Peggy Noonan

You’ve heard the mindless braying and fruitless arguments, but I’m here to tell you the facts, no matter what brickbats and catcalls may come my way. Lindsey Graham defied the biases of his constituency to do what was right, not what was easy. Robert Byrd put aside personal gain to save our Republic. David Pryor ignored the counsels of hate to stand firm for our hopes and dreams. Mike DeWine protected our way of life. These men are uniters, not dividers.

How do I know?

Because they told me. Again and again, and at great length, as they announced The Deal. And I believed them, because I am an idiot. Or as they might put it, your basic “folk” from “back home.”

Listening to them I thought of some of the great and hallowed phrases of our Republic. “The rooster who thought he brought the dawn.” “The only man who can strut sitting down.”

I know they’re centrists, but there is nothing moderate about their self-regard. And why should there be? I personally was dazzled by their refusal to bow to the counsels of common sense and proportion, and stirred that they had no fear of justified insult (“blowhard,” “puffed up popinjay”) as they moved forward in the halls of the United States Senate to bravely proclaim their excellence.

*   *   *

John McCain wryly reminded us not to miss A&E’s biography of his heroic Vietnam experience. Joe Lieberman referred to the group as “this band of brothers, and sisters.” But my favorite was Lindsey Graham, who said, “I know there will be folks ‘back home’ who will be angry, but that’s only because they’re not as sophisticated and high-minded as I am. Actually they’re rather stupid, which is why they’re not in the Senate and I am. But I have 3 1/2 years to charm them out of their narrow-minded resentments, and watch me, baby.”

Oh, excuse me, that’s not what he said. That’s only what he meant. It was the invisible scroll as he spoke. The CNN identifier that popped up beneath his head as he chattered, however, did say, “Conceited Nitwit Who Affects ‘Back Home’ Accent to Confuse the Boobs.”

Oh wait, that’s not what it said. It said, “R-South Carolina.” My bad.

Actually, what Mr. Graham said was, “People at home are gonna be mad at me for a while.” He said he decided to support the deal because “kids are dyin’ “ in Iraq, “Social Security is comin’ up,” and “this is a lot bigger than me.” If only he knew that is true.

*   *   *

Why do they do this? Is their egomania not part of a trend? Have you noticed that every announcement now made on television has become an Academy Awards show in which the speaker announces that he is the winner? I often watch cable news during the day, and in the past year I’ve been taken aback by what happens when a local police chief announces the capture of a serial killer who’s been murdering people for 30 years. The police chief does not say, “We finally got him.” Instead he gives a long speech congratulating himself, lauding law-enforcement personnel, complimenting his department, congratulating investigators and their families, and nodding to the district attorney, the attorney general and the governor. Sometimes the police chief’s voice shakes, so moved is he by the excellence of himself, his colleagues and his bosses. Then he announces a bad guy got caught. The only thing he never says is, “Sorry it took 30 years!” The only question he doesn’t want to hear is, “Didn’t you get tips on that guy in 1978?”

All this self-lauding has become strange. Public figures use the press to laud themselves with no embarrassment, no sense of what is important, and no sense of modesty. If Jack Webb were here he would deck these guys. Broderick Crawford would bark “10-4” and hit them on the head with his Highway Patrol walkie-talkie. Once again I think of the wisdom of Tony Soprano: Let Gary Cooper talk and he’ll never shut up.

Every announcement of news in America has become an Academy Awards show. And every speaker has become a variation on Sally Fields: “I like me, I really like me!”

*   *   *

Back to the senators. Why did they put on that performance the other day? Yes, it was sheer exuberant egotism; it was the excitement of the TV lights; it was their sly conviction that if they laud themselves they will be appearing to laud the institution; and it was, no doubt, the counsel of their advisers that in the magic medium of television, if you declare you are a “hero” often enough people will come to associate the word “hero” with you. Advisers, you must stop telling them this. Please.

I think everyone in politics now has been affected by the linguistic sleight-of-hand, which began with the Kennedys in the 1960s, in which politics is called “public service,” and politicians are allowed and even urged to call themselves “public servants.” Public servants are heroic and self-denying. Therefore politicians are heroic and self-denying. I think this thought has destabilized them.

People who charge into burning towers are heroic; nuns who work with the poorest of the poor are self-denying; people who volunteer their time to help our world and receive nothing in return but the knowledge they are doing good are in public service. Politicians are in politics. They are less self-denying than self-aggrandizing. They are given fame, respect, the best health care in the world; they pass laws governing your life and receive a million perks including a good salary, and someone else—faceless taxpayers, “the folks back home”—gets to pay for the whole thing. This isn’t public service, it’s more like public command. It’s not terrible—democracies need people who commit politics; they have a place and a role to play—but it’s not saintly, either.

I don’t know if politicians have ever been modest, but I know they have never seemed so boastful, so full of themselves, and so dizzy with self-love.

There. Thank you. I yield the floor.

This is the official end of high heels in Washington, isn’t it?

The Republican Senate staffer, who spoke to me after she returned to her desk following the evacuation of the Capitol, laughed.

“I think it might be, yeah,” she said.

She spoke to me anonymously because she wanted to be free with her observations.

I asked her what it was like at 11:59 a.m. Wednesday, when word came to the Hart Senate Office Building that everyone had to get out. Here’s her story.

*   *   *

“I was on the phone in the office. The girl behind me, about 30 years old, all of a sudden jumped up and said, ‘They’re running off the floor!’ We have a TV monitor in the office that is always showing the floor of the Senate. Sen. [Carl] Levin was running off the floor.
“A few minutes later the alarms came. The squawk box goes off: ‘Evacuate immediately! Evacuate immediately!’ Each office has a big black duffel bag with gas masks and decontamination stuff. We’re all trained in the use of this stuff. Big sealed bag. Somebody grabbed it. We evacuated immediately.

“Every office has been trained—each office is required to have an official security person who makes sure everyone is out. You meet later at a designation.

“So we go down the stairs and out the door. What’s interesting about this is the people who have been here a while know what the drill is, but the kids who’ve just come in, the interns, the new staff, the visitors to the Capitol, they flip out. They haven’t had the experience that you in New York and we in Washington have had.

