Peggy Noonan

‘He’s Got Two of ’Em’

-- The Wall Street Journal: November 11, 2004

Well, I just can’t stop being happy. I don’t mean elated—it’s hard to get elated by big history, as opposed to by the birth of a baby, say, or a child’s being elected president of the debating club—but I continue to feel relief (the exit poll hives have gone down) and satisfaction (my countrymen, such good sense they have). So let’s just let the mood continue and have fun.

This week I went to a symposium thrown together at the last minute by the Club for Growth, the Washington-based political action committee that gives crucial financial help to candidates who espouse economic policies that will help the American job machine, and opposing those who do not. Almost every Senate and House candidate they backed this year won. Also it was the club that worked with Hollywood’s David Zucker to get out the anti-Kerry commercial that was perhaps the best of the season, the one with the guy standing at the altar when the bride realizes he just can’t make up his mind and starts to chase the bridesmaid, and then the old organist. It captured John Kerry’s indecision and its implications. More important, it was funny.

Members of the club gathered in a New York hotel room, and president Stephen Moore said we ought to take a moment for a full and uninhibited gloat. So we applauded, stomped and cheered. It’s good to see Republicans show their joy. Republicans are people who can always see the next problem down the road, and are always working on it; moreover they’re often like the Irish and the Jews, who don’t believe in good fortune, and if it happens don’t mention it or it will stop. But for this night, skepticism, worry and even maturity were put aside, and everyone was just happy.

I was on a small panel that talked about the meaning of last Tuesday, why it happened, what was behind it. The nice thing about such panels is that nobody knows the meta-answer, so you can’t be wrong, only rather interesting or mildly stupid, which is allowed among friends. I knew some of the speakers were heavyweights who would look at the returns and their implications with gravity and sophistication, so I decided the only thing I could do that they couldn’t was be shallow. Thus I shared views that were based on a merely intuitive sense of what might have been going through the minds of some of the almost 60 million people who voted for George W. Bush.

* * *

I actually think all elections come down to issues, to great questions that are answered vote by vote in the ballot box. But I put that wisdom aside for the fun of free association.
This is what I said: The president won re-election by a relatively healthy margin because the American people judged him to be the better man. He seemed to have the better character of the two candidates. He’d tell you what he was going to do, and why, and then he’d do it. He’d been doing that for four years. He did it in the campaign, too. He was dependable, and he was predictable. It’s nice to have a predictable president. It’s not nice in the nuclear age to have a surprising one.

Mr. Bush was not known as a sneak or a liar. We have had presidents who were known as sneaks and liars, some quite recently, but that wasn’t Mr. Bush, and I believe it was a relief to normal people. That relief was never articulated by anybody I remember hearing, but I believe it had a real if unquantifiable effect on the voters’ choice.

I think the people tended toward Mr. Bush because they saw him as a good American man, a man they know—an imperfect one with an imperfect past who turned his life around with grit and grace. That’s a very American story. It’s one we all know, and respect. There are Democrats—Chris Heinz was reportedly one, at the end—who amuse themselves referring to President Bush as a former cokehead. I don’t know about that, but I know America went through the 1970s, and America is still in recovery. When nice people hear things like “former drunk” they tend to put the internal emphasis on the word former.

The American people arguably did not pick the more interesting man in the race. Mr. Kerry strikes me as a complicated and intelligent person, and the one time I spent any time with him he seemed to be bright, and to have an interesting range of thoughts on many issues. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, does not strike me as the most interesting man in the world. That’s one of the things I love about him. I sort of have a theory that Americans don’t necessarily desire terribly interesting men as presidents. “Interesting” tends to bring with it a whole bunch of other attributes—”complicated,” “hard to figure,” “unknowable,” “startling,” even sometimes “tortured and tragic.” A lot of us are Republicans, and we just hate tortured and tragic. Or rather we like it in our plays and novels and TV characters and even in our friends. But not in the guy with his finger on the button.

I think Mr. Bush, the better man in terms of character, was also the more normal man. And we like normal. He loves sports and business and politics, and speaks their language. Normal. His wife is important to him, and his kids seem a bit of a mystery to him, and perhaps even to some degree intimidating. Normal. He thinks if bad guys attack New York City and the Pentagon, we go after them and kill them—normal. He thinks marriage is between a man and a woman—normal. He thinks if Baptist preachers in a suburb of Louisville have an after-school plan that has an excellent record of turning kids from juvenile delinquency to thinking about college, those Baptist preachers should be helped and encouraged every way we can, and it has nothing to do with “church and state.” Normal. He thinks if there’s an old plaque bearing the Ten Commandments on the wall of the courthouse you should leave it alone—it can’t hurt, and it might help. Normal.

Finally, you look at President Bush, and you can tell he’s not going to change much anymore. He’s 58 and he’s going to stay who he is. He is not emotionally or intellectually labile or subject to great swings—he’s not going to shock us and announce tomorrow that, on reconsideration, Osama had a point, or he actually doesn’t like Jesus. He’s not going to say tax increases are good. He’s not going to say we need more regulation of small businesses. He liked to brag sometimes in the campaign “You know who I am—I say what I mean and I mean what I say.” Actually, it wasn’t bragging, for it was true.

Some liberals, misunderstanding Mr. Bush’s support, think that in the red states they think Bush is a god. They do not. They do not think he is perfect; they do not think he is Pericles; they do not think he has the subtlest political mind since Harry Hopkins (if Hopkins was subtle—I forget). They just like him, and respect him. Some love him, but they all make teasing jokes about him. This is a man whose very White House called its political strategy shop “strategery.” The American people are in their own way fiercely sophisticated. They know the history of second terms: woe and error. They expect Mr. Bush to make mistakes. But they don’t expect him to make amazing out-of-character mistakes. They expect him to make George Bush-type mistakes. They can live with that.

* * *

The journalist and economist who followed me on the panel said some serious big things. One said he could quite imagine Mr. Bush defying the second administration curse, in part because of his boldness: He means it about Social Security reform, for instance, and he’s going to do it. The economist was convinced Mr. Bush will move big time against the estate tax, which we call the death tax, and on capital gains. No one, however, predicted lower spending. There was a sense that once again Mr. Bush will trade spending for progress in other areas, and let that progress lower the size of the deficit down the road.

There was a nice moment in the Q&A, which I’ll share. I was asked by Stephen Moore about comparisons of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, how they are alike and how they differ. I told him I normally don’t answer that question from journalists because they always turn it into a sort of “but she conceded Bush lacks Reagan’s rhetorical gifts” kind of thing. I don’t know why liberal journalists enjoy comparing Mr. Bush with Reagan. They never wanted to compare JFK’s leadership style with the giant who preceded him 15 years before, FDR, and they never compared Bill Clinton’s rhetoric to JFK’s. But Stephen was asking not as a mischievous journalist, so I said I’d answer.

I just recounted something that has stayed in my mind. About a year ago I was visiting West Point, and I was talking to a big officer, a general or colonel. But he had the medals and ribbons and the stature, and he asked me what I thought of President Bush. I tried to explain what most impressed me about Mr. Bush, and I kept falling back on words like “courage” and “guts.” I wasn’t capturing the special quality Mr. Bush has of making a tough decision and then staying with it if he thinks it’s right and paying the price even when the price is high and—

I stopped speaking for a moment. There was silence. And then the general said, “You mean he’s got two of ’em.” And I laughed and said yes, that’s exactly what I mean. And the same could be said of Reagan.

It was a happy night at the Club for Growth.

* * *

On Monday, National Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, wrote this on The Corner, his magazine’s blog: “I’ve been talking to Bush folks about how they pulled off this victory over the last couple of days, and the grass roots activism is something to behold. It was driven largely by volunteers who gave of their time and effort because they believed in something—in the president and in conservative ideas. This was a marvelous exercise in democratic citizenship and if it had happened on behalf of Howard Dean or some other liberal, we would never hear the end in the media of how members of this grassroots army vindicated their ideals on election day. But that’s exactly what these Bush volunteers did.”

Mr. Lowry had it exactly right. I witnessed it from the bottom up, going door to door with volunteers in Florida, meeting with the troops collating and delivering pro-Bush literature in Ohio, meeting with the phone callers who were getting out the vote in Pennsylvania, and hearing everyone’s stories on the national battle of the Bush lawn signs. They were always being removed in the dark of night. (One Ohio man got so fed up he wired his Bush sign with some kind of cattle prodder thing; in the morning, proof through the night that his sign was still there.) I saw mothers leave their kids to work at various headquarters for a few hours whenever they could, and husbands stay out late to put up banners. I saw the young man in an Ohio headquarters who kept a baseball bat in his office because they had been menaced, and he meant to menace back if he had to.

