Peggy Noonan

What is emerging right now is the real “new world order.” Twelve years ago when the Soviet Union fell, the first President Bush declared it had arrived, but it is this President Bush on whom it has come to call.

Old alliances fall, new ones rise. The 21st century takes its shape. The “old West” is damaged, strained and on the brink. This is obvious not only in the stark disagreement on our current and crucial question of world security but in the manner in which the disagreement is expressed. It is one thing for France and Germany to oppose America’s stand—that, after all these years, is not news—but quite another for representatives of those countries to treat a Colin Powell with such disdain, the kind of disdain you might use toward the emissary of an old enemy, not the representative of an old friend.

The new world reality is a division, a sharp split, between the civilized world on one side and those who comprise, or refuse to thwart, the uncivilized world. The civilized world wants peace and means to stop those who would use weapons of mass destruction to kill civilian populations and terrorize the people of world. Many in the uncivilized world love peace also, but not all, and a key question is whether the peace lovers in their alliance encourage murderous violence by refusing the stop the uncivilized war-bringers in their midst, such as Saddam Hussein.

Is it quite right in this formulation to call a France, a Germany, uncivilized? Germany is so cultured, France so refined. But they are like the Boston Brahmin figure of whom it was long ago said, “He has a mind like the new England countryside, highly cultivated and inherently sterile.” They are lost in the postmodernist ozone, they are post-church countries with great wealth and no faith. They love to talk, and not only because they enjoy the sound. Actions have consequences, but talk is just more face time.

How does this all play out at home, in America, right now? You already know. Two words, duct tape, have in ten days gone from meaningless to meaningful to cliché. We prepare for trouble as best we can, individually. It is impressive that in the middle of a terror alert only 100,000 to 200,000 New Yorkers took to the streets this weekend to march against war. Saddam probably misunderstands the international antiwar movement, thinking it is a pro-Saddam movement. But no one is pro-Saddam. And when there’s a peace march in New York, a target city in whose radius are 20 million people, and 200,000 at most show up, well, that says something.

*   *   *

Last week, until Saturday, New York was nervous, and the nervousness built. Now there is a sense that nothing bad is going to happen right now because of the weekend’s antiwar demonstrations, especially Europe’s. This would be the wrong time for terrorists to strike, for if they move now world opposition to American intentions will be shaken, and America will hit back hard and unilaterally. But what I saw last week bears mention.
This is how people felt. Auden had it wrong. Now is the age of anxiety. On the streets of New York there was a low-key, held-in unease, a sense that bad things were going to happen and the only question was when. People had coping mechanisms—denial for some, preparedness for others—but they all knew they were coping, and with something big. At a lunch in midtown there was mordant merriness, at another a frank sharing of fears.

The internet was buzzing. This last Thursday from a friend who’s had the jits bad since 9/11: “We are leaving town, we’re thinking of you and praying for you.” This from a funny, sweet-natured man: “Headline of the Day: Michael Jackson Admits Plastic Surgery; France Unconvinced.” Thursday night an e-mail from a friend in Virginia: he has been told by Washington associates that the administration may go code red overnight, and people in government have been told to bring to work a week’s worth of clothing. He tells me he is praying for me and my son; I thank him, and give him phone numbers to reach people I love who are near him in case communication from New York becomes difficult. A friend forwards an e-mail from an American Christian who tells him that a visiting Israeli messianic preacher has prophesied “Ezekiel 38 is about to happen.” I went to the Bible and found that chapter 38 tells the battle against Gog, the land of Magog, from which Israel, protected by God, safely emerges.

*   *   *

Last week new urban legends sprang up. One, which has raced through the headquarters of a national magazine, is that there’s a New York woman who has told her friends that her cousin, a psychiatrist in northern Virginia, has been treating “a high State Department official.” The official told her in a recent session that he is extremely worried, that the end of the recent Osama tape has not been revealed to the public. He told the psychiatrist, “What we edited out is that Osama said they’ll hit the New York subways Friday.” He said this will be followed on Saturday by a full-scale U.S. invasion of Iraq. This was such a good story I almost hated telling the person who told me of it that it is most certainly an urban legend.

It is like the tale that raced through New York in October 2001: There was a nice local woman in a deli in Brooklyn. She was in line at the counter. The guy in front of her was a young Arab male, kind of jumpy. He ordered some sandwiches and then found he was a dollar or two short, couldn’t pay for them. The woman overheard and intervened. “Here, son, here’s a few dollars, don’t worry about it.” The guy thanked her, paid and left. She paid and left too, and outside she found he was waiting for her on the sidewalk. “You’re a nice lady,” he says, “and I want to do something to thank you. So listen to me. Don’t go into Manhattan on Monday. Just don’t be there.” And he walks away. And the nice woman called all her friends and told them.

The first time I heard this story it was from a woman I didn’t know who told me firmly and with feeling that the woman was her aunt. I told a friend about it. She said no, the way she heard the story it was the father of a kid at one of the networks. I told another friend and he laughed. “That story’s been around town for weeks,” he said. “It’s a post-9/11 urban legend.”

*   *   *

Throughout the week people famously prepared with water and canned goods and duct tape and plastic. There was plenty of duct tape in Brooklyn, and plenty of water. I put clothing in my safe area Thursday night, and then decided to add in some non-franks-and-beans things, like fine asparagus and crackers.

I went to the local liquor store and asked the clerk, “Are people buying liquor for their safe rooms, and if so what are they buying?” He started to laugh and said actually no one had mentioned that, but business sure was good. We talked about what alcohol might help one through a siege. We looked at brandies in pretty bottles but I chose a 10-year-old single-malt scotch. I have never had an expensive single-malt scotch, and under siege might be a good time to start.

Then I went to the Rite Aid and asked the extremely bored girl at the counter if people were getting any particular kind of pills in preparation for—um, you know, if things become difficult. She said “potassium.” I asked what that does, and she said, “I don’t know but everyone’s getting it.” I said, “Then I’ll have some too.” She said, “No, we’re out.”

*   *   *

The enduring toughness of New Yorkers deserves note. Everyone is doing his job. I’m certain this is so in Washington too. But in New York there are more people just starting out, more immigrants, more people who are alone and not fully integrated into a community, more people who are highly individualistic and self-supporting, and of course our ad hoc army of first class strange-o’s. But everyone’s showing up.
The cleaning staffs in the city, for instance: a lot of them work in buildings that are understood to be targets. They take the subways in the darkness and show up. The checkout girl in the midtown food store and the guy at the counter at the souvenir store and the clerk in the bank—they all get up, listen to the latest terror alerts, and go into town.

Most of the big television networks are located in midtown. All those at the ABC studio on Times Square know they’re working each day at a target. They come, do their work, and on the set, live, when the show is on the air, they smile and chat and calmly introduce the piece on how to build a safe room. At Fox they know they’re a target too: Rupert Murdoch’s papers are up front in your face pro-invasion, and his cable network is perceived by many as essentially pro-administration. But they too show up, smile, move smoothly from live U.N. testimony to the live presidential speech to the live Homeland Security news conference to the live Capitol Hill briefing. The grown-ups on the anchor desk are something. But the desk assistants and writers and associate producers, all young and noncelebrated, could call in sick and no one would notice. And my highly nonscientific telephone survey tells me that isn’t happening.

Something that is happening is that the leaders of networks and the executive producers of shows and the managing editors of magazines are all fully aware that they set the tone for their organization. The young look to them for cues and clues. So they kiss the wife or husband goodbye and hug the kids and leave the house in the morning wondering if today is the terrible day and they won’t get home again. Then they get into work and lounge against the wall in front of their office as if this is a snoozy Tuesday in August. They glide through the halls making jokes and referring to plans for the big summer meeting in July. They’re cool as a cuke for the kids in the hall. Like all Americans there are times when I hate the media, but there are moments when their class, professionalism and courage take your breath away. And this is one.

*   *   *

Tuesday morning I had breakfast in town with two friends, both media people. One spoke of his fear each day at leaving his family. The normally bustling hotel restaurant was barely half full. When a waiter first came to pour me coffee his hand trembled and he had to steady the pot. The lobby was quieter than usual. There was a lot of quiet going on. Until Saturday’s demonstrations the streets seemed less full than usual; tourists weren’t coming in. There were cops all over, extra heavy at bridges and tunnels, and the sirens that pierced the air sounded somehow lonelier, maybe because there was less street noise to blend into.

Wednesday I was in town for a lunch for Laura Bush, who had been invited to the mauve walled dining room of Good Housekeeping magazine to speak about literacy. About halfway through her speech there came from the streets a howl of sudden sirens, and no one moved or altered his expression. Mrs. Bush continued talking.

I looked at my watch: 1:37 pm. I wondered if the journalists around me were going through the same thought-stream I was. 1. Oh no, is this the trouble? 2. I’m with the first lady at a dramatic moment in history, take notes. 3. Maybe being with the president’s wife isn’t a bad place to be; her Secret Service detail knows how to handle things like this and they must carry gas masks, etc. Then a romantic sense of history kicked in: Maybe this is like being with Mary Todd Lincoln the morning of first Bull Run. In five seconds or so the sirens died down and moved on. Mrs. Bush seemed wholly unaffected.