“Longtime staffers move purposefully. They’re not seized with ‘Oh my God!’ The new ones run. The kids were like they were fleeing for their lives. They are all on their cell phones calling mom back in Dubuque.

“We’re fighting a war; you’re involved because you’re in the Capitol.

“I was here on 9/11. That day I had to be forced to leave because I refused to leave when I found out it was terrorism. When the second plane hit the towers everyone left, but my reaction was, ‘No blankin’ terrorist is gonna make me leave the Capitol.’

“There’s different ways people think after something like this. Some think I could be back home in Iowa with my garden and my house and my kids.

“Others think, I belong to the U.S. government and there’s no way I’m not doing my job.

“This time I left. I don’t want to cause an argument.

“I was wearing open-toed, two-inch heels. Is this the official end of high heels in Washington? I think it might be, yeah.

“This time they did not say remove your shoes. They said, ‘Run, move away from the Capitol, move east, move east.’ You could tell it was something from the way they acted. I thought of Barbara Olson, because I could tell it was serious this time, and I was there that day.

“There were a lot of hazmat trucks, ambulances, the police in black vans, FBI or whatever. I feel like something is working—we’re coordinating better, and more seriously.

“We met at our designation, at the statue at Stanton Park, on C Street Northeast, a few blocks away. We did a headcount. Some people missing, but we knew they were elsewhere when we left.

“We stayed in Stanton Park for 40 minutes. People grabbed a smoke; smart people brought their lunch. The new people had to get their minds wrapped around it. A lotta people on cell phones calling kids, mom. Me too—I didn’t want my family to hear on the TV and worry I wasn’t alright.

“We left the office with a portable intercom. The official security person carries it. It signals when it’s all clear. It also signals when it has to tell us to get farther away from the Capitol. We waited to hear. They came on and said all clear.

“We said, ‘Good, let’s go.’ “

*   *   *

After we rang off I remembered the incident during the Reagan funeral, when everyone was evacuated from the Capitol because a small plane with a broken communications system strayed over restricted airspace. (It turned out to be carrying the governor of Kentucky.) Yesterday’s story is bigger because it involved both the Capitol and the White House, and because it heavily involved the White House press corps, which was given alarming and contradictory instructions: Get in the basement, run away from the building.

You witness a lot of pared down and unmediated human nature in situations like this. During the Reagan funeral, when many were gathered in ceremonial rooms in the Capitol, a gallant old woman, a former government official, calmly and very definitely informed a security man she was not leaving. A friend saw a powerful media figure almost knock over a wheelchair-bound woman as he raced from the room. A witty and brilliant woman turned her heel as she ran in high Manolo Blahniks down the Capitol steps. She slowed at the bottom and told a close friend to leave her, she couldn’t run anymore. He said: No, if you die my life won’t be fun anymore, I’m staying. And he did.

And I am thinking what the woman from the Hart Building told me about the young. It reminds me of Lesley Stahl. After 9/11, Lesley found that the young people in her office in New York were especially shook. Panic attacks, anthrax in the news, the fear that more death was coming.

When a young person would confide his or her fears, Lesley started saying, “Come sit next to me.” She would talk to them softly about how lucky they all were to have to concentrate on getting the news. They would sit with her at her desk and do their work next to her. Then after a while they’d leave, and if they got scared again an hour later, they would come and sit next to her again.

The young are new to history. The job of the mature is to be mature. Here’s to them.

I was at a wedding, standing just off the dance floor, when a pleasant young man in his 20s approached, introduced himself and asked where I’d had my hair done. I shook his offered hand and began to answer, but before I could he said, “I’m gay, by the way.” I nodded as if this were my business, but thought: I wonder why a total stranger thinks I want to know what he wishes to do with his genitals? What an odd way to say hello.

We live in a time in which people routinely violate their own privacy.

I don’t think the young man lacked a sense of privacy. I suspect if I’d said, “Tell me your annual salary,” he would have bridled. That’s personal.

Maybe he wanted me to approve (“That’s wonderful!”) or disapprove (“Unclean!”). Maybe he felt compelled to announce his orientation because homosexuals are so often told that not to declare is to be closeted, and to be closeted is shameful. Maybe he was doing what he thinks he must to do to show integrity.

Whatever his thinking, it has occurred to me that in the old, clucking, busybody America it was not unusual to meet people who needed to be told, “That’s none of your business.”

But in the new and infinitely stranger America there are a lot of people who need to be told, “Buddy, that’s none of my business.”

Or, as people began saying about five years ago, “Too much information!”

*   *   *

Yet there is one change in the national conversation that has been beneficial. It is one case in which the sharing of personal information has struck me as a big step forward.
This is the demystification of illness, especially cancer. It is being demystified by the number of people who have lately come forward to tell people they were ill and to ask for their help. Tony Snow of Fox is one, Peter Jennings of ABC another. Melissa Etheridge came out at the recent Grammy Awards and rocked the house with her brilliance, energy and bald-from-chemo head.

And there is Laura Ingraham. Laura was, as pretty much everyone who reads this column knows, recently diagnosed with breast cancer. At first, like everyone in such circumstances, she was shocked. Then she did an amazing thing. She told friends and family exactly what was happening; then she told her listeners on her popular radio show and asked for their prayers. She gave daily treatment updates on her Web page. Before April, Laura hadn’t been to a gynecologist in 3 1/2 years. Now she is reminding women not to be as “moronic” as she was.

Laura is funny, irreverent, beautiful and about to be married. She once told me that before she met her excellent fiancé she’d met her share of frogs. I teased her that it wasn’t a few, it was more like the ending of “Magnolia.” Her laugh filled the restaurant and made people stare. After she was diagnosed she took a week off from her radio show. But she called in from outside the operating room to report she’d just asked the surgeon if he was offering a lift with the lumpectomy.

It is not possible that her beautiful spirit—and Tony’s, and Peter’s, and Melissa Etheridge’s—isn’t helping people.

