs—confusion can buy time!) that I thought the administration would see it as a life raft. Instead they pushed it away. Like the old woman in the flood who took to the roof and implored God to send a boat to save her. A hunk of wood floated by as she prayed with fervor. A busted wooden door floated by as the waters rose and she doubled her prayers. Finally she cried “God, I asked you to save me and you didn’t send a boat!” And the voice of God answered: “I sent you a hunk of wood and a door!”

We don’t always recognize deliverance when it arrives.

There was something unnerving about the speech, from the jumpy beginning to the stumbles to the sound glitches. A jittery affair, and some dusk hung over it. At the end I suspected the president’s aides had instructed him again and again not to strut or have an edge. He perhaps understood that as: Got it—don’t be me. He couldn’t do wounded wisdom, but he could repress cocky cowboy. The result was that he seemed not chastened but effaced, not there. It was odd. One couldn’t find the personal geography of the speech.

*   *   *

Nothing in it really worked. “I had a sinking feeling,” said a conservative journalist afterward. An old Republican hand: “He looked like he was over his head.” Of the call for bipartisanship: “A tad late.”

John McCain looked pale—he looked like a ghost among the pillars—as he gave reaction on Fox from the Capitol. His voice was soft, feathery, like a speaker who’d been knocked flat on the way to the podium. “I’d much rather lose a campaign than lose a war,” he said. I wondered if he was thinking, Once again this man sinks my fortunes. It’s South Carolina all over again! Dianne Feinstein seemed grave on CNN. “Oh, my heart fell,” she said of the president’s proposal. “I was very disappointed by it.” She wanted more attention to Mideast peace efforts.

Pat Buchanan on MSNBC warned of what would happen if the U.S. simply withdrew or maintained the status quo: “I think the president’s gonna get this last chance, but I think it’s the last one.” There has been something gallant in the old battler who’d opposed the war taking no pleasure in the current crisis. Democratic foreign affairs veteran Richard Holbrooke on PBS: The speech was “an astonishing event. . . . The president is doubling down on every bad bet.” Republican veteran Ken Duberstein: “I found myself watching the speech thinking, ‘I want to believe.’” He did not hide his skepticism.

The question that suddenly began to crop up in all the talk after the speech was: What will fill the vacuum if America simply says, “We gave it our best, but the Iraqi people didn’t seem to want to cooperate in their freedom, so we will have to leave”? The talk was grim and believable. Ethnic cleansing, religious warfare, geopolitical machinations potentially harmful—almost certainly harmful, and deeply so—to America and the West. One argument seems tired and not true. It is that if we leave Iraq, the terrorists of the world will have a safe place in which to gather, coalesce, plan and move. They already have such places, in the Mideast and outside it, and maybe here. Terrorists hide, and the world is full of hiding places.

But there are two vacuums in the Iraq story. The first is the vacuum that would be filled in Iraq if America withdrew tomorrow. The second is the power vacuum that will be created in Washington if the administration is, indeed, collapsing. The Democrats of Capitol Hill will fill that one. And they seem—and seemed in their statements after the president’s speech—wholly unprepared to fill it, wholly unserious in their thoughts and approach. They seem locked into habits that no longer pertain, and absorbed by the small picture of partisan advancement at the expense of the big picture, which is that the nation is in trouble and needs their help. They are sunk in the superficial.

*   *   *

When Nancy Pelosi showed up at the White House Wednesday to talk with the president it was obvious she’d spent a lot of time thinking about . . . what to wear. She wrapped herself in a rich red shawl. Dick Morris said it looked like a straitjacket. I thought she looked like a particularly colorful mummy. She complained that the president had not asked for her input as he put together his plan. He should have. But what would she have brought to the table if she’d been asked to it? It is still—still!—unclear.

The other night after the speech, Rahm Emanuel, on PBS, was pressed for what he would have the president do. He blinked as if the question were a diversion. He was there to say Bush is Bad. Why bother with what might be good?