Earlier, when I’d asked how she was doing, she said she was fine, this is obviously a difficult time for people but anxiety has a way of diminishing with time, people get used to it and then don’t feel it so sharply. I asked how the staffers in the White House were doing, and again she said fine; she was mindful that they’d been forced to flee the White House by foot on 9/11 and had had some hard days. She mentioned to the table that she thought people were watching things like Michael Jackson and Joe Millionaire “to distract ourselves.” In her remarks she said, “I know we will get through this,” and that she finds herself thinking, “This too will pass.”

She was poised and composed in the way of someone who isn’t trying, and she was humorous. When Good Housekeeping’s editor, Ellen Levine, stepped in to pick the first questioner in the ensuing Q&A, a bright woman in eyeglasses began to ask a question. Mrs. Bush asked her to identify herself and her organization. She gave her name and said she was the deputy editor of . . . Good Housekeeping. “Oh great, this must be the setup,” Mrs. Bush said, to laughter.

She was in a well-tailored dove-gray wool suit, collarless and double-breasted, with a knee-length skirt, dark-gray heels and pearl earrings. Her makeup had been applied with some art, her auburn hair was subtly highlighted, and her nails were professionally manicured, with red-orange nail polish. I mention this because sometimes grooming is a statement. Mrs. Bush said: Don’t worry too much, we’ll all be fine; if I didn’t know this I wouldn’t have been able to put on my eyeliner in such a straight line. Good grooming and a cheerful demeanor are sometimes heroic.

*   *   *

But something I saw Wednesday night was the most rousing moment in the week. Did you see Dennis Miller debate the war and politics with Phil Donahue on Mr. Donahue’s cable show? Mr. Miller won, but in a way he didn’t defeat Mr. Donahue, he defeated Mr. Donahue’s smugness, his assumption that he speaks from a moral height. Mr. Miller didn’t accept Mr. Donahue’s assumption, he challenged it directly and knocked it down. And his analysis of the American Civil Liberties Union’s position on public Christmas nativity scenes—that it opposes them ferociously, but if a guy walks by, climbs the fence and tries to have sexual intercourse with one of the nativity scene’s animals it’ll rush passionately to defend his rights—was astutely observed and vividly put. And yes he should have used the words “sexual intercourse.”

Dennis Miller was just another person who did good work this week, like the media people and the first lady. And, maybe most of all, the waiter at the hotel whose hand shook, and who steadied the pot and kept pouring.

At this point Iraq is, for each of us, a gut call. We probably have as much information and hard data as we’re going to get. There are different ways to interpret the evidence, to understand the peril. No one can prove containment will work in the future, for instance, and no one can prove that it won’t. There will be a price to pay if we invade. There will be a price to pay if we don’t. And ultimately you have to go with your instinct, your gut sense of the world and of men.

George W. Bush looks at fact patterns, as they say, and does not shrink from coming to conclusions if he thinks the facts demand them. This can’t be said of all political leaders. Coming to a conclusion means having to take a stand. Taking a stand is dangerous. They would rather observe the drama from a distance (a distance that may not hold, for the drama may come to them) and, if it ends happily, come forth to say this is indeed what they hoped for, what they quietly helped. The success of the American operation was, we feel, partly the child of our criticisms. But it would be wrong to take credit, let us simply say we are pleased. If it ends in disaster they will say: Ah, that is why I could not support it.

That’s politics. President Bush in this respect isn’t a politician. He’s an actual leader. He has come to conclusions and taken a stand.

This is not small but big. It’s moving, and it’s impressive.

But it doesn’t in itself mean he’s right.

*   *   *

Some people have been put off by, and some people are inspired by and grateful for, the degree to which the president’s Christian faith seems to play a part in his leadership. A New York media person or intellectual will say, Bush thinks God put him in the presidency “at a time such as this,” and that gives me the creeps. This reflects a misunderstanding about Mr. Bush’s faith. He actually prays for guidance, for wisdom, for strength. Mr. Bush told an audience the other day that he thinks the most generous gift one person can give another is a prayer. He said, “I pray for strength. . . . I pray for forgiveness. And I pray to offer my thanks for a kind and generous Almighty God.” This doesn’t make him strange. It puts him in the normal range of Americans.

He doesn’t think I’m God’s guy, he agrees with everything I do. If he did it would be disturbing to say the least. But he’s not John Brown saying God himself told me to start this war, and he’s not an ayatollah saying death to the Great Satan. He’s just a Christian asking God for help and trying in turn to do what is helpful. When you do this you’re acknowledging your inadequacy and dependence. It’s a declaration not of pride but of humility. To a Christian it’s like declaring reality. It’s like saying, “There’s weather outside.”

So Mr. Bush doesn’t shy from conclusions and he isn’t embarrassed that he asks for and needs God’s help.

Fine and good. A lot of people are able to feel a certain comfort with Mr. Bush because he’s authentically himself, not led by polls, a man of faith, a man who tries to stay plugged into the current of big love.

But it still doesn’t necessarily mean he’s right.

*   *   *

Which gets me to Colin Powell’s testimony before the U.N. Security Council.
From the early days of the debate I listened to the secretary of state closely and with respect. I was glad to see a relative dove in the administration. It needed a dove. Mr. Powell’s war-hawk foes seemed to me both bullying and unrealistic. Why not go slowly to war? A great nation should show a proper respect for the opinion of mankind, it should go to the world with evidence and argument, it should attempt to win allies.

A lot of people tracked Mr. Powell’s journey, and in a way took it with him. Looking back I think I did too.

Mr. Powell now stands where the president stands: Saddam Hussein must be stopped.

This is what Mr. Powell asserted, and in my view established, in his U.N. testimony: Iraq has developed and is developing weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has deliberately hid the weapons, in contravention of international agreements. Iraq has relations with and is supportive of terrorists who mean to strike at innocent people.

You have to ask yourself: Why is Saddam developing these weapons, and what might he do with them? Will he do nothing with them? That would not be in line with his history. His history is one of aggression: invasions of neighbors, mass killings of his opponents in his own country and in others. Doing nothing with his weapons would be at odds with what appears to be his personal pathology: He is sadistic, a torturer. He likes bloody floors.

Should we think past is prologue? It would seem realistic to think that, especially when we see his increased hunger for more and bigger weapons. The anti-invasion people don’t address what they think a man like Saddam will do in the future if no one stops him. Recently I asked a friend, an intellectual who is passionately antiwar and anti-Bush, what he thinks Saddam will do if we do not remove him. At first my friend dodged the question with anti-neocon invective, but when I pressed he admitted he had no idea what Saddam would do if he were not stopped—and he didn’t care.

But you have to care. It’s irresponsible not to.

*   *   *

How is Saddam a threat to world safety? Well, you don’t develop chemical and biological weapons to establish world peace. You get them, you spend your treasure to get them, to use them, one way or another at one time or another. He’s used the weapons he has in the past—both conventional weapons in his invasions, and unconventional weapons in his gassing of the Kurds and Iranians. He seems never to shy from violence. Do we want him to go nuclear, and then deal with him then? That would seem an unwise gamble.

If Saddam means to do mass harm with his weapons, whom does he mean to harm? He has long pointed to America and Israel as his great foes. He was thwarted and humiliated by America 12 years ago when he tried to take Kuwait. He was infuriated by Israel 22 years ago when they bombed his nuclear reactor. Whether you think America and Israel were right in those past actions or not, they are history, and they suggest who Saddam sees as his ultimate targets: them, and their allies, such as Britain and Italy.

When America in the Gulf War spared his life and left him in power, he solemnly agreed to stop developing weapons of mass destruction. The world turned its attention elsewhere as he merrily resumed developing such weapons.

*   *   *

It is hard to believe Saddam’s future plans are benign.

It is also hard to assume an invasion of Iraq would be as smooth, short and low-cost in terms of casualties as the first Gulf War. Maybe it will. U.S. military power is somehow always stronger and more overwhelming than one expects. But this looks like Saddam’s last stand, and it is hard to imagine he will not hide and use the weapons he has. American troops appear to be prepared for this, but the unarmed civilians of Iraq do not. If Saddam uses all he has and goes out in a blaze of inglory, it could yield a terrible human toll among his own people, to whose safety he’s long given little thought. Those who implacably oppose war will use these civilian loses to paint America as a mindless behemoth scattering bodies in its wake. But a great nation cannot allow its decisions to be determined by the pictures its foes will paint.

War is ugly, damaging, chaotic and, in its individual application, often wildly unjust. It is as William Tecumseh Sherman said, hell. But Gen. Sherman didn’t say the Civil War was wrong because war is hell. He fought hard and hellishly for the Union.

President Bush’s foes warn of body bags. There will be body bags. But the question does not seem to be “invade and get body bags” versus “don’t invade and no body bags.” If that were so we’d all say fine, no invasion. The question is: “invasion body bags or noninvasion body bags?” Removing Saddam and taking losses, or not removing Saddam and waiting for the losses that will no doubt follow. Saddam is a body-bag bringer. Where he is, loss follows.

*   *   *

What good can come of an invasion? A successful invasion would mean Saddam removed and, in his place, someone almost certainly better. Maybe a more benign dictator, or an Iraqi leader who is already helping the CIA and has silent Iraqi support, or a hopeful democrat, or a claque of men who hate what Saddam’s leadership did to abuse their country and people. U.S. forces would obviously be there for some time, and maybe a long time.

Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could be found, removed, destroyed.

