Peggy Noonan

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.

Trent Lott’s position in the Senate is deeply eroded, more than has been made public. His most vocal Senate defenders have one by one privately decided he must go. They want him to step down but have no reason at this point to think he will. They do not want the drama to continue until they meet to vote on his fate on Jan. 6. And some are fearful that Mr. Lott will squeak through that vote, which will have many unfortunate implications, for the party’s future and for his ability to lead. Even if he manages to cobble together 26 votes, his 51-member caucus will have been deeply divided.

Mr. Lott at this point seems to be on automatic pilot, doing what politicians do when they’re fighting for their lives: pressing for support automatically and almost unthinkingly, speaking to the media, making his case. He’s in shock. His shock is understandable. It would have been good if he had resigned this week. Maybe he will over the holidays. But it would be best for the Republican Party—and the country—if Republican senators were utterly brutal and moved to fire him before then. This would be a Christmas present to the country: Jim Crow’s long, gasping death is finally over. If they do not move before Jan. 6 they certainly must fire him as leader on that date. And when they do they should read a brief statement explaining what they did and why they did it. And then they should speak no more, and go back to work.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton brought his special brand of crinkly-eyed malice to the story Wednesday, telling CNN that the growing opposition to Mr. Lott within the GOP is “hypocritical” because, after all, Republicans are racists anyway. Or rather, “I think what they are really upset about is that he made public their strategy.” And “he just embarrassed them by saying in Washington what they do on the back roads every day.” This from the man who gave that old segregationist J. William Fulbright the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

You could almost see Mr. Clinton’s mind whirling as Jonathan Karl interviewed him. Hmm, I could be high-minded and speak thoughtfully during what amounts to a public crisis, or I can play gut-ball politics and slam the enemy. No contest. Way to go, Bill, and happy holidays from a grateful nation.

Others will refute Mr. Clinton’s charges. I’m going to do a Lott question-and-answer, because I sense the story is becoming confused, with good people trying to do and think the right thing and tearing their hair out over what is fair and integritous. (Integritous is a word made up by a kid I know. It means just what it sounds like, full of integrity. It is a great word, so I’m going to try to popularize it.)

*   *   *

Q: Why should an unfortunate remark be enough to cost Mr. Lott his job?

A: Because it’s 2002. Because America began its modern civil rights movement 50 years ago, and at some point we as a people have to be able to declare, in truth and comfort, that this good movement has reached its maturity. The half-century mark would seem a good time. You know the movement has reached full maturity and won over a nation when none of that nation’s leaders feel free to speak, consciously or unconsciously, the language of racial antagonism. When one does, he should be replaced.

There are other reasons.

It is a mistake to underestimate the degree to which some black Americans fear they may find themselves at the mercy of the forces that used to keep them down. People internalize memories and absorb the vibes of history. Margaret Thatcher told me a few years ago that one of the things she’d become deeply aware of while in power is how fearful so many people feel in their daily lives, that insecurity itself is a great force in modern life. I was struck by this. I’d never heard a political figure speak so thoughtfully about the varieties of human experience, and I also thought she was right, and I was startled that it was Mrs. Thatcher saying it. She wasn’t famous for sensitivity.

But many people are fearful, deep down, that some old bad day will return. There are American Jews who fear pogroms will someday come to this country. You may think that surprising, but they have reason to feel as they do: The Holocaust took place in their lifetimes, or killed their family, or scarred the lives of their loved ones.

In the same way there are blacks in America who fear, deep down, that the whites of America do not accept them truly, will never accept them fully, would move against them if possible and, at the very least, often deride them behind their backs. Do you find that surprising? I don’t. I think it’s sad and human and understandable. It’s what happens when people have been enslaved.

One of the great patriotic emotions of our time, it seems to me, is to be eager that everyone in our country come to feel as secure and respected as everyone else. Part of that—just a small part but a meaningful one—means no speaking in racial code words by political, cultural or religious leaders. Period. Or anyone else if that’s possible.

I believe that Trent Lott spoke at the Thurmond birthday party in racial code words. And a man who does that should not, half a century into the modern movements for civil rights, be allowed to continue as the face of a major political party in politics.

Q: But come on—Democrat Robert Byrd went on Fox and actually said some people are “white niggers,” and he’s still in the Senate. Jesse Jackson called New York “Hymietown,” and they still call him a leader. Mike Wallace made fun of Mexicans and blacks and he’s still on “60 Minutes.” Mr. Lott’s getting a raw deal.