Right now, in the deepest levels of the American government, intelligence and military planners should be ordered to draw up serious plans for an American withdrawal, and serious strategies for dealing with the realities withdrawal will bring. It would not be the worst thing if the Maliki government knew those plans were being drawn up. It might concentrate the mind.

What is paramount is a hard, cold-eyed and even brutal look at America’s interests. We have them. I’m not sure they’ve been given sufficient attention the past few years. In fact, I am sorry to say I believe they have not.

The first instant message of 2007 came up on my screen just after midnight. It said, “Noony there is much love in the world.” I immediately thought this must be a lovely drunken person, but it was from a journalist broadcasting the festivities in Times Square. He’d been watching a live feed in his studio, and the sight of all the young people massed before the camera—“beautiful full of joy full of hope”—suddenly brought tears to his eyes, and he was taken aback. As I read, tears came to mine.

Why do they mass in Times Square and count the New Year in? There are no symposiums on this question, but I believe the answer is: to gather and mark something big beginning, to share a sense of expectation. If you had a bad year, it’s over, change is on the way—“Five, four, three, two”—and if you had a good year you’re on a roll—“one!”

They do it to start out on the right foot, with a cheer.

It’s not just an event, it’s a ceremony.

*   *   *

A few days later, the great state funeral of Gerald Ford. I didn’t plan to watch it, but every time I saw it I couldn’t stop. Why do we do this, dust off the pomp and circumstance and haul out the ruffles and flourishes? It’s not only to mark a death, even of so respected and highly charged a figure as a former president. Why do network television chiefs and newspaper editors decide not to leave the story until it’s over, even when from day one it seems stale?

Because it’s not stale. We’re renewing.

The Marines snap their salutes and bear the flag-draped coffin up the marble steps and we hear the old hymns—“Going Home,” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” “The Navy Hymn”: “Oh hear us when we cry to thee / For those in peril on the sea.” We don’t hear these songs much in modern life, only at formal occasions like this. We lock them in a closet until a state funeral, and then they come out and we realize how much they meant, and how much we miss them.

The ministers speak of God’s grace and ask him to welcome his humble servant home. Which suggests, and in a formal state occasion, that there is a God, a home, a soul. The eulogists speak of the wonders of the human personality, and of a specific and particular life in the long continuum. They praised Ford’s honesty, his modesty, his patience. They said he always put himself second. They said he loved his country. In doing so they reminded us that effort is rewarded, patriotism is praised.

We do all this to remind ourselves who we are. We do it to remind ourselves what we honor, and what we believe, as a nation and a people. We do it to remind ourselves that America yields greatness, that here a seemingly average man raised in decidedly average circumstances can become someone whose passing deserves four days of a great nation’s praise.

Praising these things reminds the old of what it is we should be aiming for each day, and instructs the young on the elements of a life well lived.

We do it to make the picture broader for a moment, and free ourselves of our cynicism. And we do it finally to enact what so many feel and rarely say, not only because it’s corny but because if you mean it, it’s beyond words.

*   *   *

Ford’s was the most human of presidential funerals. Maybe because the Fords wanted so little done, so insisted on modesty, all that was done was genuine and sincere, and perfect. The Ford kids, now middle-aged, seem to be genuinely close, and love their mother. The old guard, those soft old faces with soft gray hair, looked genuinely moved. And Jimmy Carter’s remarks were wonderful. He and Gerald Ford spent 1976 beating each other’s brains in. It was a sharp and personal campaign. And here he was speaking of “the intense personal friendship that bound us together,” as Rosalyn Carter wept in her pew.

Good for them. Good for all of them. Such affection and dignity isn’t only about them, it continues the long and very human line of old political enemies who came to see each other’s humanity, and then see beyond that. “Jefferson still survives.”

It is a tricky thing. No one likes the buddy-buddyness of the elites. But we are all moved to see that foes who fought bitterly but meant well can in some way find common ground.

At the end, at the gravesite in Michigan, a military officer, in accord with old tradition, folded the flag and marched it softly to the vice president, who then walked it over to Betty Bloomer Ford, who took it in her hands and quietly brought it to her lips.