This will be difficult, all of it. It may not work, or work completely. But if it removes Saddam and removes his killing weapons it may well sober up our allies in the area. And it will hearten the civilized world more than we imagine. For the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, the civilized world will be able to feel that it can seize control of its fate again.

It would also be a real and psychological blow to terrorism and terrorists. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse,” Osama bin Laden said in a post-Sept. 11 videotape. America, he implied, was the weak horse. Will it be bad for the world if the civilized West gallops into the chaos and removes the weapons cache? I think it will encourage a more robust sense that nonterror states do not have to be the victims of bad history in a bad era.

So: a blow to terrorism, the destruction of horrific weapons, a reassertion of Western spirit and values, and the stopping of a rogue nuclear program controlled by a sadist. This would seem to be worth a lot.

And millions of Iraqis would be freed from oppressive and pathological rule. That would be worth something too.

A more stable Iraq may well contribute to a more stable Middle East, and a more stable Mideast would contribute to a more stable world. And in the context of that enhanced stability the U.S. would hopefully feel free to be a more effective encourager of the hard steps needed to calm the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is not the only source of but the obvious modern source of our current woes.

Much needs to be done in a troubled world, and surely the removal of Saddam is part of it, a needed step.

*   *   *

We cannot expect a successful invasion of Iraq to result in a new age of peace and security. Islamic terrorism won’t stop until all the terrorists themselves are jailed or killed. They will probably do terrible things again before the West decides once and for all and en masse to stop them. We are in for rough times. It cannot be said often enough that we are in the era of weapons of mass destruction. It is one thing for a Hitler to plan a war, build up his military and move strategically to get what he wants. It is quite another when a thousand little Hilters get their hands on one huge weapon and passionately, nihilistically go forth to kill. There will be plenty more heartache before the drama is done.

But we can’t dodge history. History won’t let us. We’ll have to deal with it, do our best, lead for the good. Iraq is part of the pattern of world terror. To move against it is a gamble. But to do nothing is a gamble too. It’s gambling on Saddam’s future goodwill, a new reluctance on his part to use what he has, a change of heart, mind and character. Does that strike you as a safe bet? A good one?

Me either.

What did you think of President Bush’s Columbia speech?

It hit the spot, did what needed to be done. The bible references were pure Bush. Only question was why it wasn’t given in the Oval Office. I think I am correct in observing that modern presidents shy away from the Oval for addresses. But why? The big desk with the pictures behind is what people expect. That’s where presidents talk.

Back to the State of the Union. Wasn’t it surprising that at a time like this Mr. Bush didn’t limit his State of the Union address to the two great issues, Iraq and the economy?

It surprised me when I learned of it, which was the morning of the speech. I was one of the columnists invited to meet with a high government official with intimate knowledge of the president’s thinking, as they say, on background. We met in his office, which has no corners. He told us he would be presenting his domestic agenda, a blueprint for the coming year, in his speech.

This struck me as counterintuitive, and odd. I asked how this decision had come about. He said he had made it early on in the preparation of the speech. He said he thinks a great nation can do many things at once, and that his domestic agenda is important. Afterwards, on the shuttle home, I thought: Hmmm, this may be wise. Speaking of important things other than Iraq resurrects and projects a sense of political normalcy. It implicitly cools things down while widening context. We are in a crisis, but then we often have crises; we are America. Iraq is grave but not dire; life continues, and work must be done. Then I thought, if the domestic program he unveils tonight seems connected to Iraq, and can be understood as an expression of the thinking that guides his decisions on Iraq—well, that would be big, and helpful.

Was it?

Yes. I said earlier that what seemed to me to tie his domestic agenda to his international agenda was protectiveness. A desire to protect the innocent, from children orphaned by AIDS to kids with a parent in prison to world citizens vulnerable to massive terrorist attack. His Iraq remarks seemed to me to circle back on and bolster, or more fully express, his domestic assertions. I thought: This is smart, and subtle.

There’s something I don’t get though. President Bush the elder backed a lot of big government spending; he didn’t make the government smaller; the deficit grew; he was open to adding on new spending. And by 1992 his Republican base turned on him, and he was finished. Now Bush the younger comes along and promises more government spending, a government getting bigger, the return of deficits. And yet after the speech Tuesday his base is more rock solid than ever. How come?

Several reasons. One, the president’s base shares with him the conviction that nothing—nothing—is more important than the war on terrorism. Conservatives always think the first job of government is to look to our national security, keep defenses strong, ensure public safety. So Mr. Bush’s base is willing to give him a lot of room to maneuver to get what he needs on security and safety.

Second, conservatives know something about President Bush that they didn’t know about his father: He’s a conservative who means it. So they trust him.

Third, and crucially, Mr. Bush didn’t promise new spending in the liberal mode; he didn’t ask for spending on liberal targets and programs guided by liberal assumptions. He didn’t and doesn’t bow to those assumptions. He is skeptical of them—that’s why he’s a conservative. The domestic agenda he unveiled the other night was about directing federal energy and expenditures toward programs that reflect a conservative view of what is helpful, and that tug at the national—the liberal and conservative—conscience. AIDS in Africa, for instance. You didn’t know this is a matter of concern to conservatives? Then you don’t talk to enough conservatives. AIDS is killing Africa, it is creating a continent of orphans, and this doesn’t have to be. So much can be done. So give them help. Christian groups are deeply involved in the African effort. Bill Frist too.

The sole liberal program Mr. Bush advanced was increased Medicare spending—and again, many Republicans think that’s necessary, others respect what the polls say, many will sacrifice the fiscal impact if it removes a sapping and divisive issue from the table, and the rest will let it go as not too unreasonable or expensive. And Mr. Bush said he supported prescription-drug benefits in the 2000 campaign, so it’s not a vow broken but a vow reasserted.

There were other domestic elements in the speech that reflected modern conservative, as opposed to older and more liberal, thinking. Hydrogen cars? Fine. Fifty years of resisting the monolith of the giant state has left conservatives thinking, reflexively, outside the box. From supply side to welfare reform to Chuck Colson’s ministry to convicts and their children to George Gilder and the new technology, a spirit of innovation has swept and guided modern conservative thought. Old Robert Taft would spin in his grave if he knew what modern conservatives will consider. They’re like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney—”I know, let’s put on a show in the barn with the hydrogen fueled car!”

Back to Iraq. The Democrats seem to be flailing around in their search for attack points on Mr. Bush’s policies, don’t they?

Yeah, I think he’s tying them in knots. They say he’s a lone cowboy but he goes with Colin Powell and approaches the U.N. and asks for its help. They say he’s a unilateralist so he shocks them the other day with an unexpected statement of support from eight European leaders—including a great man and idealist named Vaclav Havel. They say they need more detail so he announces Mr. Powell will go to the U.N. Security Council with a full brief. They say Mr. Powell is a lone voice of sanity in the administration and Mr. Powell comes out powerfully to back the president. They say they need proof of “imminence” of Iraqi attack, and Mr. Bush counters that, um, terrorists and dictators don’t send notes announcing they’ll be coming to visit.

But really it’s the new eight, the new coalition come together with one voice, that is so impressive. The declaration, coming just after the State of the Union address, looked like a small diplomatic masterpiece, and it may be one. It got a major assist from The Wall Street Journal, which had asked Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar for an opinion piece setting out their reasons for supporting America in Iraq. The two leaders apparently contacted a few more leaders, and the result was the public letter carrying all eight signatures.

And here’s a funny thing. George Bush the elder was masterly in putting together his Gulf War coalition. Everyone knows he was sensitive to the subtleties and requirements of high diplomacy, and he came through. George W. Bush isn’t known for diplomatic expertise. And yet he appears to be achieving what his father achieved, and more. Bush the elder had an Iraqi invasion that had already done in Kuwait as his main arguing point. Bush the younger has mostly the potential, or the likelihood, of grave misdeeds involving weapons of mass destruction, but not the present reality of them, to use in argument. So the bar was higher for this Bush.

Anyway, I think the Democrats have been tied in knots, and they’re showing their desperation with their latest talking point, body bags. American invasions mean dead Americans. This is a matter of the utmost seriousness, of course, and yet it dodges the issue. American invasion means dead Americans, but if Mr. Bush is right then refusing to confront Saddam and his weapons now may well mean a future Iraqi- supported or Iraqi-executed attack on our soil. Which could result in hundreds of thousands of dead American civilians. And body bags.

What will Colin Powell say this week at the U.N.?

He signals what he’s thinking in today’s Wall Street Journal. He repeats the president’s statement that Iraq has “open channels and ties to terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda. He quotes Hans Blix reporting to the U.N. Iraq’s lack of a “genuine acceptance” of the need to disarm. Mr. Powell makes clear that he will have more intelligence to share Wednesday also.

What did you come away from your interview in the office without corners thinking about Mr. Bush, and war?

I came away with a sense that Mr. Bush has grown comfortable and confident in the presidency, in part perhaps due to a silent weighing that was going on inside him. I had the hunch that Mr. Bush, who had succeeded as a Texas governor in part by relying on his gut sense of people, events, meaning, went into the White House wondering if his gut would be up to the job. If it would give him the guidance it had given in Texas, if it was up to the demands of a presidency. Then Sept. 11 came, and he was thrown back onto his inner resources. He had to use his gut to make big quick decisions. The one time he didn’t follow his gut—when he didn’t return immediately to the White House after the attacks—he made a big mistake. So he went with his gut thereafter, and in the next 12 months he concluded his gut was up to the challenge. And so he is now more comfortable and commanding—because he can use as a primary tool something he really has as opposed to something he needs to develop.