Which gets me to last week’s column, in which I wrote about Agincourt. I got a lot of mail about my reference to the fact that the bloggers and Internetters of 2004 were like the yeomen of England who pierced the old armor of the French aristocracy at that great battle. Some people wrote to me parts of the famous speech Harry the king gave minutes before the battle in Shakespeare’s “King Henry V.” Young Harry’s troops are outnumbered, and for all he knows outgeneraled. But they had their guts and their weapons and an unkillable desire to win.

One reader wrote and mentioned St Crispin’s Day, the day of the battle, which inspired me to open my Shakespeare. You know the speech well, but let’s enjoy it again, in tribute to Bush’s yeomen and -women.

The King speaks to his men in Act IV, Scene III, in the English camp:

St. Crispin Crispian—or St. Crispin and St. Crispian, there might have been two; quick research indicates no one knows—were apparently shoemakers and evangelists who tried to convert Britain in the third century. Their feast day—the day of Agincourt—was Oct. 25. This year, Oct. 25 was exactly eight days before the election, when all Mr. Bush’s yeomen had gathered in their separate fields, and were shooting their best arrows, and working their hearts out, and ensuring what would become their great victory. Here’s to them.

But of course none of this is anything to what is being done today, and tomorrow, in another battle, called Fallujah. It was launched on what might be called the Feast Day of the United States Marines, their 200th birthday as an American fighting force. As Shakespeare might have said, Semper fi.

So Much to Savor

-- The Wall Street Journal: November 4, 2004

God bless our country.

Hello, old friends. Let us savor.

Let us get our heads around the size and scope of what happened Tuesday. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. This is huge.

George W. Bush is the first president to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988. (Bill Clinton failed to twice; Mr. Bush failed to last time and fell short of a plurality by half a million.) The president received more than 59 million votes, breaking Ronald Reagan’s old record of 54.5 million. Mr. Bush increased his personal percentages in almost every state in the union. He carried the Catholic vote and won 42% of the Hispanic vote and 24% of the Jewish vote (up from 19% in 2000.)

It will be hard for the mainstream media to continue, in the face of these facts, the mantra that we are a deeply and completely divided country. But they’ll try!

The Democrats have lost their leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle. I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor.

The elites of Old Europe are depressed. Savor. The nonelites of Old Europe, and the normal folk of New Europe, especially our beloved friend Poland, will not be depressed, and many will be happy. Let’s savor that too.

George Soros cannot buy a presidential election. Savor. “Volunteers” who are bought and paid for cannot beat volunteers who come from the neighborhood, church, workplace and reading group. Savor.

The leaders of the Bush effort see it this way: A ragtag band of more than a million Republican volunteers who fought like Washington’s troops at Valley Forge beat the paid Hessians of King George III’s army. Savor.

* * *

As I write, John Kerry is giving his speech. He looks hurt. Who wouldn’t? He fought to the end, for every vote, untiring and ceaseless. I told some young people recently who were walking into a battle, “Here’s how to fight: You fight until they kill you, until they kill you and stop your heart, and then you let them carry you out of the room. But you fight until they carry.” I think that’s how the Democrats fought. Good for them.
To admit defeat with attempted grace is a moving sight. Kerry did well. His talking about his “good conversation” with the president was gracious and helpful. He was honest about the facts of the vote in Ohio. When he thanked his people from the bottom of his heart it was a real thanks. “Thanks to Democrats and Republicans and Independents. . . . Thanks to everyone who voted.” “Don’t lose faith, what you did made a difference . . . and building on itself . . . the time will come when your votes, your ballots, will change the world. And it’s worth fighting for.” A lot of pundits and editorialists are going to say, “His best speech of the campaign was his last.” But that’s not the point.

Mr. Kerry graced democracy today. He showed his love for it. Savor.

And now the president is speaking. He looks tired and happy. He looks as if the lines on his forehead are deeper. Maybe it’s the lighting. “We had a really good phone call,” he said of Mr. Kerry. “He was very gracious . . . and he and his supporters can be proud of their efforts.” Good for them both. He announced his agenda: reform the tax code, privatize Social Security, help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan. “And then our servicemen and -women will come home with the honor they have earned.”

“Today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. . . . I need your support. . . . I will do all that I can do to earn your trust. . . . We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us.” All good. Savor.

* * *

Who was the biggest loser of the 2004 election? It is easy to say Mr. Kerry: he was a poor candidate with a poor campaign. But I do think the biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief—CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS’s “60 Minutes” attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election—the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country.

Last note. As much as anyone, the POW wives of Vietnam, who stood against the Democratic nominee for president and for the Republican, can claim credit for the Bush victory. Everyone with a computer in America, and a lot of people with TVs, saw their testimony about the 1970s, and their husbands, and John Kerry. You could not come away from their white-haired, soft-faced, big-eyeglasses visages without thinking: He should not be commander in chief.

Oh, another last note. Tuesday I heard three radio talkers who refused to believe it was over when the ludicrous, and who knows but possibly quite mischievous, exit polls virtually declared a Kerry landslide yesterday afternoon. They are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. The last sent me an e-mail that dismissed the numbers as elitist nonsense and propaganda. She is one tough girl and they are two tough men. Savor them too.

Now Is the Time

-- The Wall Street Journal: August 5, 2004

Life should be fun. It should be satisfying and exciting. As much as possible one should do what one’s heart dictates, as long as it is constructive and helpful. (If it is not, one should take one’s heart to a minister, rabbi or therapist, and get one’s heart in order.)

In this spirit, a slight swerve is announced here.

Everyone who reads me knows I am a political conservative, by which I mean I adhere to a particular philosophy, a way of viewing life and man and his time on earth. I do not think a lot of modern conservatives have taken on their philosophy because they were brought up in it, schooled in it, and swallowed it whole. And I don’t think a lot of them became conservatives because they read a book by Hayek or Adam Smith and thought, “Ah ha, this seems sound!” I think a lot of people in our time who have become conservatives did it because they had a certain and particular kind of mind. To choose just one facet, they have a natural respect and even sometimes love toward human beings, while at the same time having no illusions—none—about who we are. Man is not perfect and is not perfectible, at least by other men. We are what we are; God made us and gave us freedom; we use it to ill and good; man best operates through certain arrangements and traditions, and those arrangements and traditions are best animated by respect for the individual and love of liberty.

You start out there, and then you find yourself hearing something or reading something that you find out is “conservative.” You pick up National Review at the age of 17, or you read C.S. Lewis or bump into the autobiography of a man named Whittaker Chambers and you read and suddenly you think, “Oh my God, that’s exactly what I think.” That moment, for a young conservative, is a very happy one, a breakthrough.

In the leftist water in which we all swim, and have swum for half a century, left-liberalism reigns: in media, in academia, in the schools and the newsmagazines. It is a great relief to see there are actually a number of little fish like you, trying hard to swim upstream.

Because I am a conservative I support the party that best represents conservative views, the Republican Party. Sometimes I get mad at it; often it disappoints me. It is imperfect, and not perfectible. But to a greater degree than in the past I feel an urge to help it. Since peace was wrenched off the tracks on 9/11, deep in my heart I have pulled for President Bush, Vice President Cheney, members of the current administration, and Republicans in the Senate and the House. With the decline of the Democratic Party I have become convinced there is a greater chance we will win the war if the Republican Party wins the election.

In the past four years I have written about and given advice to both parties in this column. But a week ago, while watching the Democratic convention, I made a decision.

I am going to take three months’ unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal and attempt to support the Republican Party in the coming and crucial election. (Every four years everyone says “this is the most important election of my lifetime,” but this year I believe it is true.) I’m going to give whatever advice and encouragement I have in terms of strategy, approach, message—I hate that word—and issues. No one has asked me to do this, and I do it as a volunteer, not for a salary but simply to give my time to help what I think is the more helpful side. This will take a bite out of my finances but I can do it. Actually most of us, when we die, wind up with a few thousand dollars in the bank. We should have spent it! I am going to spend mine now.

The White House does not need my help. They have the best political strategists, communications specialists and speechwriters since the Reagan era, which had the best of all these since the time of JFK. President Bush has his sound, and it’s a good one. He’s getting his sea legs on the stump—it’s hard to go from being-president to being-president-and-running again-for-president, it’s a bit of a shift and is always awkward. But he’s got it together and they’ve got it together.