*   *   *

Illness used to be considered a personal and intimate matter, and of course it is. But publicizing your struggles with it can save the lives of strangers. The other day the Associated Press reported that more than one-fourth of those who were aware of celebrity urgings to get cancer screenings had gotten such screenings.

Certain illnesses, and cancer is one, have been treated as if they were obscurely shameful. In “Illness as Metaphor,” Susan Sontag said disease arouses dread. An illness “that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.” She quoted Kafka writing from his sanitarium: It was hard for him to get accurate information on his tuberculosis because in discussing it “everybody drops into a shy, evasive, glassy-eyed manner of speech.”

In the past people have acted as if illness were an evil predator and not what it is, a condition that can be treated.

So why not open the windows, air it, let everyone know? Why not let those who choose to talk to God talk to God for you? Laura had full convents praying for her. The day of her operation, a Mass was said for her at a small church in Brooklyn, where strangers very specifically prayed for her full recovery.

The other day I called in to welcome her back to her show and she mentioned a friend had questioned her approach. Was it wrong to be so public?

No. It was healthy.

The case of John Bolton is about politics (unhousebroken conservatives must be stopped), payback (you tick me off, I’ll pick you off) and personality. People who have worked with him allege he is heavy-handed, curmudgeonly and not necessarily lovably so.

I don’t know him, but I suspect there’s some truth in it. Do the charges disqualify him to serve as American ambassador to the United Nations? If reports of his behavior are true—he is tough, pushes too hard, sends pressuring e-mails and may or may not have berated a coworker as he threw paper balls at her hotel door—the answer is no.

*   *   *

Bad temper is a bad thing, but in government it’s a flaw with a long provenance. Bob Dole once slammed a phone down so hard it is said to have splintered. Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos tells us, used to go into “purple rages.” There is a past and possibly future presidential candidate who would regularly phone one of his staffers at home and ream that person out by screaming base obscenities. (I was impressed to learn the staffer felt free to respond in kind, and did.)

Harry S. Truman, as president, once threatened in writing to kick the testicles of a journalist (a music reviewer who had been nasty about the talents of Truman’s daughter). Lyndon Johnson would physically crowd people and squeeze their arms painfully as he tried to get them to do what he wanted; in his case arm-twisting was really arm-twisting. Richard Nixon is said to have snapped to an aide who came to him with some issue, “You must have me confused with somebody who gives a sh—.” He also physically pushed and humiliated his press secretary, Ron Zeigler.

And so it goes, and all the way back. Jefferson was a man of public dignity and the meanest private plotting. Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton. (I here invite all readers who work in government to give, in one paragraph, their memory of Most Obnoxious Hissy Fit by or Most Appalling Style of any unnamed government official with whom they have worked, and what they learned from it.)

Bad temper is a bad thing in a public servant, but it is not the worst thing. Worse is the person who judges all questions as either career-enhancing or career-retarding, who lets the right but tough choice slide if standing for it will make him controversial and therefore a target. Mr. Bolton apparently never does that. Worse is the person who doesn’t really care that the right thing be done, as long he gets his paycheck. That’s not Mr. Bolton either. Worse still is the cynic who is above caring about anything beyond his own concerns. And that isn’t Mr. Bolton either.

*   *   *

What is interesting to me about the charges against Mr. Bolton is that he has not, apparently, been self-protective in the Washington way. People in government (and media, and the office tower across the street) are often courteous not because they believe deeply in the moral necessity of treating others with respect, but because they know rudeness is impractical. It makes enemies; it gives them something they can use against you. Government is inherently full of disagreement; why look for personal ones? It has long been said that in Washington a friend is someone who will stab you in the front. Mr. Bolton, again if the charges are true, has been a friend to many. He tells people off to their faces. That’s refreshing. As a human tic, if that’s what it is, it is probably more individually controllable than the temptation to damage people behind their backs, which is what people in intense environments more commonly and destructively do.

John Bolton is conceded by all, friends and foes alike, to be very smart, quite earnest, hardworking and experienced (undersecretary of state, former assistant secretary of state, treaty negotiator, international development official and old U.N. hand; he played a major role in getting the U.N. to repeal its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism). He is also known as jocular and tough-minded. He has been highly critical of the United Nations. These are all good things.

If he is confirmed he will walk into the U.N. as a man whose reputation is that he does not play well with the other children. Not all bad. He will not be seen as a pushover. Good. Some may approach him with a certain tentativeness. But Mr. Bolton, having been burned in the media frying pan and embarrassed, will likely moderate those parts of his personal style that have caused him trouble. He may wind up surprising everyone with his openness and friendliness. Fine.

Or he’ll be a bull in a china shop.

But the U.N. is a china shop in need of a bull, isn’t it? The Alfonse-Gaston routine of the past half century is all very nice, but it’s given us the U.N. as it is, a place of always-disappointing potential. May not be a bad thing to try something else.

There were many moving and dramatic moments in Rome two days ago, but this is the one I think I’ll remember: the sight of them running.

Did you see them running to St. Peter’s Square as the bells began to toll?

They came running in from the offices and streets of Rome, running in their business suits, in jeans with backpacks over their shoulders. The networks kept showing it in their wide shots as they filled time between the ringing of the bells and the balcony scene.

So many came running that by the end, by the time Benedict XVI was announced, St. Peter’s and the streets leading to it were as full as they’d been two weeks ago, at the funeral of John Paul II.

Why did they run? Why did this ancient news—”We have a pope”—representing such irrelevant-seeming truths and such an archaic institution—send them running?

Why did they gather? Why did they have to hear?

*   *   *

The faith is dead in Europe, everyone knows that. So why did they come?
You say, “They just wanted to be there. It’s history. People are experience junkies. They wanted to take pictures with their cell phones.”

That would be true of some. But why did so many weep as the new pope came out? Why did they chant “Benedict, Benedict” as he stood at the balcony? Why were they jubilant?

Why were so many non-Catholics similarly moved? And why in America, where the church is torn in divisions, did people run to the TV and the radio when word spread?