As to the war, Mr. Bush is moving forward with what looks like a great sense of moral security. He is certain he is right that Iraq is a real and present danger to the world. So he doesn’t mind taking the hits he takes, accepts the high stakes, feels sure that if we must go to war we will triumph, hearten the world, and win greater safety. He’d love it if Saddam would leave or be removed in a coup, but he doesn’t plan on it, because you can’t plan on good fortune. He’d welcome it though. He doesn’t want war but the fruits of war, the defeat of a dangerous enemy.

You said last week Mr. Bush should provide us with more of what the U.S. government knows or thinks it knows on Iraq. Are you satisfied after the speech?

I think he shared more of what U.S. intelligence knows than he had in the past, and I thought his “There’s never a day when I do not learn of another threat, or receive reports of operations in progress,” was quite suggestive. I know there are those around the president who feel more must be shared, and Mr. Bush seems to agree. The official with intimate knowledge of his thinking said more will be coming in a future Bush speech on Iraq. Which will be, in effect, his final summation to the jury.

“The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors.” Blunt words spoken softly by President Bush this afternoon. He spoke of how easy it is for all of us to “overlook the dangers of travel by rocket. . . . These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly.” He spoke of why “mankind is led into the darkness,” and he promised that “our journey into space will go on.”

“Lift your eyes and look to the heavens,” he said, quoting Isaiah. “The same Creator who names the stars knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today.”

His remarks were explicitly God-based, and that seemed just right. At moments like this presidents fall back on their primary thought-stream. Mr. Bush went straight to the spiritual.

*   *   *

Oh my, it is painful. The parents of astronaut David Brown were just on television, live, early in the afternoon of the day their son died. Mr. Brown said his son had told him he dreamed of going to Mars. He added that all Dave’s flight friends wanted a Mars journey. David Brown’s parents spoke with a helpful air, with pained poise, of their son who had died in the morning. Thrown back by life and trying to be helpful. You wonder where astronaut David Brown got his guts? Meet Mr. and Mrs. Brown of Arlington, Va.

*   *   *

It sends you back, doesn’t it? You see the broken line of vapor against the blue sky and hear the voices anchormen get when they have to ad lib disaster, and it takes you back to that winter day 17 years ago when America was horrified to see a spacecraft blow up before its eyes.
But this one is different, in so many ways.

We weren’t watching it take off, live, we were watching it come back in, only we weren’t watching because we’ve grown so used to marvels. I think of a hundred-year-old lady who told a friend of mine of the day that when she was young, she saw an airplane for the first time. She had been dining with friends at an outdoor club and a plane—this amazing machine—came and landed on the rolling lawns beyond. They ran out from the lunch table in great excitement, touched the plane, felt amazement. “What did you do then?” my friend asked. “We went inside and finished lunch,” she replied. That’s what people do with marvels, they see, absorb and return to life. That’s what we were doing while the space program was going on the past few years: We were eating lunch.

The Challenger broke up over the ocean, this one over land. The air this time on the TV screen was pale, not the painful rich blue that framed the vivid cloud of what had been the Challenger.

Back then it was a shock. This time it is too, though one we’ve experienced before.

*   *   *

“These are the days of miracle and wonder,” sang Paul Simon in the 1980s. It ran through my head all morning, from out of nowhere, and I think I know why. It has to do with the impossibility, the sheer implausibility, of the facts. We are on the verge of war in the Mideast, a war springing in its modern origins from the tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict; our president, a Texan, believes we must move on Iraq. The space shuttle that broke up today carried, for the first time ever, a Mideastern astronaut, an Israeli who won fame when he led a daring raid on a nuclear reactor in Iraq, 20 years ago. The shuttle broke up over the president’s home state, Texas. The center of the debris field appears to be a little town called Palestine.

If Tom Clancy wrote this in one of his novels—heck, if Tim LaHaye wrote this in one of his Left Behind books—his editor would call him and say, “We’re thinking this may be too over the top.”

*   *   *

The morning the Challenger blew up, President Reagan was meeting with a handful of network anchors, giving them a preview of his State of the Union address, which was to be given that night. The president got the news of the explosion and spoke of the tragedy with the anchors, who asked him questions. Their conversation was witnessed by a staffer in the National Security Council, who took notes. She ran them into the speechwriting office. The notes became the basis of the Challenger speech, which the president gave later that day.

He ended with famous words from a famous World War II-era poem written by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr., an American citizen who gave his life with the Royal Canadian Air Force at the beginning of the war, before America was in.

I felt in my heart that Mr. Reagan knew that poem, and that if he did he would want to use it. He did know it. He told me afterward that it was written on a plaque at his daughter Patti’s school when she was a kid. He used to go and read it. I was later told that Mr. Reagan had in fact read the poem at the funeral or at a memorial for his friend Tyrone Power, who had been a World War II pilot.

This is the poem. It’s called “High Flight”:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence, hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along,
And flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

The morning the Challenger blew up, the grade-school daughter of Ronald Reagan’s chief speechwriter, Ben Elliott, was spending the day with her father in the White House. She came into my office, this little blond child, and said softly that the teacher was on the Challenger. Is the teacher OK? I realized: schoolchildren across the country were watching the Challenger go up, they were watching on TV sets and in auditoriums, because Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, was on the flight. The children saw it all. It was supposed to be part of American schoolchildren learning about space, that’s why the schools were showing it live. It was a learning tool.
Well it was, and the children learned more than anyone would have expected. They got a lesson in bravery, on why men go forth into space, on what it means to push forward, and what courage it takes. What it is to be an American pioneer.

Today the tragedy feels less like something that teaches than something that reminds. We were reminded of what we know. President Bush referred to it when he lauded the astronauts’ courage. We forget to notice the everyday courage of astronauts. We forget to think about all the Americans doing big and dangerous things in the world—members of the armed forces, cops and firemen, doctors in public hospitals in hard places. And now, famously again, astronauts. With their unremarked-upon valor and cool professionalism. With their desire to make progress and push on.

Buzz Aldrin captured it this morning. He tried to read a poem about astronauts on television. He read these words: “As they passed from us to glory, riding fire in the sky.” And tough old Buzz, steely-eyed rocket man and veteran of the moon, began to weep.

He was not alone.

God bless and bless and bless their souls, and rest their souls in the morning.

You always hope a State of the Union address will be a sleek and handsome ocean liner cutting through the sea. Often they start that way and then turn, inevitably, into a greasy old barge riding low in the water, weighed down by policy cargo. It blows its horn proudly but the sound is more impressive than the ship; in fact it highlights the ship’s inadequacy.

*   *   *

George W. Bush’s State of the Union the other night flipped expectations and broke rules. It began as a barge and turned into a ship of state. Suddenly you realized its early slowness was in fact a stateliness, not a flaw but part of a design. It built. It didn’t blast its horn and yet as it moved forward you couldn’t stop listening.
It was the speech of a practical idealist, practical in that it dealt directly with crucial and immediate challenges and addressed them within a context of what is possible, and idealistic in that it applied the great American abstractions—freedom, justice, independence—to those challenges. The speech was held together by a theme of protectiveness. We must now more than ever, and for all the current crisis, continue as a uniquely protective people. We must protect the vulnerable and troubled—the young with parents in prison, the old with high prescription costs, workers battered by taxes, victims of late-term abortions, a continent dying of AIDS. In foreign policy we must protect ourselves and the world from those who would harm us with massive, evil weapons.

The theme held both halves of the speech together, and so they cohered and supported each other. The two halves were defined, too, by a change of tone or demeanor on the president’s part that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. In the first, domestic part of the speech he was serious and contained, but in the second part of the speech, on Iraq, there was a shift. His voice seemed lower and there seemed a kind of full head-heart engagement in his grave but optimistic message. For a moment I though of earnest Clark Kent moving, at the moment of maximum danger, to shed his suit, tear open his shirt and reveal the big “S” on his chest. But it wasn’t quite like that because it wasn’t theatrical. The speech was unrelentingly serious, and assumed a seriousness in its audience. It assumed also a high degree of personal compassion and courage on the part of those watching. And so it was subtly rousing without being breast-beating, flag-waving or cheap. It was something.

In a pre-speech meeting with reporters on Tuesday, a high administration official with intimate knowledge of the president’s thinking said that the president did not intend for the speech to be the last word on Iraq. There will be meetings with allies, statements and presentations, and they will most likely culminate in a big and final presidential address.

The State of the Union was intended to persuade and add more data, which the president did. He revisited Saddam Hussein’s attempts to create and obtain weapons of mass destruction, and referred to his ties with al Qaeda. He met Democrats’ insistence that he prove that a Saddam move is “imminent” with the observation that terrorists don’t send handwritten notes announcing they’re about to visit. He added to the case against Iraq in a way that seemed compelling: He was talking to mom and pop at the kitchen table and telling them that men with histories and characters like Saddam’s don’t get their hands on weapons of mass destruction to do anything with them but hit their enemies—that is, us—hard. He finished with a vow: We will “disarm” Saddam if he will not disarm himself. Mr. Bush did not hold out hope on that score, asserting that trusting Saddam “is not a strategy, and it is not an option.”