There are others, however, lower down on the power pole, who might benefit from another hand on deck. I’ve called a few this week and they’ve been welcoming and I’ll see if I can add to their fortunes. If I can’t I’ll at least try not to sink them.

Because politics is such a spectator sport and an obsession for so many people—I include myself in this group; who else would watch almost every minute of the Democratic convention, and enjoy it?—some political reporters will call me and ask who I’ll be trying to help or what I’ll be doing. Let me give them my answer now, and it is an answer that will not change. It is the wonderful reply of Terry Edmonds, a speechwriter for John Kerry, who was pressed by a reporter on what work he was doing at the Democratic convention. “I don’t exist,” he said. He doesn’t want to talk about whatever contributions he’s making. Neither do I. Also, to be frank, while I’m sure Mr. Edmonds is wonderful at what he does and his modesty obscures the size of his contributions, I am not so confident that I will be wonderful at what I do. I haven’t lived a political life since 1988. I have no idea if my ideas will prove pertinent or helpful.

* * *

A word about careers. Mine has been varied and has not always gone as planned. When I left the Reagan White House and wrote my first book I was certain I would not return to politics. I worked hard to gain an independent voice as a writer of books and essays and, the past four years, this column. A while back I also agreed to spend part of the 2004 election year commentating on MSNBC and NBC. But it was not fully satisfying. I never felt I was moving the ball forward either for my beliefs or for myself or for that elusive thing that yet exists called “what is true.” The oppositional nature of TV news shows—there’s a liberal and a conservative and they fight, which equals drama, which equals ratings—often keeps progress from happening and truth from being said. And in an odd way people talk a lot on these shows—there’s a high syllabic content—but they often don’t say what they really mean.

Anyway, I never felt I was moving the ball forward. So I ended my contract and figured out where I should be. I decided it’s good to be on TV in whatever venue seems right when you feel you have something important you want to say. I also decided that when you are living through crucial history and you believe one political party is on balance right, and trying to fight a valiant fight, you should join in if you can.

When I return after the election I hope I will bring to my work a new and deeper knowledge of modern politics, the American electorate, and changes in media coverage of both. If it turns out things go well I’ll come back and tell you why I think it went well. If things don’t go well—if the Republicans lose, or they lose plus I’m a big flop in my efforts—I’ll tell you about that too.

* * *

A personal note. My colleagues at the Journal have been sterling. This is the third time in four years they’ve allowed me to take a leave, the first two to finish books. They appropriately decided I cannot write for them during this time even now and then, because it is not the business of The Wall Street Journal to employ Republican or Democratic operatives. (I hate that word because it sounds so John Le Carre; but if you are trying to help a party you are operating in its favor, so there you are.) My personal thanks to James Taranto, my wonderful editor of four years; and to Paul Gigot, the editor of the editorial page of the Journal, who shared reservations as to the personal wisdom of my decision and yet proceeded with what might be called a conservative’s love for personal freedom.

Speaking for Kerry

-- The Wall Street Journal: July 29, 2004

The major American political conventions have become like the party conferences of the conservative Tory and liberal Labour parties in England. The point is to showcase the party’s reigning and rising stars. There’s some arguing and maneuvering in the background but it’s in smoke-free green rooms, and it’s not between politicians but media consultants, and it’s over things like whether the spermatozoa-esque pictures of John Kerry crawling in a dust free space suit should be a) laughed off, or b) responded to with dark suggestions of leaks by NASA operatives. They went with plan b, and a fluke became a story. Sometimes candidates must think like the king in Shakespeare: “First thing, let’s kill all the consultants.”

* * *

Unlike most Americans I have been watching it all on TV. I am enjoying it because I love politics and speeches. Some observations.
So far, a lot of the speeches have seemed to be an expression of the Democratic Party’s persistent problem, which is that it can’t seem to decide on a message. The speeches have been about everything—health care, technology, minimum wage—but a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. You have to decide.

Some of the speeches had a stale, canned and fulsome quality. Ted Kennedy seemed ponderous and heavy. With his new round glasses he looks like old pictures of his father if his father had grown corpulent. He brought out old chestnuts, quoted JFK, tried mightily to rouse. “John Kerry offers hope, not fear.” “An economy that works for everyone.” “That’s the kind of America we’ll have with John Kerry in the White House.” He has outlived his rhetorical age. It was the speech of someone desperate to move you. Speeches like this never do.

When Barack Obama began his speech everyone watching thought: A star is born. Talk about famous overnight. His Bill Cosby-esque line—”the slander that a black youth with a book is acting white”—was right for the times, which is to say in line with common wisdom, and when he spoke of blue states where “we worship an awesome God,” he was not just hitting a note but using the authentic language of American evangelism. When you first see him he is a plain man of irregular features and jug ears. But when he begins to speak his features blend into harmony and handsomeness. This kind of thing only happens if you have magic. At one point the C-Span cameras went to an unhappy looking Jesse Jackson in the stands. He looked like he was thinking, “I don’t remember passing a torch.” But it was passed.

Teresa Heinz Kerry’s speech was an odd and interesting mix, just like Teresa Heinz Kerry. She is such a distinctive personality, so unusual as a presidential candidate’s wife, that when she began to thank the delegates in five languages a friend asked me with some alarm if she was speaking in tongues. It was weird that she didn’t talk much about her husband—if she doesn’t have special insights or stories to share on him who does?—but it was fun when she dealt with her verbal indiscretions by breezily calling herself “opinionated.” What saves Mrs. Heinz Kerry is a singularity, an individualism, and a retained femininity. She seems like someone who’d come to your house with homeopathic medicine if you had a sinus infection. But there’s a disconnect. There is about her too an air of grievance—the sighs, the resigned shrugs—as if she feels she has been a victim of unusual suffering. She seems not to have noticed that all her life she has been a child of privilege. It’s odd. I wonder sometimes if some liberals have somehow never been told that bad things happen in life, and who are constantly perplexed by whatever misfortunes befall them.

Hillary Clinton was in comparison cold, robotic and too heavily botoxed. At a certain point Botox can become a problem for those in public life. Mrs. Clinton now has to pop her eyes out to show excitement. Worry lines are honorable, and in Mr. Clinton’s wife they are understandable. She should keep them. She has obviously been practicing public speaking—her voice was lower, more modulated and less screechy than usual. Her speech was full of assertion—”I know a thing or two about health care”—but lacking in wit or grace. As always she seemed full of certitude and lacking in sincerity.

Ron Reagan is too coached in media. He has the smooth round tones of a game show host. He patronized his audience. “Let me paint as simple a picture as I can,” he said of stem cell research. This is how liberals say, “I’ll talk slowly, stupid.” When he began with “I am not here to make a political speech,” he seemed like a salesman on the lot: “This is not a used car, it is a pre-owned car.” By the end he seemed to me like Ron Popeil of the late night pocket-fisherman infomercials: And by the way, no fetal tissue is used in this process! He seemed a nicer person years ago when he was dancing in his underpants on Saturday Night Live. He is that unusual person who seems less authentic when not in a tutu.

As in conventions past, some of the best and most revealing moments came away from the podium and in interviews. A sleek Caroline Kennedy hit all the anchor booths, and with Tom Brokaw seemed to leave open the idea that she will be running for office. So will, one senses, Ben Affleck. “You have to enervate the base,” he told Chris Matthews, who introduced him on “Hardball” as “a great writer.” (He must have been thinking of Jayson Blair.) What Mr. Affleck has going for him in terms of politics, besides moviestardom, is, the above notwithstanding, a quick intelligence. Going against him will be this: When he’s watching himself on the monitor and doesn’t know he’s on camera his bright boyish eyes become clever, sensual and vain. He has Clinton eyes.

* * *

While watching the convention this week I have been reading the early 20th century novels of Indiana’s Booth Tarkington, the once wildly popular chronicler of American mores and social arrangements as our great rise began. I had a hunch I’d find things pertinent to our times. Sure enough, in the short story collection “In the Arena,” Tarkington gives this description of a political ward heeler. “He was a pock-pitted, damp looking soiled little fungus of a man who had . . . through the operation of a befitting ingenuity, forced a recognition of his leadership.” This of course reminded me of Michael Moore, a modern sort of ward heeler, who was seated in the presidential booth with Jimmy Carter and who early in the week became the face of the convention. It would be good for Mr. Kerry if he seizes the stage from Mr. Moore, and Mr. Affleck, et al., tonight. It is time he came to dominate the proceedings with focus, and a message. He should not let this convention speak for him. He should speak for him.

Will the Real John Kerry Please Stand Up?