People are complicated. You can hit distracted people with all the propaganda in the world, you can give it to them every day in all your media, and sometimes they’ll even tell pollsters they agree with you. But something is always going on in their chests. Some truth is known there; some yearning lives there. It’s like they have a compass in their hearts and turn as they will, this way and that, it continues to point to true north.

We want a spiritual father. We want someone who stands for what is difficult and right, what is impossible but true. Being human we don’t always or necessarily want to live by the truth or be governed by it. But we are grateful when someone stands for it. We want him to be standing up there on the balcony. We want to aspire to it, reach to it, point to it and know that it is there.

Because we can actually tell what’s true.

We can just somehow tell.

*   *   *

John Paul II was a great man. We all knew that. Funny how we all knew. And so when word spread that he was dead, they came running.

And because they came running, because four million people engulfed Rome after his death, the eyes of the world were suddenly trained on John Paul’s funeral, which was suddenly an event.

Because the world watched the funeral, they noticed the man who celebrated the mass and gave the eulogy. John Paul II had picked him for that role. He spoke with love. He said John Paul, the old man who always came to the window to greet the crowds and pray with them, was now, today, right at this moment, at the window of his father’s house. It was beautiful and poetic and people—cardinals—who watched and listened to the speaker thought: Yes, that’s true. And the man who was speaking, who even 10 years ago was considered too old and controversial for the job, was suddenly seen by his fellow cardinals, one after the other, as the future pope.

It was impossible. But it happened. No one was really considering Cardinal Ratzinger until that mass.

Those who are pursuing John Paul II’s canonization, please note: his first miracle is Benedict XVI.

*   *   *

We are living in a time of supernatural occurrences. The old pope gives us his suffering as a parting gift, says his final goodbye on Easter Sunday; dies on the vigil of Feast of the Divine Mercy, the day that marks the messages received by the Polish nun, now a saint, who had written that a spark out of Poland would light the world and lead the way to the coming of Christ. The mourning period for the old pope ends on the day that celebrates St. Stanislas, hero of Poland, whose name John Paul had thought about taking when he became pope. We learned this week from a former secretary that John Paul I, the good man who was pope just a month, had told everyone the day he was chosen that he wanted to be called John Paul I. You can’t be called “the first” until there is a second, he was told. There will be a second soon, he replied.
It is an age of miracles and wonders, of sightings of Mary and warnings, of prophecy, graces and gifts.

The choosing of Benedict XVI, a man who is serious, deep and brave, is a gift. He has many enemies. They imagine themselves courageous and oppressed. What they are is agitated, aggressive, and well-connected.

They want to make sure his papacy begins with a battle. They want to make sure no one gets a chance to love him. Which is too bad because even his foes admit he is thoughtful, eager for dialogue, sensitive, honest.

They want to make sure that when he speaks and writes, the people of the world won’t come running.

What to do to help? See his enemies for what they are, and see him for what he is. Read him—he is a writer, a natural communicator of and thinker upon challenging ideas. Listen to him. Consult your internal compass as you listen, and see if it isn’t pointing true north.

Look at what he said at the beginning of the papal conclave: It is our special responsibility at this time to be mature, to believe as adults believe. “Being an ‘adult’ means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties.” Being an adult is loving what is true and standing with it.

This isn’t radical, or archconservative. And the speaker isn’t an enforcer, a cop or a rottweiler. He’s a Catholic. Which one would think is a good thing to have as leader of the Catholic Church.

You are a cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, a modern man, and for the past seven days, in private conversations in Rome with cardinals you trust, you’ve been admitting what you would never say in public.

You were shocked at the outpouring for John Paul II. You were shocked at the four million who came to Rome, at the line that stretched across the Tiber, at the tears.

You had no idea.

Not that you didn’t have real affection for the old man. He was probably a saint. All that suffering, dragging his broken body into each day the past five years. That’s a long time on the cross.

But you thought he was yesterday’s news. Everyone had already said goodbye to him at those big audiences in the Paul VI hall. And let’s face it, the church under John Paul was slammed every day as conservative, ossified, reactionary.

Here’s another strange thing. In the polls on churchgoing and belief it’s always Catholics on the street in Europe and America who say they want change and reform. They’d been saying it for years! And yet it was Catholics on the street from Europe and America—real nobodies, not to be impolite but just regular Catholics—who engulfed Rome to weep and yell Santo, Santo!

*   *   *

You sit and think: We have to consider what the crowds signified, what the outpouring meant. Maybe God was telling us something.

You try to walk through the data. Everyone says John Paul was popular because he was a rock star. He had a special appeal to the young. People loved him because he was so vibrant and dynamic.

Then you think—or rather that part of your mind that habitually questions your main themes on any given day tells you—Wait, the guy could barely walk, he couldn’t even move his face. He looked like, God forgive me, the Hunchback or something. He was writing encyclicals and telling people what seems to be good is not good, and what seems to be old is true. That doesn’t sound like a rock star.

You think: The fact is, John Paul was not an expression of his times, he existed in opposition to the times. He defended church doctrine and moral teaching because he thought they were true! He wouldn’t abandon the truth. In the Catholic colleges of America they didn’t see the truth he spoke as true. They thought it was archaic. Catholics in colleges and newsrooms, on campuses and on TV, are always going on and on about the world needs contraception, we need married priests, we need women priests. Now it’s the right to die.

*   *   *

The cardinal was getting a headache. So many colliding thoughts. Worse, they were thoughts at odds with the common wisdom. And the cardinal doesn’t like to be any more at odds with the common wisdom than he absolutely has to be. Life is tough enough.

He goes to dinner at a fine Roman restaurant with a handful of cardinals. He has a glass of Chianti, and then two. The service is excellent. Rome knows how to treat a cardinal. And Rome appreciates the burden that faces them: how to replace John Paul, the man the church just found out is considered irreplaceable.

The cardinals’ conversation turns to the funeral.

A Cardinal from South America says, “I had a thought. When the crowd kept applauding during the Mass—to me, looking out at them, it seemed as if they were saying: ‘We’re not just observers anymore, we’re the Church, Hear us!’ It seemed to me possibly quite significant.”

Silence as they all considered this.