Oh, it was beautiful. A friend who wasn’t much impressed by Ford or the ceremonies emailed me. “I’m bawling,” she said.

*   *   *

Time moves, life moves, we grow older together. And now a new era begins, and with another great ceremony. As I write, a new Democratic speaker of the House is about to be sworn in. The great hall of the House is full and teeming—members have brought their children in brightly colored dresses and little jackets and ties. Nancy Pelosi in a russet suit and pearls is standing, laughing and holding a grandchild.

Now a clerk with a high voice is reading, “Therefore the Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is duly elected . . .” and the House has erupted in cheers. She is escorted to the back of the chamber. And now the first woman to lead the House of Representatives is being handed the gavel by John Boehner, the leader of the opposition. He kisses her. She holds it high. And now she speaks. “I accept this gavel in a spirit of partnership . . . for the good of the American people.” “In this House”, she says, “we may be different parties but we serve one country.”

And so again we remind ourselves who we are. We “show an affirming flame.” We are a great republic and a great democracy. We are a great nation and a great people. We peacefully—gracefully—pass power from one group to another. And we start this new time on the right foot, with a cheer.

One of the greatest things about Gerald Ford as a former president was that he didn’t say much. He had no need for the spotlight. He was modest in the old-fashioned way of stepping aside and not getting in the way of the new guy.

He kept a lot to himself. This was in part because he had a self to leave it to.

It must have taken some effort. The man who replaced him, Jimmy Carter, was a kind of non-Ford, offering personal goodness as his main calling card. He carried his own garment bag. He was not imperial. He was awfully proud of his humility. The man who followed him, Ronald Reagan, differed from Ford not so much characterologically as politically, and his success might have grated on his old foe. But it doesn’t seem to have. Ford seemed happy when things turned out well for America. That was apparently his primary interest.

He seemed lacking in vanity. There is no evidence that he was obsessed with his legacy. He didn’t worry and fret about whether history would fully capture and proclaim his excellence, and because of this he didn’t always have to run around proving he was right. He just did his best and kept walking. What a grown-up thing to do. Former, current and future presidents would do well to ponder this approach. History would treat them more kindly. The legacy of a man who spends his time worrying about his legacy is always: He worried about his legacy.

Now we know Ford was not silent but discreet. He granted an interview with Bob Woodward in July 2004, to be released posthumously, in which he shared his views. Mr. Woodward reports Ford told him he would not have gone to war in Iraq based on the public information available at the time. “I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”

This is the authentic voice of the American foreign-policy establishment, and it reminds me, among other things, that establishments are not all bad. They rise for a reason. One is an ability to apprehend reality.

By speaking posthumously, Ford gave his words greater weight. He did not insert himself into the current debate, and because he wasn’t in the fight he had nothing to gain or lose, no position to defend or attack. And so he could tell the truth as he saw it.

It is not clear who will speak at his funeral, but it is now unfortunately common practice for politicians to see every eulogy as an opportunity. Invited to reflect on biography, they tend to smuggle in as much autobiography as they can, and advance their personal agendas. If Bill Clinton speaks, one suspects he will laud Ford’s personal tolerance. The text: This was a man who did not judge others. The subtext: He wouldn’t have voted to impeach me! If George W. Bush speaks he will likely laud Ford as an exemplar of the old bipartisanship. In this way he will attempt to confer the bipartisan mantle on himself. And so on. I don’t suppose this is terribly harmful, but it often gives short shrift to the departed. Still, Gerald Ford, a practical man who enjoyed the hit and tackle of politics, would have understood. Would have chuckled, in fact.

*   *   *

There are three points about Ford that I’m not sure can ever be sufficiently appreciated.

The first is that when he pardoned Richard Nixon, he threw himself on a grenade to protect the country from shame, from going too far. It was an act of deep political courage, and it was shocking. Almost everyone in the country hated it, including me. But Ford was right. Richard Nixon had been ruined, forced to resign, run out of town on a rail. There was nothing to be gained—nothing—by his being broken on the dock. What was then the new left would never forgive Ford. They should thank him on their knees that he deprived history of proof that what they called their idealism was not untinged by sadism.