-- The Wall Street Journal: July 22, 2004

No one takes conventions seriously. They’re not where democracy happens anymore. They’re mere enactments of politics, not the real and gritty thing. And yet we have to have them because they serve a purpose: They provide the platform for the big speech.

The big speech—the acceptance speech of the presidential nominee—is always important. It can be revealing, it can be inspiring and it can give you insight. It can make you give a candidate a second look, or a first; it can make you turn away from him for good.

A week from tonight John Kerry gives his acceptance speech. If it is good or great it will be turned into a million commercials and will be cut up and quoted so often on TV that people who don’t see it will think, a year from now, that they did. If it is good or great it will inspire a lot of memorable bad writing from the newspaper poets—The Knight of the Woeful Countenance who dazzled the crowd from the moment he rode forward and unfurled his banner. If it’s a poor or merely average speech it will be a reason Mr. Kerry lost if he loses.

* * *

Normally an acceptance speech is an opportunity for a candidate not to unveil his beliefs but to restate them in a way that breaks through to the public mind. In Mr. Kerry’s case, since the average American probably doesn’t know what he stands for beyond the idea that he can’t stand George Bush, the speech is an opportunity to paint himself anew. He is not “Not Bush,” he is “Kerry Who Believes in . . .”

In what? Mr. Kerry is a “liberal,” or a “progressive.” What is that these days? He could tell us. He might take this opportunity to actually redefine what liberalism is, and rescue it from its dread L-word status as the thing Democrats are and can’t admit. Conservatives aren’t afraid to call themselves conservative. They even do this when they’re acting like liberals. Mr. Kerry should tell us what liberals intend with regard to domestic policy. Another way to say this is: The past half century liberals have won a great deal—Social Security, Medicare, civil rights, the megastate. What exactly do they want to win now?

Some say Mr. Kerry must use the speech to make his position on Iraq clearer. In purely political terms there’s little benefit in this. When you’re cloudy you’re not a clear target. There’s no difference between Bush and Kerry on the war except people know Mr. Bush means it and assume Mr. Kerry doesn’t. This gives Mr. Kerry a certain flexibility. It is the one area where his lack of sincerity is a plus. To the extent he can, he should leave it alone, which is to say damn Mr. Bush in general terms and keep walking.

Mr. Kerry has a problem with rhetoric. He doesn’t have his own sound. You may hate Mr. Bush’s sound but it’s his, and a lot of people like it. He sounds normal, which for all its pluses and minuses as a style does tend to underscore the idea that he is normal. Mr. Kerry and his speechwriter, Bob Shrum, have long relied on a sort of proto-New Frontier sound that is the rhetorical default position for lost Democrats. Now is their chance to reinvent the Democratic sound. JFK himself came forward as JFK. He didn’t present himself to the world with a cigarette-holder, a jut-jawed chin and rimless eyeglasses. That is to say, he did not make believe he was FDR, the party’s giant who’d died just 15 years before. JFK knew to be JFK. Kerry should be Kerry. This is assuming there is a Kerry. For argument’s sake, let’s.

Mr. Kerry should give us something fresh and awake—true to him while being new from him. It should not be orotund. He might consider surprising everyone by approaching things in a low key, plain-speech way. In conversation he doesn’t sound weird, but on the stump he often does. (It’s odd that we’re in a time when candidates seem more compelling when they’re not making speeches. They seem more interesting when they’re overheard talking. It used to be just the opposite.)

Will Mr. Kerry get real and be plain as a plank, or will he “ask not”? Don’t ask. A prediction: People do what they know how to do, and for decades Mr. Kerry and Mr. Shrum have been doing the JFK thing. And it will please many in the hall. But it won’t play as well in America. Mr. Kerry is one of those rare public men who never get over self-consciousness in public. He’s also that rare athlete who seems to lack physical grace. (In these things, oddly, he’s like George Herbert Walker Bush.) He seems affected because he’s self-conscious, and this is compounded by an air of premeditation. In all the pictures of him taking part in sports he always has the perfect right gear on, striking sort of the right pose. He seems to be enacting sports more than enjoying them. He always seems to be enacting rather than enjoying. This is why John Edwards in comparison seems normal.

Mr. Edwards is going to be bigger than the Democrats and Republicans think. You can talk about how vice-presidential nominees don’t make a difference, or about how they can maybe lose it for you but not win it, but watch him. He’s going to be a better candidate than Mr. Kerry (which the campaign seems to be conceding with their latest ads, which feature not Mr. Kerry talking about the future but Mr. Edwards vouching for Mr. Kerry).

Mr. Edwards has the sun on his face. He’s a happy man, and happy candidates have unseen power. He has successfully hidden his desire for personal power behind a “people vs. the powerful” populism, and he sees no reason to believe he’s going to get busted now. The compelling personal story—he’s a one-man John Grisham novel—the kids, the smile. His wife looks and acts like a normal American woman who didn’t turn her accomplishments into a gritty sense of entitlement and whose engine is not a robust resentment.

* * *

Which gets us to Hillary. It’s a great favor to her that she won’t be giving one of the big rabble-rousing speeches. When she speaks to a sympathetic audience eager for red meat her voice becomes high, harsh, grating—the first wife that your nice husband fled. People think the evil woman Meryl Streep plays in “The Manchurian Candidate” is Hillary because, well, they’ve seen Hillary make a speech. She’s better in interviews where her voice is conversational and her chuckle ever-ready. If Mr. Kerry wins, no one will remember she didn’t speak. If he loses she doesn’t want to be part of the retrospectives on How the Democrats Turned America Off.

Speak Softly, Mr. Bush

-- The Wall Street Journal: July 15, 2004

Recently I wrote a column on a particular anxiety I’ve been feeling regarding the coming election and the prospects of President Bush. I stated that some voters may be feeling or come to feel that history has simply become too dramatic the past few years, and one way out of the drama might be to change presidents, and hire Mr. Kerry to, in effect, make things more boring and force history to calm down. This has given rise in the blogosphere (see this Instapundit entry, for example) to a question: Do I, and others who have written on this subject, think that what might be called the new nervousness should compel the Bush administration to stop fighting the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and change its policy in the war on terror? Should we, in a word, withdraw?

My answer is no. We cannot leave Iraq and should not leave Iraq. Certainly lately, since the transfer of sovereignty, things seem to be looking up, but that may well prove temporary. But the great reason, as I have written before on Iraq, is that there’s no way ‘round it but through it. We have to stay, and we have to win. I define winning as the yielding up of, at the least, a relatively stable society unafflicted by governmental sadism and dictatorship, and, at the most, a stable society in a fledgling democracy that demonstrates, with time, that the forces of Arab moderation, tolerance and peacefulness can triumph. Such an outcome would give so much good to the world. What a brilliant beacon this Iraq could be, and what a setback to terrorists, who thrive in darkness.

I do not feel America is right to attempt to help spread democracy in the world because it is our way and therefore the right way. Nor do I think America should attempt to encourage it because we are Western and feel everyone should be Western. Not everyone should be Western, and not everything we do as a culture, a people or an international force is right.

Rather, we have a national-security obligation to foster democracy in the world because democracy tends to be the most peaceful form of government. Democracies tend to be slower than dictatorships to take up arms, to cross borders and attempt to subdue neighbors, to fight wars. They are on balance less likely to wreak violence upon the world because democracies are composed of voters many of whom are parents, especially mothers, who do not wish to see their sons go to war. Democracy is not only idealistic, it is practical.

* * *

What I wrote about a few weeks ago was my fear that the American people have grown or are growing tired of the heightened drama of the times. Americans like drama in their lives—they like graduations and first jobs and prizes and the birth of a baby in the family; they like triathalons and great stories and local mysteries. They like movement and action on a personal level. But they do not want it on a historical level if they can avoid it. They don’t want to send their sons, or daughters, off to war. They don’t like that kind of excitement, or they don’t like it for long. This is part of why we used to be called Isolationists. We weren’t and aren’t—we just have a bias for peace. Can that bias be overcome? Of course. Pearl Harbor overcame it. The Soviet desire to expand and impose communism overcame it. Sept. 11 did too.

Which gets us to Mr. Bush, and Mr. Kerry, and which of the two is likelier to make things historically boring again.

You may say history will never be boring again, and I’d agree with you. And you may say “Bush and perseverance” is the way to achieve progress, that victory in Iraq and against terrorism is the only path to something like the old boredom, and the old safety. I’m with you there, too.