An old cardinal with what seemed a German accent cleared his throat.

“What they want, I believe, is a healthy church. For all John Paul’s illness, they thought he was a healthy man. Emotionally and psychologically healthy in a way modern culture is not.

“It seems to me the meaning of the crowds, the meaning of the cries at the mass, is this: ‘We loved this hero of truth, and we want a hero of truth.’ They want someone who won’t bow to the thinking of the world. They want someone who will clean the stables, too. The corruption and worldly values of the church, the sex scandals—these must be dealt with.”

At this point an American cardinal made an indignant sound, and tried to interrupt. But the old cardinal raised his hand and continued.

“The church needs someone who’ll clean the church, defend it and refresh it. At the same time we need a man who can engage the world intellectually on the coming bioethical dramas and explain why trying to create human life in a Petri dish will be the end of us, the end of humanity. For man will do what he can do, and when he can grow replacement humans to give people new hearts that will allow them to live forever, well, that’s what they’ll do. We’ll have human fetal farms, you wait.

“But even more important than any of this, the new pontiff must have a holy soul. He must be a man who prays to God, is led by God, loves God above all. And here’s the great problem for us: this person may not be the most charming or accessible person in the world.”

A young cardinal leaned forward. “I don’t disagree, my friend, but in order to teach the world you must draw its eyes and ears! We need someone who captures the imagination of the world. We can’t lead unless they look and listen. For that we need a rock star.”

Silence again.

Then a young cardinal from Asia said, “Excuse me, but I have less knowledge about our brother cardinals than you. Is there a man who has all that is needed plus he’s a rock star?”

The cardinals thought. “No,” said one. “Or not that we know.”

“If that is true,” said the cardinal from Asia, “It would seem our duty is to choose a great man who is not necessarily a dramatic or endearing figure. The Holy Spirit will give him voice. Our time will need greatness. ‘For nowadays the world is lit by lightning.’ “

There was silence again.

Someone called for the bill.

*   *   *

Outside was an enterprising crew from NBC.

“Your excellencies, how are the bishops thinking? After the outpouring of love the past 10 days, are you thinking that you need a dramatic figure, a rock star who’ll capture the imagination of the world?”

“The Holy Spirit will decide,” said the old Cardinal with the German accent.

And our modern cardinal walked home to the Vatican, met with his aides in the suite, lay down with his headache, which was now very bad, closed his eyes and thought: Now more than ever. He dragged himself up, and knelt by the bed.

Everyone has spoken this past week of John Paul II’s role in the defeat of Soviet communism and the liberation of Eastern Europe. We don’t know everything, or even a lot, about the quiet diplomatic moves—what happened in private, what kind of communications the pope had with the other great lions of the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher. And others, including Bill Casey, the tough old fox of the CIA, and Lech Walesa of Solidarity.

But I think I know the moment Soviet communism began its fall. It happened in public. Anyone could see it. It was one of the great spiritual moments of the 20th century, maybe the greatest.

It was the first week in June 1979. Europe was split in two between east and west, the democracies and the communist bloc—police states controlled by the Soviet Union and run by local communist parties and secret police.

John Paul was a new pope, raised to the papacy just eight months before. The day after he became pope he made it clear he would like to return as pope to his native Poland to see his people.

The communists who ran the Polish regime faced a quandary. If they didn’t allow the new Pope to return to his homeland, they would look defensive and frightened, as if they feared that he had more power than they. To rebuff him would seem an admission of their weakness. On the other hand, if they let him return, the people might rise up against the government, which might in turn trigger an invasion by the Soviet Union.

The Polish government decided that it would be too great an embarrassment to refuse the pope. So they invited him, gambling that John Paul—whom they knew when he was cardinal of Krakow, who they were sure would not want his presence to inspire bloodshed—would be prudent. They wagered that he would understand he was fortunate to be given permission to come, and understand what he owed the government in turn was deportment that would not threaten the reigning reality. They announced the pope would be welcome to come home on a “religious pilgrimage.”

John Paul quickly accepted the invitation. He went to Poland.

And from the day he arrived, the boundaries of the world began to shift.

*   *   *

Two months before the pope’s arrival, the Polish communist apparatus took steps to restrain the enthusiasm of the people. They sent a secret directive to schoolteachers explaining how they should understand and explain the pope’s visit. “The pope is our enemy,” it said. “Due to his uncommon skills and great sense of humor he is dangerous, because he charms everyone, especially journalists. Besides, he goes for cheap gestures in his relations with the crowd, for instance, puts on a highlander’s hat, shakes all hands, kisses children. . . . It is modeled on American presidential campaigns. . . Because of the activation of the Church in Poland our activities designed to atheize the youth not only cannot diminish but must intensely develop. . . In this respect all means are allowed and we cannot afford any sentiments.”

The government also issued instructions to Polish media to censor and limit the pope’s comments and appearances.

On June 2, 1979, the pope arrived in Poland. What followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.

He knelt and kissed the ground, the dull gray tarmac of the airport outside Warsaw. The silent churches of Poland at that moment began to ring their bells. The pope traveled by motorcade from the airport to the Old City of Warsaw.

The government had feared hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands would line the streets and highways.

By the end of the day, with the people lining the streets and highways plus the people massed outside Warsaw and then inside it—all of them cheering and throwing flowers and applauding and singing—more than a million had come.

In Victory Square in the Old City the pope gave a mass. Communist officials watched from the windows of nearby hotels. The pope gave what papal biographer George Weigel called the greatest sermon of John Paul’s life.

*   *   *

Why, the pope asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the 20th century had become “the land of a particularly responsible witness” to God. The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to understand, humbly but surely, that they were the repository of a special “witness of His cross and His resurrection.” He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history.

The crowd responded with thunder.

“We want God!” they shouted, together. “We want God!”

What a moment in modern history: We want God. From the mouths of modern men and women living in a modern atheistic dictatorship.

The pope was speaking on the Vigil of Pentecost, that moment in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit came down to Christ’s apostles, who had been hiding in fear after his crucifixion, filling them with courage and joy. John Paul picked up this theme. What was the greatest of the works of God? Man. Who redeemed man? Christ. Therefore, he declared, “Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man! Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland.” Those who oppose Christ, he said, still live within the Christian context of history.