A: If you compare him with others maybe he is, but why compare him with others? Trent Lott is the majority leader of the Senate. That’s big. Jesse Jackson is a freelance fraud, he’s not a leader, he’s not a holder of high office in a great democracy. Bobby Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who was once a member of the KKK (Tip O’Neill is said to have had a private nickname for him, “Sheets”), is not a leader either; he’s a weird throwback. And Mike Wallace doesn’t represent the United States; he represents Mike Wallace’s ambition.

Q: But Mr. Lott apologized. Isn’t that worth something?

A: Yes. A lot, actually.

Q: Don’t you think he’s really sorry for what he said?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you think he’s more sincere because he got caught?

A: Yes. We’re all more sincere when we get caught.

Q: Well, if he apologized and you think he’s sincere, isn’t that enough?

A: No. Look, to be human is to feel sympathy for the guy at the bottom of the pile-on. Mr. Lott is going through a special kind of torture, the torture of the modern media age, which entails humiliation in front of an entire nation. In front of the world. So I feel sympathy, and I’m not kidding. But he should step down as a congressional leader of a great party, recede deeper into the woodwork of the Senate, and accept the price we all pay one way or another, in public or in private, when we do something destructive.

Q: Is this story about other things, though? Isn’t some of it about Mr. Lott being an ineffective leader, so people are moving against him because they want a change of leadership anyway?

A: In some cases that’s probably true. People often have mixed motives. It’s hard to know someone else’s motives; it can be hard to fully know your own. But in general I don’t think this is about Mr. Lott’s flaws or virtues as a leader, I think it’s about America and race and what it is acceptable to say.

Q: But isn’t there a double standard here? Democrats get slapped on the wrist for using racial and religious epithets, but Republicans lose their jobs over it. It’s not fair.

A: Maybe it isn’t fair, but think of it this way: The history of the Republican Party on race is mixed. Yes, that’s true of the Democrats too, but Democrats are perceived today as sympathetic to the movements for freedom that have marked the past century, and Republicans are not. This has some implications. It means Republicans have to go out of our way to show that our hearts are in the right place. But there’s another thing that is even more important. If we are tougher on ourselves, maybe that’s good. Why shouldn’t we be tougher on ourselves?

If the Democrats all too often treat race as if it were a card to be played in a game, and if the Republicans in contrast attempt to struggle through the issue and be serious and go out of their way to expunge the last vestiges of the old racial ways, isn’t that something we should be proud of? History is watching. It will know what we did. What will history think if it sees a new seriousness on race from the Republican Party? I think it will say: Good. And I think that matters.

Q: But won’t this just hand another win to the Democrats?

A: That’s not the most important thing; that’s not a high consideration. To many Democrats, this is a just an inside-Washington political story; it’s all gut-ball politics, and by seeking political opportunity in the Republicans’ dilemma they’re revealing a stunning insensitivity to those Americans who felt hurt and angered by Mr. Lott’s comments.

There’s no reason Republicans should treat it as a game; there’s no reason the standards of conservatives should be as elastic as those of the left. Partisan Democrats have figured out that keeping Trent Lott as majority leader would be a major coup for them. Every time Mr. Lott stands to speak for his party he’ll have an invisible bubble over his head that says “Remembers Segregation Fondly.” Even better, Mr. Lott, in his Black Entertainment Television interview, more or less announced that to prove he’s not a racist he’ll support legislation that is at odds with conservative thinking, such as supporting affirmative action. As Andrew Sullivan said, this is the worst of two worlds in which Mr. Lott leaves the old racism to embrace the new racism.

Q: Why are you conservative pundit-writer-chatterer types so passionate about this?

A: Lots of reasons. One is that we’re tired of being embarrassed by people who aren’t sensitive to the reality of race in America. We’re tired of being humiliated by politicians who otherwise see many things as we do but who seem to have an inability to be constructive and understanding about race. We’re tired to being associated with hate mongering. We care about our country, and we think patriotism demands a constructive attitude in this big area.

Some of us have put our reputations in jeopardy by supporting programs like the school liberation movement because we want to help people who don’t have much and need a break. Or we’ve put ourselves in jeopardy by opposing racial preferences, or any number of other programs, for the very reason that we believe completely in our hearts and minds that all races are equal and no one should be judged by the color of his skin. And then some guy comes along and speaks the old code of yesteryear and seems to reinforce the idea that those who hold conservative positions are really, at heart, racist. We are indignant, and we have been for a long time.