Or you may decide that Mr. Kerry, by jumbling things and murking them up and speaking French will, by his very presence, tend to calm things down because—well, because he doesn’t really seem deeply wedded to any particular principle, or even to long-term strategic thinking in the national interest. And the world can tell, and a good portion of the world will like him all the better for these flaws. And so will some voters.

That’s my anxiety. If I am right, what can the president do to address this problem? How to approach an electorate that I believe respects Mr. Bush and likes him, but that is also capable of letting his contract expire and hiring Mr. Kerry for four years?

* * *

Here is a criticism I have spoken of but not written of regarding President Bush. When you are president and you are doing hard things in history like making war, and you are doing it in the jingle-jangle of the modern media environment, you have a kind of moral responsibility to make it clear that you hate war, really hate it, and love peace. This would seem obvious, but is not. Men and women in the midst of planning war forget to say it and insist it. Sly old FDR didn’t forget, though. Lincoln didn’t forget it either. He always made it clear he thought the impending and then ongoing war a painful tragedy. Mr. Bush has not made it clear, or has not repeated often enough, that he hopes for peace, yearns for peace, loves it. He seems part of the very drama he has been forced to wage, and seems sometimes to enjoy it.

This is delicate. A leader cannot seem ambivalent about crucial actions and decisions, and he can’t seem so weighed down by the facts and implications of those decisions that people begin to wonder if he’s lost his fight. There’s a reason people like a happy warrior. A happy warrior tends to be a winning warrior. And yet. In the world we live in a leader must seem almost palpably yearning for life and peace even as he makes tough decisions that will soon deny either or both to some.

Lately I am reminded of something I learned from a pollster. I always thought I never learned anything from pollsters when I worked in politics, but this has stayed with me long enough to realize I absorbed a lesson. It was in the mid-1980’s, I was a speechwriter for President Reagan, and we were working on a speech he would give on Central America. The speech centered on attempted communist incursions and mischief in El Salvador, Nicaragua and elsewhere. The president gave the speech, and explained U.S. interests and intentions: We will help this pro-democracy group here, that democratically elected government there.

As I remember it, shortly after the speech was given, the president’s pollster, Richard Wirthlin, a smart man, came in and met with the speechwriters. He wanted to give us a read on how the speech had gone over. I remember silently disagreeing with several of his points but being struck by this one. I can’t give you quotes so I’m going to give you what I remember Mr. Wirthlin saying in italics. People think we are declaring war all over the place, he said. We probably harrumphed back something like ‘Well, we’re in a war.” Mr. Wirthlin told us, You’re getting people nervous, as if America is launching a war here and here and here and here.

I imagined in my mind a map, and all the countries we had referred to as having problems that had to be addressed. I wondered if in other people’s minds, as they had listened to Reagan, they weren’t seeing something like a World War II planning map, and some captain with a pointer saying “We’ll commence the bombing runs here and here at 0800.”

And I thought, in time: Mr. Wirthlin may be right. There must be an equally candid but less unnerving way to speak of these things. Sometimes when you’re doing the hardest things you have to speak in the softest language.

People get nervous. And they’re not wrong to be nervous. Experience has taught them to be. Life is hard, and we all fear loss. I have had a very few conversations with Margaret Thatcher, and each time she has said something wise, but maybe the wisest was this. It was years ago, after she had lost power following an attempt to change the poll tax in Britain. She told me she had learned that in politics one must “never underestimate people’s fears.” At the time I thought that a surprising thing for the Iron Lady to say, or think. Those who know her well would know if she was saying what she’d always thought, or what she’d just learned, or relearned.

But it was knowing about human nature, and I think a little more of that kind of knowledge is what we need more of from the Bush administration. It won’t make things boring again, but it might make people feel better, and that’s not bad.

A Triumph of Images

-- The Wall Street Journal: July 8, 2004

The Kerry-Edwards rollout has been almost flawless, a triumph of image that obscured uncomfortable realities. The two senators are not, as the Boston Herald merrily front-paged yesterday morning, “THEY’RE LEFT OF TED!” They are the son of a mill worker and the husband of an ‘umble immigrant.

Wednesday morning’s unveiling of the Kerry and Edwards clans at the leafy Heinz compound in what looked like exurban Pennsylvania, but which they repeatedly referred to as “Pittsburgh,” was a handsome Kennedyesque photo-op in which Mr. Kerry’s elder daughter—long, blond ponytail, lithe and chic—seemed to play the part of the late Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and tall, dark-haired Chris Heinz seemed like the late John Jr. The Edwardses’ towheaded children looked like John-John and Caroline when they lived in the White House. It was all very glamorous in a way that Democrats like (Hyde Park, Hyannis, Clinton in Hollywood—we like big houses and boats, we have a secret weakness for wealth!) and Republicans don’t (We’re clearing brush here, get out of the way! We sleep in two twin beds held together at the posts by old rubber bands!) Teresa Heinz had the best line of the day: “Pittsburgh taught me to be an American.”

Tuesday’s Edwards announcement was also well done, slightly weird but only mildly so for Mr. Kerry. The solid week of head-fakes on who the choice would be was brilliantly executed. It not only built what suspense could be built, it forced the networks to keep rolling out minibios of Dick Gephardt and Tom Vilsack and Dianne Feinstein. This made it look like the Democrats had a deep bench. It made it look as if Mr. Kerry had a lot of serious prospects to choose from. In 1988 Vice President Bush literally kept his choice a secret by telling no one around him until the day of the announcement of Dan Quayle. Jim Baker was as surprised as Tom DeFrank. Mr. Bush was surrounded by leakers who advanced their position with the press by feeding them tasty morsels. Mr. Bush couldn’t be sure any of them would keep the formation to themselves. Mr. Kerry must have felt pretty much the same. He must know that the primary lesson of “I, Claudius” is now the primary rule of all political campaigns: “Trust no one.”

* * *

I continue to wonder why an accomplished athlete like Mr. Kerry handles his body with such unease. He never seems to know what to do with his arms and hands. They fly away from him. His physical actions do not seem coordinated with his expression, with what his face is doing and his eyes are seeing. And so he has taken to pointing. When he goes on stage he looks out at the audience and then makes a face as if he’s surprised to see a friend standing over there to the right, and another over there to the left. He lurchily points at them with his long arm. Sometimes he gives them a thumbs up. Sometimes it ends with a finger flutter.

He does this because Bill Clinton did it. Mr. Clinton did it because someone told him that pointing in a commanding way while the cameras click makes him look like a leader. It also makes him look as if he has friends in the audience. I used to go to Mr. Clinton speeches and watch him point. I’d swing my head around to see who he was pointing at. He was never pointing at anyone. No one knew who he was pointing at. They always thought it was the guy behind him or the girl over there. But they liked it. Anyway, the Point is a perfect Time/Newsweek cover, and often has been.

I remain impressed by Teresa Heinz Kerry’s palpable boredom and disinterest in playing the part of Mr. Kerry’s wife. Tuesday, when Mr. Kerry first came out and started to do the pointing-at-my-friends-in-the-crowd thing, he took her hand and whispered in her ear something like, “There’s Bob Smith.” Meaning, “I want you to look with me at Bob and smile.” She couldn’t hear him and shook her head, twice. Then finally when she heard him she smiled wanly as if to say, So what? She stifled a yawn on stage too. I love her.

By the way, Republicans tend not to point at the crowd in this way. They wave. I think it’s because their mothers taught them pointing is rude. Someday, in 2008 or 2012, there will, however, be a Republican pointer. And we will know history has truly changed. Because that man’s mother will not have taught him that pointing is rude, for she was working 18 hours a day in a law firm, and forgot.

In his Tuesday announcement, Mr. Kerry was 20 minutes into his remarks before he said anything interesting: “John Edwards and I would never think about sending young Americans . . . into harm’s way anywhere in the world without telling the American people the truth.” This is going down into Michael Moore territory, and it’s going to be a big theme. He also talked about American independence from oil. That’s been an issue for 30 years, but this time it may take off.

Before that Mr. Kerry did nothing but boring boilerplate—John Edwards “shares American values”—all that vague stuff. What does that mean? It means someone’s focus group said “they like the word values” But they like it when it has meaning, when it is connected to issues that mean something, not when it’s just some dumb word cynically thrown out for the boobs. Boobs are sophisticated now. They may be sophisticated beyond their intelligence, but they know rote words used to please them are rote words used to please them. And they’re not impressed.