It is hard to know how many Americans are still open to persuasion on the subject of an invasion. It is tough to know how hardened positions are. The new information Mr. Bush offered seemed both believable and incomplete. The high White House official in the pre-speech interview made it clear that he wants to release more classified data on Saddam, and seemed to suggest the data will inform parts of a future Colin Powell appearance before the Security Council.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush’s language was interesting. It was Elevated Bushian—plain and pared of personal emotionalism. “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to humanity.” “The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.” “If this is not evil then evil has no meaning.”
People talk about “great lines” in speeches, but this speech was distinguished in that it didn’t highlight them—it didn’t toot its horn. When leaders speak these days a big problem with their rhetoric is that the great lines—the soundbites—sound like something sprinkled in artificially. They almost jump up and announce themselves—Main soundbite coming! Runs 14 seconds. Incue: “My fellow Americans . . . “ This doesn’t impress people very much because Americans are sophisticated. They don’t say, “I love what he just said,” they say, “That was the big soundbite.”

Mr. Bush’s speech was a departure in this regard. It didn’t have “good lines,” it had thoughts. The thoughts were pithily, and sometimes memorably, expressed. They didn’t seem artificially sprinkled in. They arose from the text, were woven into it, and organic to it. And so they didn’t seem showy and insubstantial, they seemed like real thoughts that had a particular weight. This is oratory of the post-soundbite era, and it’s a step forward.

I felt at the end of the speech not roused but moved, and it took me a while to figure out why. It was gratitude.

*   *   *

This, truly, is a good man. And that is a rare thing. Agree with Mr. Bush’s stands or disagree, there can be no doubting the depth of his seriousness and the degree to which he attempts to do what he is convinced is right, and to lead his country toward that vision of rightness. We have had many unusual men as president and some seemed like a gift and some didn’t. Mr. Bush seems uniquely resolved to be as courageous as the times require and as helpful as they allow. There is a profound authenticity to him, and a fearlessness too.

A steady hand on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.

Nothing is more beautiful, more elevating, more important in a speech than fact and logic. People think passionate and moving oratory is the big thing, but it isn’t. The hard true presentation of facts followed by a declaration of how we must deal with those facts is the key. Without a recitation of hard data, high rhetoric seems insubstantial, vaguely disingenuous, merely dramatic. Without a logical case to support rhetoric has nothing to do. It’s like icing without cake.

Once the facts and the declaration are put forward it’s fine to use eloquence if you can muster it, and ringing oratory too if it will help people to see things as you do, and help them lean toward taking the course of action you recommend.

So to sum up: Moving oratory is what you use to underscore a point. It is not in itself the point.

George W. Bush is being told by some pundits and others that ringing oratory is what he most needs in his State of the Union address tomorrow night. That is exactly wrong.

*   *   *

I’m going to limit myself to war with Iraq, because whatever else is on the table, and there’s a lot, nothing is more important than war. One expects Mr. Bush will give a last warning to Saddam Hussein and the world that either a regime change will come to Iraq or war will. I suspect we’ll hear the don’t-make-me-come-up-there sound bite over and over in the coming week. Fine by me, but more is needed.
Last year’s State of the Union is remembered for dramatic declarations and rhetorical flourishes—”axis of evil,” etc. That seemed right for the times. America had been brutally attacked months before, Americans needed to know of their president’s determination to define and deal with our enemies.

But now, in January 2003, a year rich with rhetoric has passed. Mr. Bush’s passion is well-established. Too much so, actually. Last summer, when Mr. Bush told Bob Woodward’s tape recorder that he personally loathes Kim Jung Il, when he spoke of his disdain in startlingly personal tones—and when the world heard it on television, for Mr. Woodward apparently provided the tape to publicists when he was selling his Bush book—well, that was not a great moment in the history of diplomacy. Mr. Bush’s father was often accused of allowing himself to express too little. George W. Bush may be remembered in part for allowing himself to express too much. Anyway this has become one passionate presidency.

The times are passionate. Last year in the State of the Union, Mr. Bush essentially argued for war. Now we are on the brink of it. Tensions are high. If the U.S. invades Iraq and succeeds, many Americans will tell pollsters they always backed the president and supported the war. If we invade and fail, just as many Americans will tell pollsters they’d always opposed war and that Mr. Bush is a hothead.

Lately Mr. Bush’s comments to reporters on Iraq have taken a more heated tone—he’s fed up with Saddam; he’s seen this movie before. Mr. Bush is upping the rhetorical ante. Even Colin Powell last week took on a new toughness when speaking of his doubts regarding weapons inspections, and Condi Rice has declared that Saddam has to know that time is about run out.

It is not farfetched to assume that all of this is part of a deliberate plan to break stasis and force movement. The president and his advisers are telling Iraq’s generals: We mean it, we’re coming, if you want to die with Saddam, go ahead, but if you want to live, then take him out now. They’re talking to Saddam too. They’re saying: This is the last chance you’ll get to take your billions and retire to Africa, much of which is already Dodge City and inclined therefore to give a hearty welcome to a new psychopath at the neighborhood bar.

In the meantime Mr. Bush is sending carriers, ships and matériel to the Gulf, getting everything in place for invasion.

In a surprising way, by the way, the personal Bush-to-Saddam invective may tend to prove to Saddam what his intelligence services are no doubt telling him: this is all personal with Mr. Bush, he thinks you tried to kill his dad, he’s mad for war—and a Christian fanatic who thinks God wants him to invade. Mr. Bush’s comments and actions may, who knows, get Saddam to blink.

As a strategy, forcing the moment to its crisis with hot talk and troop movements carries dangers, as all strategies do. But it could reap the great reward: war averted and victory won.

But one of the problems with the strategy, if it is a strategy—and one certainly hopes it is for if it’s not there’s a lot of messy swaggering going on at the White House—is this: It leaves the world and the American people wondering if Mr. Bush isn’t a little too hot, too quick on the draw, too personal in his handling of international challenges.

In an odd way Mr. Bush’s passion about Iraq is getting in the way of his message on Iraq. It’s not carrying the message forth forcefully, which is what passion is supposed to do. At this point his passion seems to be distracting from the message.

*   *   *

Which gets us to tomorrow night’s address. What we need this time is something bracing—such as facts, new facts, hard data.
Most of the public believes—even many antiwar protestors say they believe—that Saddam is a bad and dangerous man, and that the world will be less safe if he develops nuclear weapons, if he doesn’t already have them. Saddam doesn’t have a lot of fans. Mr. Bush doesn’t have to make a case against him; he needs to make the final case, the irrefutable one.

And for this, what’s needed is the slow and steady buildup of fact upon fact, like brick upon brick. Mr. Bush has to build a final forceful case in a way the world can’t miss.

Mr. Bush, as president, knows things we don’t know. Presidents always do. It would be helpful here if the president would speak of things he has not revealed before. This would include some hard intelligence that has not been divulged to the public.

He needs more than “bleeding Belgium” rhetoric: “Saddam gassed his own people.” He needs uncommon unknown data.

An example. I’m going to refer to a private conversation about another conversation, I hope in a good cause. Four months ago a friend who had recently met with the president on other business reported to me that in conversation the president had said that he has been having some trouble sleeping, and that when he awakes in the morning the first thing he often thinks is: I wonder if this is the day Saddam will do it.

“Do what exactly?” I asked my friend. He told me he understood the president to be saying that he wonders if this will be the day Saddam launches a terror attack here, on American soil.

I was surprised. We know of the arguments that Saddam is a supporter and encourager of America’s terrorist enemies. We know the information that has been made available. But the president has not to my knowledge said in public that he fears Saddam himself will hit us hard on the ground in America, and soon.

Maybe my friend misheard, maybe something was misunderstood. But my friend is a careful man, and I suspect he heard exactly right. Which begs the question, what does Mr. Bush know that he hasn’t said about Saddam’s intentions and ability to strike America?

One hopes more information will come to the public. Presidents are always bound by the need not to compromise sources or operations, and rightly so. But at this moment, on the brink of war, an immediate and situational new flexibility would seem to be helpful. If you lose a source or an operation and gain more of the understanding of the people of the world and the people of your country—well, that would seem to be a reasonable deal.

*   *   *

I wonder if this famously tight-lipped administration has become institutionally and reflexively inclined to withhold more information than is warranted. It is tight-lipped about helpful and unhelpful facts alike.
Tomorrow night the world will be watching the last big speech before what looks like the next big war. It’s the perfect forum for a strong unveiling and reiteration of hard facts that speak of why, for the good of the world, Saddam must leave or be forcibly removed.

It is now 30 years since the Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade vision, blew down the barriers to abortion on demand, using as the essential rationale a constitutional right of privacy that the court had discovered less than eight years earlier. Since 1973 roughly 40 million abortions—that seems to be the generally accepted number—have been performed in America, and 40 million children banished from life.

Forty million. There isn’t a country in the world with an army that big. Many don’t have a population that big. Among the 40 million were, as romantics like to point out, a Leonardo, a Dr. Salk, the man who’d make the rocket to Mars and perhaps the first American pope. But there were men and women among the 40 million who would have grown up to be destructive too, and cruel. It seems realistic to assume the 40 million would have included your average mix of heroes, villains and those undistinguished by recognizable gifts.

But actually I wonder about that. It has seemed to me over the years that so many of the 40 million were the children of bright or educated or affluent parents, lucky young people and, in the way of things, might likely have gone on to—well, we might have lost more curers of cancer than we know. In any case, whatever these individuals would have become, they were all unique, blessed. They all deserved the same thing, life, and all suffered the same fate.