Second, Ford’s personal dignity—his plain Midwestern rectitude, his old-style, pipe-smoking American normality, and his characterological absence of bile, spite and malice—helped the nation over and through the great tearing of the fabric that was Watergate. This is often referred to, and yet it is hard to communicate what a relief it was. Whether right or wrong, hopeless or wise, a normal man was in charge. This was a balm, a real gift to the country.

Third, he did not understand, and so was undone by, the rise of the modern conservative movement. He did not understand the prairie fire signaled by the California tax revolt, and did not see it roaring east. He did not fully understand how offended the American public was by endless government spending and expanding federal power. He did not see the growing estrangement between Republicans on the ground and a leadership they saw as tax collectors for the welfare state. He did not fully appreciate the public desire for a fresher, more candid attitude toward the Soviet Union, and communism in general. He was not at all alive to what would prove to be deep national qualms about abortion. He was not aware of its ability to alarm, to waken the sleepy Evangelicals of the South and the urban ethnics of the North, who’d previously been content to go with the Democratic flow. Ford was oblivious to this. He thought in his own stolid way that abortion was pretty much an extension of the new feminist movement, which he supported. How could a gallant fella not?

*   *   *

In all this he proved that it is not enough in politics to be good. You have to have vision. You have to be able to see. If you can’t, they can tell, and they’ll retire you.
Which Republicans almost did in the great Ford-Reagan primary of 1976, and the electorate did later that fall.

And yet. This must be said and should be said. He was a good man, and that’s not nothing—it’s something. Gerald Ford fought for his country. He didn’t indulge his angers and appetites. He seems to have thought, in the end, that such indulgence was for sissies—it wasn’t manly. He was sober-minded, solid, respecting and deserving of respect. And at that terrible time, after Watergate, he picked up the pieces and then threw himself on the grenade.

We were lucky to have him. We were really lucky to have him. Rest in peace.

Sunday is Christmas Eve. It feels wrong to speak here of small and sentimental things such as politics. The most passionately committed Americans right now, and the most imaginative, are children waiting for a large laughing man with a full white beard. And so a newscast Brian Williams could give on Sunday evening:

Brian Williams: Good evening and welcome to “NBC Nightly News.” Reports this evening that that great symbol of Christmas, Santa Claus, has begun his amazing annual journey and is on his way to the home of every child in the world, bringing gifts, joy and cheer. Our full field report begins with NASA, and news of a successful liftoff.

NASA spokesman: Brian, it was all systems go and A-OK for Santa and his sleigh this morning. We can confirm a successful launch from the North Pole. We picked up, via audio sensors, a great whooshing sound, and then “Ho, ho, ho!” Santa entered the stratosphere just after dawn, did a waving flyby of the space station, and has now leveled off at some 2,000 feet.

Williams: And word also from Norad, in the mountains of Colorado.

Norad spokesman: Brian, Santa is now on our radar. We are tracking him also through satellite and infrared sensors. You can see here on the screen—that blip, or rather cluster, is the sleigh, and the reindeer. And I want to note here on the screen a curious red dot that seems to be both part of the blip and leading the blip.

Williams: Is the red dot sign of a problem or malfunction of some sort?

Norad spokesman: No. It’s Rudolph. Rudolph is once again guiding the sleigh. There had been concern—Santa is ageless, but Rudolph was getting old. However he’s here again this year. Gallant old deer.

Williams: It is well known that Santa comes only at night when the children are asleep. So let’s go to London, where it is just past midnight, and our correspondent Jim Macedo.