Christ, the pope declared, was not only the past of Poland—he was “the future . . . our Polish future.”

The massed crowd thundered its response. “We want God!” it roared.

*   *   *

That is what the communist apparatchiks watching the mass from the hotels that rimmed Victory Square heard. Perhaps at this point they understood that they had made a strategic mistake. Perhaps as John Paul spoke they heard the sound careen off the hard buildings that ringed the square; perhaps the echo sounded like a wall falling.

The pope had not directly challenged the government. He had not called for an uprising. He had not told the people of Catholic Poland to push back against their atheist masters. He simply stated the obvious. In Mr. Weigel’s words: “Poland was not a communist country; Poland was a Catholic nation saddled with a communist state.”

The next day, June 3, 1979, John Paul stood outside the cathedral in Gniezno, a small city with a population of 50,000 or so. Again there was an outdoor mass, and again he said an amazing thing.

He did not speak of what governments want, nor directly of what a growing freedom movement wants, nor of what the struggling Polish worker’s union, Solidarity, wanted.

He spokeof what God wants.

“Does not Christ want, does not the Holy Spirit demand, that the pope, himself a Pole, the pope, himself a Slav, here and now should bring out into the open the spiritual unity of Christian Europe . . .?” Yes, he said, Christ wants that. “The Holy Spirit demands that it be said aloud, here, now. . . . Your countryman comes to you, the pope, so as to speak before the whole Church, Europe and the world. . . . He comes to cry out with a mighty cry.”

What John Paul was saying was remarkable. He was telling Poland: See the reality around you differently. See your situation in a new way. Do not see the division of Europe; see the wholeness that exists and that not even communism can take away. Rhetorically his approach was not to declare or assert but merely, again, to point out the obvious: We are Christians, we are here, we are united, no matter what the communists and their map-makers say.

It was startling. It was as if he were talking about a way of seeing the secret order of the world.

That day at the cathedral the communist authorities could not stop the applause. They could not stop everyone who applauded and cheered. There weren’t enough jail cells.

*   *   *

But it was in the Blonie Field, in Krakow—the Blonia Krakowskie, the fields just beyond the city—that the great transcendent moment of the pope’s trip took place. It was the moment when, for those looking back, the new world opened. It was the moment, some said later, that Soviet communism’s fall became inevitable.

It was a week into the trip, June 10, 1979. It was a sunny day. The pope was to hold a public mass. The communist government had not allowed it to be publicized, but Poles had spread the word.

Government officials braced themselves, because now they knew a lot of people might come, as they had to John Paul’s first mass. But that was a week before. Since then, maybe people had seen enough of him. Maybe they were tiring of his message. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

But something happened in the Blonie field.

They started coming early, and by the time the mass began it was the biggest gathering of humanity in the entire history of Poland. Two million or three million people came, no one is sure, maybe more. For a mass.

And it was there, at the end of his trip, in the Blonie field, that John Paul took on communism directly, by focusing on communism’s attempt to kill the religious heritage of a country that had for a thousand years believed in Christ.

This is what he said:

Is it possible to dismiss Christ and everything which he brought into the annals of the human being? Of course it is possible. The human being is free. The human being can say to God, “No.” The human being can say to Christ, “No.” But the critical question is: Should he? And in the name of what “should” he? With what argument, what reasoning, what value held by the will or the heart does one bring oneself, one’s loved ones, one’s countrymen and nation to reject, to say “no” to Him with whom we have all lived for one thousand years? He who formed the basis of our identity and has Himself remained its basis ever since. . . .

As a bishop does in the sacrament of Confirmation so do I today extend my hands in that apostolic gesture over all who are gathered here today, my compatriots. And so I speak for Christ himself: “Receive the Holy Spirit!”

I speak too for St. Paul: “Do not quench the Spirit!”

I speak again for St. Paul: “Do not grieve the Spirit of God!”

You must be strong, my brothers and sisters! You must be strong with the strength that faith gives! You must be strong with the strength of faith! You must be faithful! You need this strength today more than any other period of our history. . . .

You must be strong with love, which is stronger than death. . . . When we are strong with the Spirit of God, we are also strong with the faith of man. . . . There is therefore no need to fear. . . . So . . . I beg you: Never lose your trust, do not be defeated, do not be discouraged. . . . Always seek spiritual power from Him from whom countless generations of our fathers and mothers have found it. Never detach yourselves from Him. Never lose your spiritual freedom.

They went home from that field a changed country. After that mass they would never be the same.

*   *   *

What John Paul did in the Blonie field was both a departure from his original comments in Poland and an extension of them.

In his first comments he said: God sees one unity of Europe, he does not see East and West divided by a gash in the soil.

In this way he “divided the dividers” from God’s view of history.

But in the Blonie field he extended his message. He called down the Holy Spirit—as the Vicar of Christ and successor to Peter, he called down God—to fill the people of Poland, to “confirm” their place in history and their ancient choice of Christ, to confirm as it were that their history was real and right and unchangeable—even unchangeable by communists.

So it was a redeclaration of the Polish spirit, which is a free spirit. And those who were there went home a different people, a people who saw themselves differently, not as victims of history but as strugglers for Christ.

Another crucial thing happened, after the mass was over. Everyone who was there went home and turned on the news that night to see the pictures of the incredible crowd and the incredible pope. But state-controlled TV did not show the crowds. They did a brief report that showed a shot of the pope standing and speaking for a second or two. State television did not acknowledge or admit what a phenomenon John Paul’s visit was, or what it had unleashed.

The people who had been at the mass could compare the reality they had witnessed with their own eyes with the propaganda their media reported. They could see the discrepancy. This left the people of Poland able to say at once and together, definitively, with no room for argument: It’s all lies. Everything this government says is a lie. Everything it is is a lie.

Whatever legitimacy the government could pretend to, it began to lose. One by one the people of Poland said to themselves, or for themselves within themselves: It is over.