Looked at in this way, abortion might seem not a completely private choice but one that has had a profound public impact on our country. If you want to be cold and actuarial about it, you can note that in the next five to 10 years tens of millions of baby boomers will retire, and their futures would be more secure if they were benefiting from the financial support of the missing 40 million, many of whom would be paying into Social Security right now. But they’re gone, so they can’t help.

If you want to be less actuarial than cultural in your thinking, it’s hard to believe that we don’t all know, down deep, that abortion has not made our country a gentler place. I believe we haven’t begun to appreciate the effect on our children and their developing understanding of life that they are told every day, on television and in magazines, in advertisements and news stories, that we allow the killing of children. It’s not good for them to know that, not good for them to be told over and over that they live in a place where life is not necessarily respected and inconvenient life can be whisked away. Knowledge like that has a chilling effect on the soul.

*   *   *

I think, as many do, that Roe v. Wade was as big a travesty as the Supreme Court decision on Dred Scott, which in 1857 declared that descendants of slaves could not become U.S. citizens. All Americans would now see that decision as terribly wrong, but back then the Court had spoken and Dred Scott was forced to continue to live in slavery.
I think also that if the legal status of abortion, a long-settled issue that was inevitably forced into play by the cultural revolution of the ‘60s and the rise of the women’s movement, had to be redecided, it should have been done politically, not judicially. That it was not, that a huge and radical change in law was forced on the entire country by black-robed fiat, caused avoidable and continuing unrest. It has contributed more than any decision in my lifetime to the national breakdown of faith in our institutions.

If it had been left up to the states, New York, California and other places would have legal abortion (as they already did in 1973). Utah, Louisiana and other places would have voted pro-life. The outcome would have been mixed and the argument would have continued, but not with quite the same citizen-hating-citizen level of intensity or quite the damage to our trust in the law and the law givers.

*   *   *

The antiabortion movement isn’t going to go away. It will fight on until the day our country ends if that day comes. And it is making progress. Two recent polls, which the mainline media largely ignored, are revealing of that progress. A Wirthlin poll released last week reported 68% of respondents support “restoring legal protection for unborn children,” and almost the same number said they would favor future Supreme Court nominees who supported protections. That poll was commissioned by pro-life groups, but then came a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in which 70% of respondents said partial-birth abortion should be outlawed, 78% backed a mandatory 24-hour waiting period for all abortions, 73% supported parental consent for girls under 18 seeking abortions, and 88% said they favor a law directing doctors to inform patients of alternatives to abortion before it is performed.
These data suggest the country may be slowly but surely turning, and looking at the question in a new way, and inching closer back to the old idea that abortion is tragedy, tragic for the baby and tragic for us. It is no good, we know it, it is avoidable, there are options, such as hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans eager to adopt.

*   *   *

Why haven’t our courts and lawmakers made greater progress in protecting the unborn when polls suggest public support is there? Lots of reasons, but one that I think is not sufficiently appreciated is this: Abortion is now the glue that holds the Democratic Party together. Without abortion to keep them together, the Democrats would fly apart into 50 small parties—Dems for free trade, Dems for protectionism; for quotas, for merit. All parties have divisions, the Republicans famously so, but Republicans have general philosophical views that keep them together and supported by groups that share their views. They’re all united by, say, hostility to high taxes, but sometimes they have different reasons for opposing tax increases.
The Democratic Party, in contrast, has exhausted its great reasons for being, having achieved so many of them during the past 75 years. The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less. It is composed not of allied groups in pursuit of the same general principles but warring groups vying for money, power, a louder voice, the elevation of their particular cause.

The one thing they agree on, that holds them together and finances their elections, is abortion. The abortion-rights movement packs huge clout in the party; it can make or break a candidacy with contributions and labor and support. It has such clout that at the 1992 Democratic convention the party wouldn’t even let Gov. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, a popular liberal from a state with 23 electoral votes, give an afternoon speech. He was officially a nonperson at his party’s convention because he was pro-life. The Republicans, on the other hand, still have arguments over abortion. Whether pro- or anti-, it is understood you are not banned from a convention podium on that basis. The Republicans can still have a conversation, albeit with occasionally loud voices. But better a loud voice than no voice at all.

Democratic officeholders either agree with and fear the clout of the abortion-rights groups or disagree with and fear them. So the pro-abortion forces keep the party together, but they also tie it down. They keep the Democratic Party on the defensive—the lockstep pro-abortion party that won’t even back parental notification, the party of unbending orthodoxy that will fight tooth and nail against banning abortions on babies eight months old, babies who look and seem and act exactly like human beings because they are.

No party can long endure, or could possibly flourish, with the unfettered killing of young humans as the thing that holds it together. And so a prediction on this grim anniversary: Someday years from now we will see abortion’s final victim, and it will turn out to be the once-great Democratic Party, which was left at the end deformed, bloody and desperately trying to kick away from death, but unable to save itself.

In 1988 Roger Ailes, then an advisor to Vice President George Bush in his presidential campaign, watched a television debate among the Democratic candidates and said of eventual nominee Michael Dukakis: “He looks like a guy thinking about what he’s going to have for dinner.” He didn’t mean Mr. Dukakis looked hungry, but preoccupied. His mind was someplace else. Maybe it was. He has a good mind and it probably goes to some interesting places.

I have been thinking about what Roger said because I’ve been thinking about the Democrats’ announced contenders for the 2004 presidential race. Leaving such crucial questions as political philosophy aside, candidates always bring a certain personal vibe to the proceedings when they walk into the room. Richard Nixon, whatever his politics were or were not, seemed shifty, LBJ oily.

And so, a look at the 2004 Dems and the vibes they bring:

Howard Dean, physician and former governor of Vermont, seems as bantamy and pugnacious as John McCain, and is proud of his outsider status. Dr. Dean gives off an interesting attitude. It’s as if he thinks his inside-the-Beltway competitors are a bunch of hicks. They’re not sophisticated and knowledgeable like someone who works in America. He brings two questions with him: Will America think a liberal-left Vermonter is an American? Or will they think him a kind of interesting shrub that grows in the East? Also: Will primary voters see him as Martin Sheen playing president Bartlet, or will they only think Dean thinks Dean is Sheen?

Joe Lieberman gives off a kind of canny happiness. He’s a happy guy, and shrewd too. He thinks he’d be a good president because he’s a good guy. It’s not about putting forward a philosophy or advancing an agenda, it’s about Joe is a good man and your president should be a good man. As well he should. You can’t go for the presidency unless you have a solid, steely ego, but you wonder if President Lieberman’s ego would spill over and create a private pool in which he swims laps in his own private world. Would the historical meaning of a Lieberman presidency be: Am I fabulous or what?

John Kerry brings the weight of experience and knowledge. Almost every member of his freshman Senate class has run for president, a fact he mentions. He wears his experience as if it were not a suit or a shield but a kind of gravity that hovers around his head, forcing his face and shoulders down. He brings his gravity with him; it changes the atmosphere around him. You imagine that in the balloon drop the balloons would come down fast and hard and obscure him at the podium.

John Edwards doesn’t bring gravity. He seems light, smooth and amiable. He has no crags. He seems untouched by life, as a bright boomer lawyer would. But he hasn’t been untouched; he’s known tragedy, the death in a car accident of his teenage son. And yet he has the smooth, unruffled exterior and the bright eyes. In the upcoming primary season, when he sits on the set with Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw, we’ll watch and wonder: Which one’s the anchorman? And we’ll think: Oh, it’s Tom, or Peter, it’s the older guy with the gravitas.

Dick Gephardt gives off a vibe of tired niceness. He is nice; it’s part of who he is and part what he does. But he’s tired of Congress. He long wanted to be speaker, and he realized that likely wouldn’t happen for years, and minority leadership is full of less-interesting headaches. He figured he had two choices. He could run for president again and see how it goes—he could win, he’s got the unions, Bush could tank—or he could join boards and write a book and do consulting and finally get some money. The first path doesn’t preclude the second, but the second would seem to preclude the first. So first path first. This will be his last throwing of the political dice. He could surprise everyone by being . . . surprising. I think he will not dye his eyebrows, and I think he’s already got writers trolling for self-deprecating jokes: When Bush said that of course I raised my eyebrows, but unfortunately he couldn’t tell.

Former senator Gary Hart is talking about getting in, and so is Al Sharpton. Mr. Hart is interesting, intellectual and independent. He carries on his back a question: Has he mellowed much? Has he gotten more strange or less? When you hear him speak, you wonder less about his brain and the extent to which it is engaged with a discernible philosophy, than about what seems his spiky personal oddness. He spoke of his time in the political cold the other day by comparing himself to Churchill. You wonder if there isn’t an inner grandiose vision of himself that leaves him hungry to re-enter the fray and implacably bitter that he’s been left out so long. He says he’ll decide in the spring. But he’s going to Iowa late this month and will begin to decide there. Whatever he does his party should let him back in the fold: He is a resource, he knows a lot.

As for Mr. Sharpton, he’s running not for president but for Party Powerbroker Who Must Not Be Ignored. He wants to be the candidate of black America, but Donna Brazile’s clever plan to run local black officeholders in primaries in which Sharpton runs could turn his candidacy into a joke. He might be tough, though, for his competitors to get a handle on in debates.