Macedo: Brian, a light snow is falling tonight, the skies clear and dark. I am standing here in front of 48 Doughty Street, near Bloomsbury Square. This was the home of Charles Dickens, the writer who as much as anyone made the symbols of Christmas famous with his story “A Christmas Carol.” Now as you look in the windows of homes nearby you can see, under the Christmas trees, many gifts, all wrapped in bright paper. So Santa has apparently been here. But I’ll tell you the most amazing thing we’ve seen—if the camera can move in—look here into the Dickens house. It’s a museum now, and an hour ago it was dark and closed. But in the past few minutes lights within began to glow, and people dressed in Victorian garb began to arrive, as if for a party. Suddenly a room lit up and we saw a tree, beautifully lit with candles and red bows. Then a little boy walked in, limping on a crutch. He was holding the hand of an old man with grim lines in his face, but a merry look in his eyes. And together they sat under the tree and began to open presents. We couldn’t hear their conversation, but from the house a moment ago we heard an old carol, and then someone said, “God bless us, every one.” There were cheers and laughter, and—

Williams: Jim, I must interrupt you. We have a report that Santa has been over the Atlantic, where he was seen by travelers on the Queen Elizabeth 2. The QE2 blew its great whistle in his honor, and Santa in response circled low over the ship, and dropped presents. And now I am told he has just flown over Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, where he dipped his sleigh back and forth. Apparently Santa also goes out of his way to show respect for whatever country whose airspace he’s entering. It is expected that Santa will at some point turn south, and enter the airspace of Washington D.C., where our own Tim Russert has been waiting. Tim, any sign, as dusk envelops our nation’s capital?

Russert: Thanks, Brian, and Merry Christmas. Dusk has turned to evening here, and just now a sound of laughter and sleigh bells seemed to come from the sky. Here at the Capitol itself, on the House side, the new speaker-designate, Nancy Pelosi, came and stood on the broad marble steps and seemed to search the sky. Then all of a sudden she pointed, and waved with great enthusiasm. I followed her eyes and looked up, but I’m afraid what she’d seen had passed. But children in a crowd nearby seemed to see what I could not. They began to point, and some burst into applause. I’m hearing Jim Miklaszewski has more from the White House.

Miklaszewski: Brian and Tim, Santa came by the White House too. And for our purposes most striking was what came from the Residence, the part of the White House where the president and first lady live. When the sleigh bells rang, the lights started going on and off in what appeared to be a pattern. We asked a military aide, and he said the president has been learning Morse code. The message he sent through the lights was, apparently, “Way to go, Big Nick.” Big Nick is the president’s nickname for Santa Claus, who is also called St. Nicholas.

Williams: All right, good reports all. And so we reach the end of our newscast. And we ask: What is the Santa phenomenon? I think Santa comes to remind us that kindness and generosity can be a surprising gift from someone you don’t even know. To remind us that something can be a gift even if it arrives awkwardly, such as tumbling down a chimney. Maybe Santa comes just to touch our hearts. It is also worth noting—and perhaps this was our lead this evening—that children seem to look forward to Santa not only with a feeling of expectation, but of love. And love is a very good thing.

That’s our show tonight. Oh—I am being told now that Santa has issued a statement. He said, “Don’t forget the cookies.” And we have, just now, the first ever audio tape. Air traffic control in Cleveland just recorded these words through the open mike of a Delta airliner en route to Los Angeles. It’s a man out of the darkness saying. “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

We are getting very excited. Barack Obama is brilliant, eloquent and fresh. He is “exciting” (David Brooks), “charming” (Bob Schieffer), “my favorite guy” (Oprah Winfrey), has “charisma” (Donna Brazile), and should run now for president (George Will). Our political and media establishments, on the rebound from bad history, are sounding like Marlene Dietrich in her little top hat. Falling in luff again, vot am I to do, vot am I to do, kont hellllllp eet.

Well, down from your tippy toes, establishment.

He is obviously planning to run. This week he was in New Hampshire—rapturous reviews, sold-out fund-raisers—and before that, Iowa. His second book is his second best seller and the biggest-selling nonfiction title in the nation. The intro he taped for “Monday Night Football”—in an Aaron Sorkin-like setting of gleaming desk and important lighting—showed he is an actor who can absorb the script and knows by nature what a camera is. This is a compliment. All the great presidents of the media age, FDR, JFK and Reagan, were great actors of the presidency. (The one non-great president who was their equal in this, Bill Clinton, proved that acting is not enough.)