* * *

By the way, I continue to be impressed by how Mr. Kerry plays Vietnam. He served four months in Vietnam, and everyone thinks it was years. It’s like a guy showing up on the History Channel talking about the Pacific war, and breaking into tears as he remembers the bombardment. Gray head, sagging face, old aviator glasses. And then the interviewer says “Tell us how long you were there?” And the old guy chirps, “Oh, four months! Scratched my arm, got my ticket punched, and got out of Dodge!” If Mr. Kerry had not led with his weakness—if he had not boldly gone forth from day one presenting his candidacy as one of a Vietnam hero—the whole subject would at this point in the campaign be not a theme but an embarrassment.

The way he’s played it, putting the spotlight on his weakness—that has been a triumph of image that obscured uncomfortable realities too.

Warren G. Kerry

-- The Wall Street Journal: July 1, 2004

LONDON—There is much to be said about this city, where I am on vacation, but my first thought is that the English continue to love flowers, and Mayfair’s homes—windowsills, little garden areas created around front steps and between small shops—are bursting with them. I can never remember the names of flowers, but the ones I’m seeing are white and yellow and rose-colored and pink and deep red. and tall and stately or short and rough looking or kind of peeping up and looking brave. They are just gorgeous.

This seems true of every neighborhood I’ve been in, and also of the small terraces on the modest high-rises on the way in from Heathrow. The rain and sunshine have been intermittent the past week, and the flowers are not dry but full of juice, and brilliant. It all reminds me of a nice block in Brooklyn Heights, where the flowers lately also look particularly vibrant.

When I was a young woman I found all beauty and fascination in people. I found flowers boring. I ignored them when I saw them, or turned away. I think I felt they got in the way of my understanding Kafka and Sartre. I think I also thought flowers were something old ladies do to make things prettier because they don’t understand the tragedy of life. Now I think people who put flowers all over the place are the only geniuses. They know flowers are an unasked-for and essentially unearned bit of beauty given to us perhaps to suggest other, greater beauty to come. They’re in Einstein-land, gardeners, and thinking of eternity. And I thought they were just retards with spades. Anyway, flower people are generous. They make everything look prettier, at no charge and for your enjoyment, even though they’ve never met you. So here’s to flower power, and thank you, London from this American traveler.

* * *

But let me be pundit-y for a few sentences. The Brits had bannered on all their newspapers the other morning the picture of Paul Bremer waving goodbye to Iraq. The early transfer of sovereignty to Iraq has hit everyone here, friend of the invasion and foe, as a brilliant stroke. Leaving early, and with such modesty—it was a pleasure to be here, let us know if there’s anything we can do—tends to undermine charges of U.S. imperialism. President Bush is feeling triumphant—one can tell even from here—and the Western press is looking very irritable indeed. They don’t like to be surprised, they don’t like it when Mr. Bush scores one, and they don’t like it when the troublemakers they’ve been so banking on to prove their point that Iraq was a fiasco don’t even get a chance to stop the turnover.

Hand it to Mr. Bush: He’s got guts. And whatever happens in the coming election, his administration will be remembered as one of the most consequential in modern political history. He did things, and they were all big and meaningful, and they will have implications for decades.

But let me share a thought I’ve been having that is not so jolly. It has to do with Mr. Bush’s re-election prospects and a worry I have. History has been too dramatic the past 3 1/2 years. It has been too exciting. Economic recession, 9/11, war, Afghanistan, Iraq, fighting with Europe. fighting with the U.N., boys going off to fight, Pat Tillman, beheadings. It has been so exciting. And my general sense of Americans is that we like things to be boring. Or rather we like history to be boring; we like our lives to be exciting. We like history to be like something Calvin Coolidge dreamed: dull, dull. dull. And then we complain about the dullness, and invent excitements that are the kind we really like: moon shots, spaceships, curing diseases. Big tax cuts that encourage big growth that creates lots of jobs for young people just out of school.

No, I am not suggesting all our recent excitement is Mr. Bush’s fault. History handed him what it handed him. And no, I am not saying the decisions he took were wrong or right or some degree of either. I’m saying it’s all for whatever reasons been more dramatic than Americans in general like history to be.

Here is my fear: that the American people, liking and respecting President Bush, and knowing he’s a straight shooter with guts, will still feel a great temptation to turn to the boring and disingenuous John Kerry. He’ll never do anything exciting. He doesn’t have the guts to be exciting. And as he doesn’t stand for anything, he won’t have to take hard stands. He’ll do things like go to France and talk French and they’ll love it. He’ll say he’s the man who accompanied Teresa Heinz to Paris, only this time he’ll say it in French and perfectly accented and they’ll all go “ooh la la!”

The American people may come to feel that George W. Bush did the job history sent him to do. He handled 9/11, turned the economy around, went into Afghanistan, captured and removed Saddam Hussein. And now let’s hire someone who’ll just by his presence function as an emollient. A big greasy one but an emollient nonetheless.

I just have a feeling this sort of thing may have some impact this year. “A return to normalcy,” with Mr. Kerry as the normal guy.

OK, readers, tell me I’m wrong. Or if you think I’m right or part right, tell me what Mr. Bush can do about it.

What I Saw at the Evacuation

-- The Wall Street Journal: June 24, 2004

June 9, 2004, approximately 5 p.m., U.S. Capitol:

What I was thinking was: Everyone here brought their souls. We are all these physical repositories of ourselves, of our characters and personalities and ambitions. But everybody is a soul, has a soul, and all these people gathered for the funeral of the great man of their lives, and they brought their souls.

I tell you this because it somehow has to do with what followed.

Many, not all, were aging or old. They had run the country 20 and 30 years ago. They had lived lives of import and meaning. But they were not this afternoon their official selves, their old formal selves, but something else.

* * *

We were in the Mansfield room, just off the Capitol Rotunda, a big tall gold-trimmed room ringed with old oil portraits of great men—Jefferson, Adams. The ones who made their country. As I stood near the entrance looking out at them, I had a visual memory of a book party long ago, in 1990 I think, in the sizeable outdoor yard of William Safire’s house in suburban Maryland. It was late springtime or early summer. A sudden breeze came up, strong and out of nowhere, and hundreds, thousands, of small petals and pieces of pollen filled the air, and fell upon our heads. Like a benediction. It seemed barely noticed by the busy talkers, who laughed and shook their heads and continued talking. But it was beautiful. God is here.

At the Capitol, there were 100 or so of us in the room, friends and colleagues and co-workers of Ronald Reagan. Air Force One would soon bring back to Washington his flag draped coffin. From Andrews Air Force Base a cortege would take him to the Capitol. The senators and congressmen were already massing in the Rotunda, where they would receive him. There would be a ceremony, and speeches. Then the politicians would leave, and the friends and colleagues of Ronald Reagan would depart the Mansfield Room to enter the Rotunda and say goodbye to the old man we loved, and loved in a way, some of us, that we didn’t even understand until we saw the coffin.

In that room, the Mansfield Room, there was a lot of laughing and remembering. “Remember the time . . .?” “Were you here when they put Jack Kennedy to rest?” Over here Jack and Joanne Kemp, leaders of the 1970s revolution that became part of the ‘80s revolution. Richard Allen, Reagan’s first national security adviser. Judge William Clark, his second. Ed and Ursula Meese, who were there from the early days, in California. Paul and Carol Laxalt—Paul was a senator from Nevada, part of the Western rebellion that lit the country in the 1970s, Carol bubbly as champagne. Jim Miller, Reagan’s budget director, still a big serious man in a big serious suit, and his wife. Bill Bennett, Reagan’s education secretary, and his wife, Elaine.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, dignified, gutsy, with great cheekbones and still-saucy or potentially saucy eyes. Somewhere along the way, I have always felt, she made a decision. She chose to follow the academic and analytical part of her nature—”There is a difference between totalitarian governments and authoritarian governments and we must acknowledge it”—and not perhaps other parts of her inner self, parts perhaps less definitive and constructive, and perhaps more merry. But that kind of decision was true of a lot of people there, and always is when leaders are gathered. The pope felt the promptings of an artist, and followed call. Life is options up to a point, and then it’s decisions made.

Ann Dore McLaughlin, Reagan’s labor secretary, and her husband, Tom Korologos, just back from Iraq for George W. Bush. They stood together looking beautiful. A late marriage; they glowed. Al Haig and his wife. I am fascinated by Mr. Haig. Portrayed as rather too intense in Oliver Stone’s cinematically dazzling and historically demented “Nixon,” Mr. Haig did in fact help run the government as the Nixon administration ended, and helped talk him into resigning when that was the right thing to do for the country. He earned his pride. By the time he was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state it was clear he did not enjoy what might be called creative chaos in foreign affairs, and his pride at that point was such that he regularly threatened to resign. Reagan was patient, for a while. And then Mr. Haig was gone, and George Shultz, standing right over there, took his place.