*   *   *

Some pundits have been wondering if the Democrats should be called “The Seven Dwarfs” or “The Six Pack” or whatever. That seems silly. They’re a gaggle of guys who have each decided to move for the presidency for the usual mix of reasons. They’re not dwarfs and they’re not indistinguishable bottles of beer.

What is more interesting is why the Democratic field is already so big, seven likely to go for the presidency this early on. There are practical reasons: If you’re going to run you have to get your money lines up and operating; you can’t let the rich contributors of the party get picked off while you try to decide what you want. And as Dick Morris notes, the first two primaries aren’t in 2004 but in ’03, so early ’03 announcements are reasonable.

As for the fairly high number of Democratic contenders, I have a hunch.

In one sense they are vying to run against a president who’s popular and well regarded, who bonded with a good portion of the American people more deeply and more quickly than most presidents are able to, who’s buoyed at the moment by history’s high seas, and proceeding on his domestic agenda with boldness. You would think not a lot of politicians would be so eager to get in the game. But they are.

The reason: The Democrats as an institutional party were late to learn the lesson of 1992, but having finally learned it they’re remembering it perhaps too well and applying it perhaps too broadly.

The lesson of 1992 was: History can turn on a dime. There’s no sure thing. A guy with 90% popularity can lose 50 points in a year.

Why were they late, back then, to learn this? Because in 1992 the Democrats were mesmerized. They were snake-bit. They never understood Ronald Reagan’s appeal, or the first President Bush’s, and they simply didn’t understand why Americans chose them in landslides. The Democrats did not expect Reagan to win in 1980 against an incumbent. He won in a landslide. He won a second landslide four years later. They knew they could at least pick off Mr. Bush in 1988 because he was a lousy campaigner and seemed weak. It was time for a change, and Mike Dukakis was a decent sober governor. And Mr. Bush won in ’88 in another landslide. By 1991 he was polling at 90%.

So 1992 comes and the Democrats have learned: This is a Republican era, we can’t win right now. So a handful of Democrats got in the 1992 fight, not heavyweights like Mario Cuomo but less-known figures like Bill Clinton. The morning he woke up as president-elect, he and his wife looked at each other and started to laugh. Who knew? They didn’t get into it thinking it would work, that’s news that only came to them at the end of the campaign.

A lot of Republicans on the ground were also shocked. They too had learned that the 1980s and now ’90s were a Republican era and that’s that. A dimwitted triumphalism had set in, stretching from the Republican National Committee in Washington on out to the neighborhood barbecue. But the most sophisticated in the party knew it was over well before voting day in ’92. They knew what was coming.

I think the Democrats as a party are still somewhat transfixed by the lesson of 1992. And they’re waiting for history to turn on a dime. They don’t think George W. Bush is a fool anymore, but they don’t think that highly of him. And they know history can turn on a dime, and they know that Bushes ride high and fall far, like cowboys who stand tall in the saddle on the tallest horse and then lose their balance and fall hard.

*   *   *

But George W. Bush also thinks a lot about ’92. He saw what happened to his father up close and personal. And he knows part of the message of 1992 is that history can turn on a dime.

But he thinks there are other lessons of ’92. He thinks history turns for a reason. He thinks not only bad luck but bad decisions and bad operations force history to turn. And he thinks none of that in any case is the Ur Lesson of 1992. To Bush the Ur Lesson of 1992 is: History does not necessarily repeat itself.

Two thousand four is not necessarily 1992; not all Bushes fall hard; new forces and facts yield new outcomes. History is more likely to repeat itself when you ask it to, when you unknowingly push it in certain directions, when you summon bad fortune. He doesn’t intend to.

He thinks the Democrats haven’t fully absorbed the Ur Lesson. He thinks however, that they’ll discover it. And he thinks what they learn may someday be called the lesson of ’04.

I thought I’d start the year with some thoughts on George W. Bush, for he soon reaches his two-year mark as president, and we have learned some things about him. Some people I love, mostly Democrats but some Republicans, have taken to asking: Why do people like Bush? They know the obvious reasons—9/11, an administration suddenly given serious purpose, a president who seemed to wobble a bit like everyone else the first hours and quickly collected himself like most everyone else.

The whole world was watching, and America was watching with keen concentration, when he did his best work: his visit to ground zero and “I can hear you; the world hears you”; his Oval Office interview a few days after the attack when he said, “I am a loving man, but I have a job to do”; his speech to Congress in which he described the nature of the menace we face and spoke of American resolve; his spectacular live question-and-answer session with children when Vladimir Putin was meeting with him in Texas, in which both took questions from kids and Mr. Bush’s humanity shined through; and a host of other public moments. The boy done good.

But there are intangibles that I suspect are part of the story. Everyone seems to know he’s a religious man, and the people of this religious country approve and relate. Everyone can see he’s close to his family, and people like that too; it’s what they all hope they have or could have, though many do not. But a close family is the American ideal, and people unconsciously feel greater respect for those lucky enough, blessed enough, to have it. Mr. Bush also seems slightly afraid of his children. I don’t know why exactly I say that; I’ve never seen them together in person and can’t back it up, and yet I sense it’s true. One feels the presence of love, perplexity, guilt and hope there, and the slight detachment those heavy emotions can bring. If I’m right this would be in line with Mr. Bush’s long years of heavy drinking, and the damage that can occur in families with an alcoholic in charge. I have a hunch the American people sense what I sense, and that it may bond them closer to Mr. Bush, too. We all have our troubles; we’ve all messed up; we’re all trying; and a lot of us, maybe most of us, have effortful relationships with our kids.

I guess I’m saying the American people sense Mr. Bush’s humanity. But what they don’t get to sense—and I think this is a major though not consciously thought out part of Mr. Bush’s popularity—is his mess.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush doesn’t bring his dramas and mess with him. He doesn’t bring a sack of dysfunction on his back when he enters a room. He keeps his woes, his emotions, his private life to himself. An example of what I’m getting at. He recently fired his Treasury secretary and his chief economic adviser. He wasn’t happy with them; he wanted someone else; they didn’t leave; he fired them. Boom. Next. If he feels personal bitterness, anger, or arrogance toward them, we don’t know.

This is wonderful. If it had been LBJ or Richard Nixon firing Paul O’Neill, we’d all still be talking about the personal elements in the marriage gone bad. Or we’d be talking about whether “the boss is in love” with someone else, as Nixon’s old hands used to say when Nixon became enthralled with the thinking of someone. Sometimes he fell in love with this intellectual, sometimes he soured on that adviser. He fell in love with Pat Moynihan, and John Connally. And then the love died. It was a regular “Peyton Place” in that White House. And Bill Clinton’s White House was, it hardly needs be said, another hothouse, though of a different kind.

But with Mr. Bush things aren’t a big emotional drama. He seems stable. This is a relief. You get the impression he’s like what he of course was, a businessman. When things work, good; when they don’t, change. It’s not personal. It doesn’t have to be messy. It’s not Shakespearean.

Which is good. The world is quite dramatic enough. It’s good especially at this time to be led not by the emotionally labile but the grounded and sturdy. They can see Mr. Bush is grounded. They’re glad.

*   *   *

I have a theory that liberals and leftists prefer their leaders complicated, and conservatives prefer their leaders uncomplicated. I think the left expects a good leader to have an exotic or intricate personality or character. (A whole generation of liberal journalists grew up reading Jack Newfield and Pete Hamill on Bobby Kennedy’s sense of tragedy, Murray Kempton on the bizarreness that was LBJ, and a host of books with names like “Nixon Agonistes” and “RFK at Forty,” and went into journalism waiting for the complicated politicians of their era to emerge. They are, that is, pro-complication because their ambition to do great work like the great journalists of the 1960s seems to demand the presence of complicated political figures.)

Liberals like their leaders interesting. I always think this may be because some of them have not been able to fully engage the idea of a God, and tend to fill that hole in themselves with politics and its concerns. If the world of government and politics becomes your god, and yields a supergod called a president, you want that god to be interesting.

Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t look for god in government, for part of being a conservative is holding the conviction that there is no god in government. They like complicated personalities in their TV shows and from actors and opera singers, but they want steadiness and a vision they can agree with from their presidents. Actually I think conservatives want their presidents the way they want their art: somewhere in the normal range. They don’t like cow’s heads suspended in formaldehyde and don’t understand that as high art; by 1998 they thought Bill Clinton was the political version of a cow’s head in formaldehyde, and they didn’t like that either.

And so my liberal friends say: Why do people like Mr. Bush? And they want an interesting answer. But I do think part of the answer is: Because he’s not complicated and perhaps not even especially interesting as a person. We just love that.

At the end of each year I think about what I’ve learned or come to look at in a new way. In 2002 I sometimes mused on the following: Everyone says money can’t buy love, but I’m not sure that’s precisely true. Say a 43-year-old woman who’s been working for years and is starting to feel anxious about the future, who’s gotten tired of the dating grind and tired in general, meets a man who’s worth $250 million. He’s twice her age, rather homely and rather boring. In time he asks her to marry him. She says yes. Society immediately understands the situation: She’s doing it for the money. And in truth she’s going to like feeling secure, and she’s going to like feeling like a victor after a long race. Society isn’t wrong in its judgment. But maybe she isn’t wrong when she tells her friends: “I love him.” Because people have a way of loving what they need.