He has obvious appeal. I asked a Young Democrat college student why he liked him. After all, I said, he has little experience. That’s part of what I like, he said. “He’s not an insider, he’s not just a D.C. politician.”

He is uncompromised by a past, it is true. He is also unburdened by a record, unworn by achievement, unwearied by long labors.

What does he believe? What does he stand for? This is, after all, the central question. When it is pointed out that he has had almost—almost—two years in the U.S. Senate, and before that was an obscure state legislator in Illinois, his supporters compare him to Lincoln. But Lincoln had become a national voice on the great issue of the day, slavery. He rose with a reason. Sen. Obama’s rise is not about a stand or an issue or a question; it is about Sen. Obama. People project their hopes on him, he says.

He’s exactly right. Just so we all know it’s projection.

He doesn’t have an issue, he has a thousand issues, which is the same as having none, in the sense that a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. And on those issues he seems not so much to be guided by philosophy as by impulses, sentiments. From “The Audacity of Hope,” his latest book: “[O]ur democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect.” “I value good manners.” When not attempting to elevate the bromidic to the profound, he lapses into the language of political consultants—”our message,” “wedge issues,” “moral language.” Ronald Reagan had “a durable narrative.” Parts of the book, the best parts, are warm, anecdotal, human. But much of it pretends to a seriousness that is not borne out. When speaking of the political past he presents false balance and faux fairness. (Reagan, again, despite his “John Wayne, Father Knows Best pose, his policy by anecdote and his gratuitous assaults on the poor” had an “appeal” Sen. Obama “understood.” Ronnie would be so pleased.)

*   *   *

The world is difficult now, unlike those days when America enjoyed “the near unanimity forged by the Cold War, and the Soviet threat.” Near unanimity? This is rewriting the past in a way that suggests a deep innocence of history, or a slippery approach to the facts.

Sen. Obama spent his short lifetime breathing in the common liberal/leftist wisdom, which he exhales at length. This is not something new—it’s something old in a new package. And it is something that wins you what he has, a series of 100% ratings from left-liberal interest groups.

He is, clearly, a warm-blooded political animal, an eager connector, a man of intelligence and a writer whose observations suggest the possibility of an independence of spirit. Also a certain unknowability. Which may account for some of his popularity.

But again, what does he believe? From reading his book, I would say he believes in his destiny. He believes in his charisma. He has the confidence of the anointed. He has faith in the magic of the man who meets his moment.

He also believes in the power of good nature, the need for compromise, and the possibility of comprehensive, multitiered, sensible solutions achieved through good-faith negotiations.

But mostly it seems to be about him, his sense of destiny, and his appreciation of his own particular gifts. Which leaves me thinking Oh dear, we have been here before. It’s not as if we haven’t already had a few of the destiny boys. It’s not as if we don’t have a few more in the wings.

*   *   *

It seems to me that our political history has been marked the past 10 years by lurches, reactions and swerves, and I wonder if historians will see the era that started in the mid-’90s as The Long Freakout. First the Clinton era left more than half the country appalled—deeply appalled, and ashamed—by its series of political, financial and personal scandals. I doubt the Democratic Party will ever fully understand the damage done in those days. In reaction the Republican Party lurched in its presidential decision toward a relatively untested (five years in the governor’s office, before that very little) man whom party professionals chose, essentially, because “He can win” and the base endorsed because he seemed the opposite of Bill Clinton. The 2000 election was a national trauma, and I’m not sure Republicans fully understand what it did to half the Democrats in the country to think the election was stolen, or finagled, or arranged by unseen powers. Then 9/11. Now we have had six years of high drama and deep division, and again a new savior seems to beckon, one who is so clearly Not Bush.

We’ll see what Sen. Obama has, what he is, what he becomes. But right now he seems part of a pattern of lurches and swerves—the man from nowhere, of whom little is known, who will bring us out of the mess. His sudden rise and wild popularity seem more symptom than solution. And I wonder if historians will call this chapter in their future histories of the modern era not “A Decision Is Made” but “The Freakout Continues.”