Tricia Nixon Cox her husband, Ed, and their son, grown taller now than his father, were there. I said hello. She is a New Yorker, as were many in the group. Her father was the last president before Reagan to die. He did not have a state funeral. He was buried instead in relative quiet, in his beloved California. He had been the first and only president to resign from office, and thought putting the country through a state funeral was the wrong thing to do. In 1960 he had refused to contest an eminently contestable presidential election because he didn’t want to put the country through it, he felt it was the wrong thing to do. Richard Nixon, even when portrayed compassionately, is shown bathed in sweat and resentment. But he had a class—a patriotism—that has not been appreciated and understood. I said to Tricia that I would never forget the last time I saw her father, in a news clip on television, sobbing great racking sobs at the funeral of his wife, Patricia. I had been taken aback by his heartbreak. “Thank you,” Tricia said. “It’s really not known—no one knows how much he loved her, and what a good marriage they had. He adored my mother.” It is a wonderful thing to know that about your parents.

Dan and Marilyn Quayle were sitting over there—he grayer and she unaged, with short, chic hair. Their son studied in China and married a Chinese girl. Everyone talks about globalization and immigration, and these are fine abstractions, but the Quayle family is now part Chinese and the Bush family is part Mexican, and maybe you think that means nothing but it means plenty. Over here in a corner Sen. Pete Dominici watched the TV monitors waiting for Air Force One to land with the Reagans at Andrews. He had tears in his eyes. They were the only unexpected tears I saw that day.

Over here the great Hugh Sidey, historian of presidents, tall and gray. And Gayle Burt, former social secretary for Nancy Reagan and former wife of Richard Burt, of the famous-in-the-’80s two Richards. Richard Burt was at State (squishy! soft! an establishment-loving undersecretary for George Shultz), and Richard Perle was at Defense (hard liner! prince of darkness! Right wing nut!). I watched them both in those days. They had quite a bureaucratic war. And you know what? They were a good team. Maybe they fought each other, but they were a good team, as pragmatist Jim Baker and conservative Ed Meese were a good team, and conservative William Clark and pragmatist Mike Deaver. You know why? Because it all worked. Life is a mess and nothing is perfect and there were zigs that should have zagged, and no one got everything he wanted, but it all worked, and the country profited. You need 20 years of looking back to figure this out.

It was such a coming together.

* * *

I was standing looking out the big entranceway toward an arched and high-ceilinged hall. There a beautiful young man in a white jacket was giving my son a ginger ale from a small bar just beyond the doorway. My son—6 feet tall, in his first suit, with a sober tie and cufflinks, also his first—was taking the plastic cup of ginger ale in his hand and talking to a very beautiful woman, Blaine Trump, down from New York with her husband, Robert. I saw them say hello, say my son take the ginger ale when a rude man rushed by and knocked the glass from his hand.

Only he wasn’t a rude man. He was a frightened man, and he was trying to save our lives.

The man walked quickly and heavily and placed himself in the huge doorway of the Mansfield room. He had on a brown wool sports jacket.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” he barked. The old lions in that room looked at him and turned away. They thought him a functionary sent to tell us the body would soon land in Andrews. They continued talking.

“Quiet! Quiet!” He was ordering us now. I was standing just to his left, and when he said “Quiet” the second time I looked at him. His voice was under control and his face was inexpressive, but his carotid artery, just above his collar, was pounding. As this thought registered—something is wrong—he said, “We are evacuating the Capitol! Now! This is not an exercise! We are evacuating. Leave the Capitol. Now.”

My eyes met my son’s and I gave him the chin up-deadeye look that parents give children to say: I’m coming.

I walked through the doorway and took his arm. In the halls there was running and shouting, scores of people rushing by. Someone in a uniform called out, “Incoming unidentified aircraft, 60 seconds out.”

We were moving now, down the hall and toward an exit onto the great Capitol steps. There someone called, “Aircraft incoming.” George and Charlotte Shultz were behind me, Joan Rivers was over there with Tommy Corcoran. You never know who you’ll die with.

As we moved down the Capitol steps a guard yelled “Run for your lives! Ladies, take off your shoes, run for your lives! Go north. North!”

Ed Meese ran with two new knees—he’d just had replacement surgery. Oatsie Charles, a great Washington social figure, a friend to all for a long time, was in a wheelchair pushed by her grandson Nick, who is at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. When they got to the Capitol steps two cops stood at each side of the wheel chair, picked her up, and carried her down the long steps.

I said to my son, “Hold my hand and don’t let go, we can’t get separated.” About halfway down the steps I suddenly wanted to share some thoughts on history. I slowed a little. I was very angry to be driven from our Capitol by terror scum. My son was too, and said of them words boys don’t normally say in front of their mothers. I wanted to speak to him about the vagaries of history, how it is a wonderful and exciting thing but there are moments when it gives you agita. I literally said “agita,” a word I don’t use much, a word from my childhood listening to the Italians next door. I had slowed my descent, and people were rushing past. This is when a generational transfer of power occurred within my family.

My son turned to me and in a tone both soft and commanding he said, “Mom: Move it.”

And I realized: Yes, son, of course, this is no time for a disquisitions. We ran to the bottom of the steps and toward the street. By now I was thinking that perhaps 60 seconds had passed. I was also thinking: These things are not exactly precise. I thought: I did not expect when I put on my shoes this morning that I might die in them today. I thought: Medium-sized plane, an imperfect hit—our guys are scrambling up there now. Above the dome—we will get it, and it will come down. But if a medium-sized plane hits the Capitol grounds, exactly what happens? That is, how wide the conflagration? How wide the fireball? Would we be safe in the park over there? Where?

A Capitol Hill cop was yelling, “This way, this way!” Another yelled, “Run for your lives!” A Capitol Hill worker, a young heavyset woman in what I think was a cafeteria uniform, broke down in sobs. I wanted to go to her. A friend ran to her and put her arms around her and walked with her. My son and I holding hands and moving fast as we could. I thought of the scene in “Empire of the Sun”—I did not want to lose my son in the melee, and if it came to it I didn’t want him to die alone. People were running and yelling and sometimes screaming.

We wound up in a group—Oatsie and Nick, Robert and Blaine Trump. We met up after a few blocks and surveyed the options. If the plane was going to hit and the plane was carrying bad stuff, nukes or chems or bios, we’d want to be in a big solid place. Union Station, three blocks away. Run for it. Inside is coolness and marble and communications and TVs in a nice cool bar. We all thought: They might bomb the station. I thought: If they’re gonna take out the Capitol with nukes, they won’t bother with the station today.

So we ran there. I heard reports later of pushing and shoving and people falling as the evacuation from the Capitol began. I saw none of this. I saw people running. And I saw Capitol Police standing their ground, directing people toward what they thought was the safe area, and I saw them running toward the Capitol to help people who needed them. I saw nothing but excellence. If these people had been at Pearl Harbor they would have manned the guns. I’ll tell you who else stood their ground: the photographers for the news services and newspapers. Those crazy bastards took pictures of us running and then moved closer to where we were running from to get more dramatic pictures of the last to leave. Shooters, they are something.

* * *

We got to the station, got Oatsie and Nick up the right ramps, got into some tall cool bar. We were dripping with sweat, which soaked through OUR shirts. I forgot to tell you it was 92 degrees at 3 p.m. We were heaving from running and catching our breath. The bar had kids and commuters talking on phones and flirting and drinking, they had no idea what had happened we asked that they put their big Jumbotron TV on. When Oatsie was rolled, in she was asked by a waiter what she would like. She said, “I would like a cool, dry chardonnay.” I said that sounded just about right. My son wanted a Japanese beer. He had earned it.

We settled in. I asked Oatsie Charles who was the first president she’d ever seen with her eyes. She said, “Franklin D. Roosevelt.” She told us of him, and of her friend JFK. “He had natural charisma—just natural charm.”

We listened to her stories of history as the drums beat for Ronald Reagan on the jumbo TV. And at that moment on a Sony Jumbotron in a little table in a railroad station bar, we watched the body of Ronald Reagan arrive at Andrews and be met by a car. There were other people there in the bar and they were young office workers, commuters talking on cell phones and flirting and laughing. I got up and went to the bar, I introduced myself and told them we’d been evacuated and now we were watching our friend who we’d loved come home to us from California and I asked if they’d like to join us. I asked if they’d like to join us. They were so wonderful—kind and sweet, and they nodded and lowered their voices. And a few came and turned their seats to join our small group and watch our friend come home.