And when 10 million Poles said that to themselves, it was over in Poland. And when it was over in Poland, it was over in Eastern Europe. And when it was over in Eastern Europe, it was over in the Soviet Union. And when it was over in the Soviet Union, well, it was over.

*   *   *

All of this was summed up by a Polish publisher and intellectual named Jerzy Turowicz, who had known Karol Wojtyla when they were young men together, and who had gone on to be a supporter of Solidarity and member of Poland’s first postcommunist government. Mr. Turowicz, remembering the Blonie field and the Pope’s visit, told Ray Flynn, at the time U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, “Historians say World War II ended in 1945. Maybe in the rest of the world, but not in Poland. They say communism fell in 1989. Not in Poland. World War II and communism both ended in Poland at the same time—in 1979, when John Paul II came home.”

And now he is dead. It is fitting and not at all surprising that Rome, to its shock, has been overwhelmed with millions of people come to see him for the last time. The line to view his body in St. Peter’s stretched more than a mile. His funeral tomorrow will be witnessed by an expected two billion people, the biggest television event in history. And no one, in Poland or elsewhere, will be able to edit the tape to hide what is happening.

John Paul gave us what may be the transcendent public spiritual moment of the 20th century. “We want God.” The greatest and most authentic cry of the human heart.

They say he asked that his heart be removed from his body and buried in Poland. That sounds right, and I hope it’s true. They’d better get a big box.

I have taken a few days off and gone to a place where there are beaches, palm trees, tan people, men in shorts and cotton-weave shirts, and women in sky-blue and pink and yellow dresses and broad-brimmed straw hats. It is nice here. The breeze is gentle and unstopping. In the houses you can smell gardenias. At night everything you touch is moist. There is a purple orchid in full bloom at the front door of the house where I’m staying. It doesn’t grow from soil but from the air. Its roots are exposed and hang below the flowers in two feet of gray tangle. It’s ugly-beautiful.

Every night a big white gambling boat goes out beyond the three-mile limit and stays there for hours; it has a long string of white lights stem to stern, and it looks like a New York bridge with all its lights on, floating out there in the darkness. Everyone here is still recovering from the hurricanes of the fall, and half the palm trees are propped up by long two-by-fours as they attempt to reroot themselves. Naturally and in the midst of all this beauty and regeneration all talk at dinner turns to politics.

All my life people have been talking politics at the dinner table, if they talked. I do not remember when it was not so. We all know the old saying, “Never discuss politics, sex or religion,” but that of course is precisely what Americans do discuss, along with sports and business. I actually don’t know what people talked about before these, but I wonder if it was something like, “What do you think is the most reliable path to personal satisfaction in the world we live in?” and “I saw a big bright yellow rose today and had the most wonderful thought, or at least it was wonderful for me, for I am no genius and do not normally go in for big time reflections on beauty,” and, “Did you have a happy childhood or an unhappy one, and if you had the latter what is the best thing it gave you, that unhappy start?”

I’d better tell you what I picked up about politics the past few days.

*   *   *

Republicans—I have been among many—are now in the stage of the Hillary Conversation in which they are beginning to grouse about those who keep warning that Mrs. Clinton will be a formidable candidate for president in 2008. She won’t be so tough, they say. America will never elect a woman like her, with such a sketchy history—financial scandals, political pardons, the whole mess that took place between 1980 and 2000.

I tell them they are wrong. First, it is good to be concerned about Mrs. Clinton, for she is coming down the pike. It is pointless to be afraid, but good to be concerned. Why? Because we live in a more or less 50-50 nation; because Mrs. Clinton is smarter than her husband and has become a better campaigner on the ground; because her warmth and humor seem less oily; because she has struck out a new rhetorically (though not legislatively) moderate course; because you don’t play every card right the way she’s been playing every card right the past five years unless you have real talent; because unlike her husband she has found it possible to grow more emotionally mature; because the presidency is the bright sharp focus of everything she does each day; because she is not going to get seriously dinged in the 2008 primaries but will likely face challengers who make her look even more moderate and stable; and because in 2008 we will have millions of 18- to 24-year-old voters who have no memory of her as the harridan of the East Wing and the nutty professor of HillaryCare.

The Hillary those young adults remember will be the senator—chuckling with a throaty chuckle, bantering amiably with Lindsey Graham, maternal and moderate and strong. Add to that this: Half the MSM will be for her, and the other half will be afraid of the half that is for her. (You think journalists are afraid of the right? Journalists are afraid of each other.) And on top of all that, It’s time for a woman. Almost every young woman in America, every tough old suburban momma, every unmarried urban high-heel-wearing, briefcase-toting corporate lawyer will be saying it. They’ll be working for, rooting for, giving to the woman.

I am of course exaggerating, but not by much.

Can a Republican beat her? Sure. She’ll have to make mistakes, and she will. And he (it will be a he; it’s not Condi, because the presidency is not an entry-level political office) will have to be someone who stands for big, serious and solidly conservative things, and really means it, which will mark a nice contrast with Mrs. Clinton, who believes only in herself. He will also have to be able to do the delicate dance of running against a woman without seeming scared, patronizing, nervous or macho. It isn’t going to be easy. But it’s doable.

*   *   *

There is more of politics to discuss, of course. There always is. But I am about to walk in the waves. With one parting thought, which has to do with politics and loss. Everyone is upset about Terri Schiavo. Everyone should be. Even Republicans who say Congress and the White House should have no role in this case are uncomfortable with what has been wrought, as are many, many Democrats. A great nation does not like to see an innocent woman put to death. Everyone seems aware: It is not like us. Her death, if it comes to that, will be a big loss. We will ponder what happened here for years to come. The fight for life has many fronts, and the war will not be over in our lifetimes.

For now, may those who fought for life be honored. May Jesse Jackson be honored, and all who fought the fight in Florida. From David McCullough’s “John Adams”: “Adams had, however, arrived at certain bedrock conclusions before [his] end came. He believed, with all his heart, as he had written to Jefferson, that no effort in favor of virtue was lost.” Onward.

God made the world or he didn’t.

God made you or he didn’t.