You’ll see a couple like this walking along a city avenue, laughing with each other when there’s no one looking. They seem to take pleasure in each other’s company. As time passes and the husband gets sick, the wife will care for him with great attentiveness and stay home with him and watch television. She’ll be loving. As if she’s in love. Which she is. Because when you’ve been in jeopardy and then you are saved, you have a way of transferring your love from the savior’s money to the to the money-bringer himself. You don’t want to think you married for money and you don’t want the world to think so either. You want to think you did it for love, and that you simply lucked out materially in the bargain. And in time love is what you feel. Because people have a way of loving what they need.

*   *   *

Here’s something I thought of in a new way. It will sound stupid because it’s so obvious, but sometimes the obvious redefines itself for you. It starts with a thought: Most of the human beings on earth spend most of their short time here in a way that is dictated by money. This is not true of everyone, but so many of us are doing with our days things that are different, sometimes radically so, from what we’d like to be doing. You’re a banker who wants to be a horse breeder, or a toll collector who wants to act, or you’re a teacher who really wants to paint, but you’re doing what you do because that is the job the world will pay you to do. And it takes money to live.

Here’s the thought that came to me in a new way. When you think about this, you realize that people are so gallant to accept what is and not become bitter or enraged; and so many are kind and humorous and cheerful in spite of the tyranny of money, the bane of life on earth. We are surrounded by the heroic cheerfulness of the average person. It is all around us. We’re not moved enough by it.

*   *   *

This is something I thought about a lot and feel I may possibly have figured out. It’s not an obvious thought and may be a somewhat mystical one. Here goes. Let us posit that God made man. But why would he give us bodies that have brains that turn forgetful in old age, so that the old are often unable to summon a name or a movie title, or exactly what happened at that party five years ago, or the particulars of a childhood incident, the kind you remember all your life? Your ability to remember thins out; it’s not so vivid anymore. Why would God make us so that with age we’re less responsive to the world, less able to summon its events?

I think this: Maybe he did it this way because he knew us, knew what happens in life, knew that in old age you lose loved ones, dear friends and close family. And so he makes your brain less vivid and responsive and clear so you can better withstand loss. He makes people less themselves so they can live through losing those who were central to their lives. Actually, let me modify that a little. The old may forget exactly who loved them and exactly how hard, but they never forget what love was. Or so it has seemed to me.

*   *   *

All of us learned or were reminded the past year that big institutions can change. Because they’re big they turn like giant ocean liners, slowly, but they can turn in a new direction. Last year at roughly this time many of our major institutions were rocking with scandal. They were revealed as unstable incompetent, corrupt. The FBI’s institutional incompetence to thwart or hinder 9/11; ditto the CIA; Wall Street movers and CEOs doing the perp walk; Enron and Global Crossing; the Catholic church as a haven for child molesters. A leader of the U.S. Senate spoke as if the old code words were gold words. What a disheartening mess. And yet just in the past month Cardinal Bernard Law has fallen in Boston, Trent Lott has fallen in the Senate, and Time magazine picked as “persons of the year” the whitsleblowers of the FBI, Enron and WorldCom. And Wall Street is working on a new and solid code of ethics.

One feels a cleansing has begun. The downfall of Cardinal Law means the old way of covering up for bad priests is over and done; the downfall of Sen. Lott told the rising and present generations of American officeholders that if you speak the code of yesterday you’re over. The raising up of the whistleblowers means we are officially celebrating the rise of honest people who will take a terrible risk to tell the truth. This is wonderful. (Your basic conflict of interest disclosure: I’m a contributing editor of Time. To demonstrate dispassion I’ll note that the least helpful, least thoughtful piece written during the Lott affair was Time columnist Jack E. White’s spiteful and unmeasured blast at those unrelentingly evil conservatives. Thanks Jack! It’s good you brought heat and not light to the topic because it’s cold out and we can be warmed by your words.)

*   *   *

I was reminded again this year that people do what they know how to do. A lot of people tend to go to their default setting when faced with any given challenge. Your default position grows out of who you are and how you think. If your default position on being treated rudely by clerks is patience and mercy you’ll likely go to default patience today if a clerk is rude to you.

But people can change, and the changes within them can produce new default settings. One of the things that can change a person is consistent good fortune, persistent admiration, a luckiness that lasts. I thought Hillary Clinton would change somewhat in the Senate; I thought her rise would soften her elbows. Why not? Not thinking you have to elbow your way past others can leave your elbows nice, soft and unused. Mrs. Clinton has clearly been trying to show an attractive and easygoing face to the world the past two years, and she’s done well. So I thought good fortune—she is an acknowledged leader of her party, a likely future presidential candidate—had moderated her. But when the Lott story ended happily she was furious, and reverted to her default position on Republicans. Which is an intense and in my view destructive antipathy for the whole lousy bunch. She said: “If anyone think that one person stepping down from a leadership position cleanses the Republican Party of their constant exploitation of race, then I think you’re naive.”

God bless her amazing consistency. This is a woman whose emotional default settings have not changed and will, I suspect, never change. People do what they know how to do. She knew when the Republican Party definitively rose up against race mongering it was time to get a hate on.

*   *   *

I found that believers and nonbelievers can still have friendly debates on the issue of religion. And those debates can be both deeply felt and helpful. Last week I got an e-mail from a close friend who is both intellectual and agnostic. He wanted to share some thoughts he’d had while watching the recent PBS documentary “The Face of Jesus.” He wrote:

It was an extremely interesting look at the various depictions of Jesus, from what seems to be the first depiction of him, in 290 CE, when he was a Hercules lookalike—beardless, with a lamb over his shoulders—didn’t Hercules always have a lamb? Or was it a stag? I can’t remember, but in any case, it was definitely a herbivorous animal. Jesus’s beard, in Christian representation, came later, in the 5th century. . . . But to bolster, in an anthropological way, the argument that iconism undercuts faith, the mere fact that Jesus has changed so much over the centuries must call into question, at least in the minds of some, exactly who it is that they are worshiping.

That, of course, has been the fate of Christianity for the past century and a half. The so-called “Higher Criticism” of the 19th century, centered in Germany and then flowing to France, where Ernest Renan’s “Life of Jesus” (1861), which ended with the famous words—“When religions respond to the aspirations of the heart at the expense of the protestations of reason, they in their turn by slow degrees, crumble away, for no force in the world can permanently succeed in stifling reason”—made mincemeat of the Bible as literal history.

There was much to respond to. This “CE” stuff for instance strikes me as equal parts prissy and aggressive. I was interested that my friend, who is quite brilliant, did not know that worshipping Christ does not detract from worshipping the Almighty—God—for the reason that Christians believe Christ is God; he is one of the Holy Trinity that comprise God. But I wanted most to talk to my friend about his statements on the changing face of Jesus in art, and its implications, if any.

I told him that Christians are not disturbed that Christ is depicted in different ways, as light-haired in this painting and dark-haired in that. There were no cameras in Galilee, and Christ is not physically described in the bible. As Pete Hamill observed on Jonathan Schwarz’s Christmas radio show last Sunday, “Leonardo was not at the Last Supper.” You do a lot of guessing when you imagine what something that happened years ago was like.

I told my friend that many Christians feel being able to imagine is a real blessing. If we knew Christ was 6-foot-2, pale, brown-eyed and portly, people who are somewhat primitive might unhelpfully favor people who look like that, and discriminate against people who are swarthy, blue-eyed, and thin. The nonprimitive might unconsciously do the same. More important, not knowing what Christ looks like makes his universality easier. It allows all of us who believe in him to “see” him in different ways. Maybe like us. Maybe that’s not bad.

My friend reacted the way intellectuals who are given surprising information react. He changed the subject. He told me what really interested him was how reason collides with faith, that deep and skeptical intellectual inquiry is faith’s enemy. I said I don’t see it that way, that God gave us brains so we could use them, and that if Christianity is true then diligent inquiry can only help you get to it.

*   *   *

But I told him also that his comments on Jesus’ face had reminded me of an old Christmas song that is lovely. In the version I have it is sung by the crystal clean voice of the late Nancy Lamott, who died of cancer seven years ago this month at 43. I found the CD. The song is written by Alfred Burt, the lyrics by Wihla Huston.

The tune is tender and slow, like the words of a bright child who’s thinking:

Some children see him Lily white,
The baby Jesus born this night,
Some children see him lily white,
With tresses soft and fair.

Some children see him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heaven to earth come down,
Some children see him bronzed and brown,
With dark and heavy hair.

Some children see him almond eyed,
The savior whom we kneel beside,
Some children see him almond eyed,
With skin of yellow hue.

Some children see him dark as they,
Sweet Mary’s son to whom we pray,
Some children see him dark as they,
And ah, they love him too.

The children in each different place
Will see the baby Jesus’ face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace
And filled with holy light.

Oh lay aside each earthly thing,
And with thy heart as offering,
Come worship now the infant King
’Tis love that’s born tonight.

‘Tis love that’s born tonight. And love of course has no color, no ethnicity; sees no division, heals and makes whole. We seem to be in a time of healing and reconstruction. The year that began with our institutions revealed as sullied and unhealthy ends with cleansing and rebuilding. How did this happen? Good people rose. They went forward touched by that most constructive thing, the truth. And maybe by other things. Maybe by love.

Merry Christmas from the author of this column, who feels it for her readers.