And so we mourned Ronald Reagan, in a room full of strangers who for once were not strangers, in Union Station, as Oatsie Charles told us about FDR and JFK and what it was like to know history. We were all together. And let me tell you: Our souls were there.

Because I Am Not Done

-- The Wall Street Journal: June 17, 2004

All week people who had waited in line to see Ronald Reagan’s casket at the Rotunda would walk up to me wherever I was, introduce themselves and say, “There were these young soldiers and sailors, we waited on line six hours, and we all got in at 2 a.m., and as they rounded the casket they would stop, every one of them, and salute.” Or, “Did you see the American Indians in full ceremonial dress who came and stood in silence?” And, “We were in bed at home and it was 10 at night and we were watching the news and suddenly we looked at each other and said: We gotta go. So we got the train schedule and took the overnight and got to Washington at 7 a.m. and stood on line.”

All week I received e-mails from strangers.

Ms Noonan, I thought you should see this—an e-mail from my brother’s friend: “I just witnessed something truly touching. I’m in Anchorage on business and I was sitting in a noisy restaurant when someone turned the TV to Ronald Reagan’s sunset burial service. The entire restaurant went quite. The noisy weekend crowd, full of jaded, cynical business travelers like me, went almost completely silent. When they lifted up his casket to carry it to his final resting place, the crowd spontaneously stood up. It was truly a remarkable moment. I don’t suspect I’ll see anything like it again.”

And this, from a woman who watched the proceedings on C-Span:

Then I went about my night work of changing loads in the washing machine, and was getting my yogurt snack from the refrigerator, when I heard the unmistakable voice of a young toddler “talking.” For the next few minutes (as long as it took to get thru the prayerful line) the child said in a delightful, sweet voice; dah! Dah! DAH, in different inflections and tones, sometimes a little softer, but mostly in positive, questioning, curious, joyous, and uplifting sounds about every 3-4 seconds. Dah! dah! . . . DAH! I laughed, AND cried. Ronald Reagan would like this too. How wonderful to have this young, happy sound to honor a very positive leader.”

And this, from a New York-based Wall Street Journal editor who stood in line at the rotunda:

I’ve never felt so comfortable in such a crowd and I think tens of thousands of people had an experience last night that they will not soon forget. They were all there to pay their respects to President Reagan. The lines though were long, arduously so. But the wait shaped the mood and after several hours it became part of the experience, instead of something that must be endured on the way to something meaningful. I think the behavior of the crowd spoke to the innate goodness within people, a message central to Reagan himself.

We all experienced history together the past week. We were all part of it. Didn’t matter if you were watching at home sitting in a big brown La-Z-Boy or getting to salute the old man in the church as they brought him back down the aisle. Some were lonely because they weren’t there; some were lonely because they were. Life is complicated. But he brought us all together for one last time, wherever we were, didn’t he? I could feel it. Everyone could feel it.

* * *

The morning of the state funeral hundreds and hundreds of us were in line to get into the Cathedral. It was to start at 11:30, but we are Republicans: we were in line at 9:15. I saw Bob Kimmitt, formerly of the National Security Council, and Marlin Fitzwater, former Reagan press secretary, who sometimes came into my office to lie on the couch and smoke his cigar and hide out from reporters. Hundreds who worked in Reagan’s White House were in line, on the sidewalk. Six or seven feet above us, to the right, was a black cast-iron fence that marked the beginning of the high lawn of the Cathedral. Suddenly at the fence, looking down at us, were Sam Donaldson and Barbara Walters. They had come by to say hello. Sam called down to us in a merry way, and we answered. Then I said to everyone around me, “In honor of the boss, when Sam talks to us let’s cup our ears and say, ‘I can’t hear you!’ “ Everyone laughed.

Sam said something. We put our hands to our ears. “We can’t hear you!,” we chanted. Sam called down something else. “We can’t hear you!,” we chanted. “It’s the helicopter! Sorry!”

It was so small and yet it was a lovely moment. Reagan would have laughed. Did Sam understand it? Ah, not really, I don’t think. But we did.

* * *

One of the things not sufficiently remarked upon the past week: The music, from California to Washington and back to California again, was old music, old American music, and it was beautiful. We have abandoned so much of the core of American music. And then a state funeral comes and the death of a president, and suddenly we are allowed to hear the old songs. “Going Home,” the hymn they played for FDR as they took him from Warm Springs, Ga., to Washington. All the stanzas of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”—”In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea.” “The Navy Hymn,” also known as “Eternal Father Strong to Save.” “Abide With Me.” “Ave Maria”—a great song of the Catholic Church, and yet they don’t play it unless it’s a special person’s wedding or a special person’s funeral.
This music is part of our patrimony, every bit as much as the trees and mountains. Our children, in our civic life, have for a generation been denied these songs. The moral and artistic equivalent of river polluters have decided we need to hear—I don’t know, what songs do they play now in school, at events? “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”?

We need a new environmental movement—a musical conservation movement aimed at saving and preserving the old songs. The rivers and mountains and plains are so beautiful and need saving. But what have you lost if you lose the sound of your ancestors’ souls singing? Even more, I think.

* * *

Another happy moment: The Washington social figures Buffy and Bill Cafritz—”social figures” doesn’t quite express what they are, which is Washington people in a position to keep it going who do keep it going—called a dinner in a Capitol Hill restaurant for their friends, the old Reagan California hands, on Wednesday night, when they all arrived in town.

It was a dinner for the old kitchen cabinet—the ones who were there 40 and 50 years ago to tell Ronald Reagan: Please, enter politics. Charlie Wick and his wife, Mary Jane, Reagan friends since the 1950s, were there. The Deavers, Merv Griffin, Oscar and Lynn Wyatt. And others. They made toasts to each other that were sweet and intelligent. Mary Jane thanked Buffy for always being there when they came east; Buffy told her nothing was easier than being a friend of the Wicks.

I do not normally make toasts at dinners because my thoughts sometimes collide when my brain hears my voice; when I speak it’s from words on paper. But there was no paper. So this night I hit my fork against my glass and asked to be heard. I told them there was something I’d always wanted to say to them, to the old Reagan friends. I told them I had watched them for decades. I saw them be the Reagans’ friends when the Reagans were on top of the world. And I saw them be the Reagans’ friends when they were old and sick and out of power. I saw them be the Reagans’ friends when they were dancing in the East Room. And I saw them be the Reagans’ friends when each of them—all of them—became the focus of criticism and even disdain for their closeness to the Reagans. I saw them be the Reagans’ friends when there was everything in it and when there was nothing in it, and the quality of the friendship didn’t change. And this week, when we are toasting Ron and Nancy, I wanted to toast them for the kind of friends they were.

Everyone nodded, and then Mary Jane Wick, who carries within her face the perfect architecture of lost beauty that will never leave, explained to me what the friendship was about. It wasn’t just affection, though it was affection, she said. It wasn’t just that the Reagans themselves were loyal, though they were. And it wasn’t just that they were easy to be with and fun. It was that early, back in the kitchen cabinet days, in the 1950s and ‘60s, they put their lives behind Ronnie because they felt the country needed what he stood for. It needed him! They felt California needed his leadership. It wasn’t just him, she said, it was what we knew he would do—shrink government, expand freedom.

I hadn’t quite known they felt that way, or heard anyone say it. Friendship as a patriotic act.

Then the dinner broke up and there was a lot of laughter and at the end Charlie Wick, who loves to sing, who burbles with the old standards, sang some songs, and Oscar Wyatt and I joined in. It was some kind of wonderful evening and some kind of wonderful history as they told stories of their friend and governor and president.

* * *

I’m afraid there is yet more I want to say about the past 10 days, so soon I’ll have a piece called “What I Saw When We Were Evacuated From the Capitol the Afternoon Reagan’s Cortege Arrived.” Subheadline: “ ‘Unidentified aircraft one minute out, run for your lives!’ “ It was something, and worth trying to capture, I think, for those who’ve never witnessed or been part of such an evacuation.

Here’s a preview: There is something in American staff and security workers that continues to be coolly, calmly, even unthinkingly heroic. As all the visitors and guests and tourists ran from what they were told was the imminent impact of a presumably enemy aircraft, the Capitol staff stood their ground. Better. I saw a young black woman in a Capitol Police uniform simultaneously point tourists toward safety as she ran, resolutely, toward the Capitol she thought was about to be leveled. They were like New York City firemen. They are something.