In the Lott scandal our indignation reached critical mass. A lot of conservatives, many of them 50 and under, decided enough is enough, let’s end this, let a new party be born. And by the way, in the particular case of Trent Lott, it didn’t start yesterday. Stanley Crouch just surprised me by sending me a column he wrote almost four years ago for the New York Daily News. It was about a Lott appearance before the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white-supremacist group. I said it was springtime and it’s time to throw out the garbage, and Mr. Lott should go. Go to the archives of conservative journals and see what they’ve been writing and thinking for a long time about race. This is a good time to get real conservative thinking out there and known for what it is.

Q: What do you think Mr. Lott should do after he steps down, or is pushed out by Republican senators?

A: I think he should rewrite the first paragraph of his obituary every day of his life by speaking about the American dilemma as a Southern white man of the 20th century. He should begin his speeches with, “My name is Trent Lott, and I used to be majority leader of the Senate. Let me tell you how I lost my job.” Then he should speak with candor about what he knows and has seen of race in America. Q&A to follow. This could be a real contribution to our country.

After his huge scandal, John Profumo, England’s former secretary of state for war, did something like this. He devoted his life to doing good. And to anyone who was watching, he died a great man.

People approach the Trent Lott story in political terms. Does it hurt the Republican Party? Do the Democrats get more out of the scandal if they successfully campaign for Mr. Lott’s departure, or do they gain more if he continues as GOP leader, functioning as a handy daily symbol of the racism that resides in the secret heart of all conservatives? What did President Bush’s comments mean? And by the way, why isn’t the New York Times flooding the zone?

These questions can be quickly addressed. First, of course the Republican Party is damaged by having as one of its leaders a man who, half a century after Jim Crow’s long death began, makes statements that can be construed as meaning segregation was better than its demise.

Second, the Democrats get more out of the scandal if Mr. Lott stays on; every time he gets up to speak, he solidifies their base. Though it is true, as Rush Limbaugh has pointed out, that the Democrats can hardly get a higher percentage of the black vote, and their continued fixation on interest group politics keeps them playing the politics of yesterday.

Third, Mr. Bush hit Mr. Lott hard, saying “any suggestion that a segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive.” And then, after pausing to allow sustained applause, he went onto say, “Recent comments by Sen. Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country.” Why did Mr. Bush do that? Because he wants to separate himself and his party from Mr. Lott and his mouth. Normally Republicans rally around when they think one of their own is being unfairly smeared. Mr. Bush was saying Mr. Lott isn’t being unfairly smeared. This is big—presidents don’t publicly knock their party’s congressional leaders—and suggests the White House is pondering the GOP’s deep Senate bench, and how Mitch McConnell, Bill Frist or anyone but John McCain might be an improvement.

And finally, the New York Times isn’t flooding the zone—yet—because they are familiar with the old wisdom that one should never interfere with one’s enemy while he is destroying himself.

*   *   *

It is hard to believe that Trent Lott meant to suggest that segregation was OK. It’s hard to believe any modern American would think that. But he left his remarks open to that interpretation. Why would a politician leave his remarks open to such a reading? Maybe it was an unthinking mistake, which would be unfortunate in its own way. But maybe it was the kind of thinking mistake politicians sometimes make.

A politician will stand and address a crowd and suggest something without quite saying it. He’ll leave some words out of a sentence, as if by accident, or as if he’s being casual because he’s surrounded by close friends. Or he won’t be completely specific. He’ll fade out with an ellipsis instead of completing a sentence, which leaves different members of an audience able to think that they’re on his true wavelength and infer his real meaning. Different politicians at different times use this form for different reasons.

Way back in the 1950s and ‘70s and even ‘80s some Southern politicians of Mr. Lott’s generation—in both parties—employed the “thinking mistake” to talk about race. So when Mr. Lott the other day emphatically but nonspecifically declared that if Strom Thurmond had been elected president, “we wouldn’t have a lot of the problems we’ve had,” a lot of people, including me, wondered if he were not making a thinking mistake.

If he was, how creepy. (A childish word and insufficient, but not a bad beginning.) To whom did Mr. Lott think he was communicating? Did he think the Capitol Hill staffers and friends who attended Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party were racists who pined for the old days of separate but equal? Why would he think that? In the press accounts I read, Mr. Lott’s statements about what a grand old fellow Strom is were cheered, understandably. It was his birthday and he’s done some good things, such as being strong on the national defense throughout his career. But when Mr. Lott made the reference to a hypothetical Thurmond presidency, an uncomfortable silence swept the room. That was understandable too. Because when Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 he ran explicitly as a segregationist who would attempt to stop the civil rights revolution. He never, ever should have been elected president of the United States. It is truly weird for a person who lives in our world, in the modern world, to say otherwise.