If he did, your little human life is, and has been, touched by the divine. If this is true, it would be true of all humans, not only some. And so—again, if it is true—each human life is precious, of infinite value, worthy of great respect.

Most—not all, but probably most—of those who support Terri Schiavo’s right to live believe the above. This explains their passion and emotionalism. They believe they are fighting for an invaluable and irreplaceable human life. They are like the mother who is famously said to have lifted the back of a small car off the ground to save a child caught under a tire. You’re desperate to save a life, you’re shot through with adrenaline, your strength is for half a second superhuman, you do the impossible.

That is what they are trying to do.

They do not want an innocent human life ended for what appear to be primarily practical and worldly reasons—e.g., Mrs. Schiavo’s quality of life is low, her life is pointless. They say: Who is to say it is pointless? And what does pointless even mean? Maybe life itself is the point.

*   *   *

I do not understand the emotionalism of the pull-the-tube people. What is driving their engagement? Is it because they are compassionate, and their hearts bleed at the thought that Mrs. Schiavo suffers? But throughout this case no one has testified that she is in persistent pain, as those with terminal cancer are.

If they care so much about her pain, why are they unconcerned at the suffering caused her by the denial of food and water? And why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo’s death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans “brain dead.” Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay “a slithering snake.”

Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo’s right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged. On Democratic Underground they crowed about having “kicked the sh— out of the fascists.” On Tuesday James Carville’s face was swept with a sneer so convulsive you could see his gums as he damned the Republicans trying to help Mrs. Schiavo. It would have seemed demonic if he weren’t a buffoon.

Why are they so committed to this woman’s death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

What does Terri Schiavo’s life symbolize to them? What does the idea that she might continue to live suggest to them?

Why does this prospect so unnerve them? Again, if you think Terri Schiavo is a precious human gift of God, your passion is explicable. The passion of the pull-the-tube people is not.

I do not understand their certainty. I don’t “know” that any degree of progress or healing is possible for Terri Schiavo; I only hope they are. We can’t know, but we can “err on the side of life.” How do the pro-death forces “know” there is no possibility of progress, healing, miracles? They seem to think they know. They seem to love the phrases they bandy about: “vegetative state,” “brain dead,” “liquefied cortex.”

*   *   *

I do not understand why people who want to save the whales (so do I) find campaigns to save humans so much less arresting. I do not understand their lack of passion. But the save-the-whales people are somehow rarely the stop-abortion-please people.
The PETA people, who say they are committed to ending cruelty to animals, seem disinterested in the fact of late-term abortion, which is a cruel procedure performed on a human.

I do not understand why the don’t-drill-in-Alaska-and-destroy-its-prime-beauty people do not join forces with the don’t-end-a-life-that-holds-within-it-beauty people.

I do not understand why those who want a freeze on all death penalty cases in order to review each of them in light of DNA testing—an act of justice and compassion toward those who have been found guilty of crimes in a court of law—are uninterested in giving every last chance and every last test to a woman whom no one has ever accused of anything.

There are passionate groups of women in America who decry spousal abuse, give beaten wives shelter, insist that a woman is not a husband’s chattel. This is good work. Why are they not taking part in the fight for Terri Schiavo? Again, what explains their lack of passion on this? If Mrs. Schiavo dies, it will be because her husband, and only her husband, insists she wanted to, or would want to, or said she wanted to in a hypothetical conversation long ago. A thin reed on which to base the killing of a human being.

The pull-the-tube people say, “She must hate being brain-damaged.” Well, yes, she must. (This line of argument presumes she is to some degree or in some way thinking or experiencing emotions.) Who wouldn’t feel extreme sadness at being extremely disabled? I’d weep every day, wouldn’t you? But consider your life. Are there not facets of it, or facts of it, that make you feel extremely sad, pained, frustrated, angry? But you’re still glad you’re alive, aren’t you? Me too. No one enjoys a deathbed. Very few want to leave.

*   *   *

Terri Schiavo may well die. No good will come of it. Those who are half in love with death will only become more red-fanged and ravenous.

And those who are still learning—our children—oh, what terrible lessons they’re learning. What terrible stories are shaping them. They’re witnessing the Schiavo drama on television and hearing it on radio. They are seeing a society—their society, their people—on the verge of famously accepting, even embracing, the idea that a damaged life is a throwaway life.

Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value.

Once you “know” that—that human life is not so special after all—then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.

It appears we’ve reached the pivotal moment in the Terri Schiavo case, and it also appears our politicians, our senators and congressmen, might benefit from some observations.

In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem not to be fully appreciating the second and third. This is odd.

Here’s both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can’t save this woman’s life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base. And they will of course deserve it.

This should concentrate their minds.

So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo’s feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.

*   *   *

There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life. They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England’s prisons. He was seated at dinner with a jabbery lady who said that if she were ever given a life sentence she’d rather die than serve it. He reared back. No, he said, always choose life! “Death’s the only thing you can’t get out of!”

Just so. Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, “Is that you, mom?” Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.

The supporters of Terri Schiavo’s right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They’re still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.

On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. But that’s not true. There’s just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn’t want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.

He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife’s parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn’t have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures—she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing—and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce—is a feeding tube.

It doesn’t seem a lot.

So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he’s drawn to his side.

It is not at all in the political interests of senators and congressmen to earn the wrath of the pro-Schiavo group and the gratitude of the anti-Schiavo husband, by doing nothing.

So let me write a sentence I never thought I’d write: Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you’ll keep a human being alive. Do nothing and you reap bitterness and help someone die.

This isn’t hard, is it?

*   *   *

At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?

No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It’s a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, “Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald’s? Can I have a burger?”

Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.

But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he’d say, “Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something’s in it and you don’t know if it’s alive, you don’t kick it, do you?” No, you don’t.

So Congress: don’t kick it. Let her live. Hard cases make bad law, but let her live. Precedents can begin to cascade, special pleas can become a flood, but let her live. Because she’s human, and you’re human.

*   *   *

A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they’re being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don’t, you can’t imagine how much you’re going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.

Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo’s room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.

Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don’t let this woman die.