*   *   *

Sometimes I think we should get back to some basic truths when we talk about race and civil rights. Instead we talk past each other.

A lot of liberals harp on the subject of race, and they do it in a way that gives more attention to hatred for racists than love for equality. They can’t make or buy enough movies with names like “Ghosts of Mississippi,” which illustrate how terrible white people are, were and probably will be again if we don’t pass more laws. (White Southerners are and historically have been particularly demonized by liberals.)

The liberals’ sin is a mindless race obsession that keeps them from seeing clearly. But conservatives have a sin too. A lot of them become deaf when the subject is race. All their lives they’ve heard the long 40-year rap about how wicked America is, how hateful, and along the way they just stopped listening. Which left them unable to hear nuance, and slow, if you will, to hear the music of a great movement.

All this is part of the kabuki that happens when you take a great moral movement like civil rights and turn it, as it is inevitably turned, into a political movement. Sides get hardened and sides get stupid. It’s a little like the debate the past few years about obscene art. In that particular kabuki liberals get off on their faux courage, making believe it takes guts to create a painting of the Madonna smeared with feces. In the world we live in that takes no courage, and they know it. If they had guts they’d do a beautiful painting of the Madonna and accept the price: marginalization and dismissal by the art establishment. At the same time, conservatives in these battles get off on faux outrage. They stand up, shake their fists and say they’re outraged that someone would desecrate the Madonna. And some are. But some in their hearts know it’s all nonsense that means nothing, and what they really feel is delight that the left has once again done something ugly and stupid, and in public.

*   *   *

But apart from posturing there’s a real story in where we are and where we have been in terms of civil rights in America.

There was an old American institution whereby people were judged by, and the facts of their lives were arranged around, what race they were born into. “If you’re white you’re right, if you’re black step back.” It lasted for hundreds of years. Its most vicious expression was slavery, and its less vicious forms continued for roughly a hundred years after slavery was ended, by war.

We’re talking “separate but equal”; we’re talking about the embarrassment and shame of a bad school for local black kids and a better school for local white kids. We’re talking about what nationally syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell referred to this week when he remembered being a soldier in the ‘50s. He lived in New York but was stationed down South. The bus he took to his base stopped at a gas station near Winston-Salem, N.C. He saw the bathroom marked for “Whites Only.” He walked around looking for the “Blacks Only” bathroom but he couldn’t find it. So he used the Whites Only men’s room. As it happens no one said anything, but he wondered why a man wearing the uniform of his country should have to go through something like that. It made him wonder what he was fighting for.

He was fighting for a nation that had a conscience to which an appeal could be made. And in spite of his forced march in pursuit of the Blacks Only bathroom, in spite of a thousand other humiliations he probably experienced and never speaks of, he became one of the great 20th-century appreciators of and defenders of this great nation and its freedoms.

It is very painful, our racial past. We made blacks and whites and all other colors equal in this country at great cost. A lot of feelings got hurt; a lot of people got hurt; a lot of people died. To pick only one of the millions of examples: Harold Ickes, the political operative who worked for Bill Clinton and now works for Hillary Clinton. I can’t imagine agreeing on too many political issues with Mr. Ickes, but back in the ‘60s he helped organize the Freedom Riders to desegregate the South. In Louisiana he got into a fight with some local bad guys. He was beaten so badly that he lost a kidney. He’s still walking around with only one kidney. He’s just a middle-aged white lawyer who’d pass you by on the street in a shirt and a tie, but in this respect, in terms of what he did 40 years ago, he is a hero. There were a lot of heroes in those days. It was all wrenching, but in the end we did the right thing.

And we’re proud of it, and should be. It’s cause for joy. And if you don’t know that, well, then let me play the ellipsis game . . .

*   *   *

If you think of where we are now, in 2002, with so much more equality and working together and living next door to each other and sending our kids to the same schools and Boy Scout meetings, if you don’t understand that . . .

And if you don’t get it that the only nations that will succeed in the future will be those nations whose citizens enjoy the maximum amount of personal and political and intellectual freedom, and that it’s good we’ve spent so much of the past half century trying to ensure the expansion of those freedoms . . .

And if you look at who protects us in our armed services, including all these young black kids who could be embittered, who could choose to believe that they don’t have a chance, who could be using the past as an excuse not to try for a future, and who instead are putting their lives on the line to protect white and black and yellow and red America . . .

If you are a political figure who hasn’t integrated all this into your brain and your heart . . .

Then maybe you should just . . .

*   *   *

And now let me translate. I’m saying Mr. Lott should step aside.