Peggy Noonan

Dear Karen Hughes,

The results are in, a consensus is forming, we want you onboard.

It appears we hit a nerve last week when we asserted that Homeland isn’t really an American sort of word but a European, or rather Teutonic, sort of word, and should be retired as the name of the government’s new antiterrorism agency. In the past year no one has wanted to make an issue of this when other things, such as whether terrorists planned to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, seemed more pressing. But if we wait for a perfect time to stop Homeland we’ll never do it. And it must be done, because words matter.

Last week I outlined the arguments against Homeland. Let me add two more. First, the essence of American patriotism is a felt and spoken love for and fidelity to the ideas and ideals our country represents and was invented to advance—freedom, equality, pluralism. “We hold these truths . . .” The word Homeland suggests another kind of patriotism—a vaguely European sort. “We have the best Alps, the most elegant language; we make the best cheese, had the bravest generals.” It summons images of men in spiked helmets lobbing pitchers of beer at outsiders during Oktoberfest.

When you say you love America, you’re not saying our mud is better than the other guy’s mud. And the name of the newest and most important agency in recent history, charged with the crucial task of thwarting terrorism and protecting our nation from weapons of mass destruction be they chemical, biological or nuclear, should reflect this.

Second, the Homeland Security Agency headed by Tom Ridge was not a conspicuous success, and was in fact nightly monologue fodder on Leno and Letterman. So it makes sense, as we create a new agency, to give it a new name. Homeland failed. Start over, make it new, change the title.

*   *   *

To what? The redoubtable Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles.com, shoulder to shoulder in this battle (even National Public Radio has joined us, making it either bipartisan, nonpartisan or multipartisan), has been collecting names. So have I. Brilliant readers of this column sent brilliant ideas. (I hope you looked at their letters. We got a lot. Almost none supported the use of Homeland.)

As you ready to leave Washington for Texas, Karen, please give the President and his advisers, as your parting gift, three or four of the following suggested names from the Kaus/Noonan list:

Department of Domestic Defense, or 3-D

Department of Domestic Security, or DDS

Department of Interior Security, DIS

Department of Federal Safety, DFS

Department of Civilian Security, DCS

Mainland Defense, MD

Department of Mainland Security, DMS

Federal Security and Intelligence, FSI

Department of American Protection, DAP

Homefront Security, HS

Department of Security, DS

Civil Security, CS

Department of Civil Defense, DCD

Any one of these would be an improvement on Homeland. As an NPR commentary said last week, “We do live in a world where real enemies mean us real harm. We do have to fight them. We have to defeat them. But in every battle we’ve fought and won our most powerful weapons have always been words. We ought to use the best ones we can find now, which means the ones that sound most like us.”

One cannot improve on such wisdom.

A final reason the administration should change the name. If the Republicans don’t do it the Democrats likely will. It is hard to imagine the literate and savvy Sen. Joseph Lieberman or the tactful and shrewd Sen. Diane Feinstein, both involved in congressional efforts to shape the new agency, being linguistically numb to the name of an agency whose creation will figure in their legacies.

They’ll change it. So beat ‘em to it.

My best to you. Go write a book on what it means to return to life.

Peggy

*   *   *

Now on to other elements in the issue of our physical security. One senses that slowly but hopefully surely, federal and state governments are finally moving forward on actions to make our people safer in the age of weapons of mass destruction. Your basic citizen, busy living his own life, is still inclined, amazingly enough, to think “the government” is taking care of business. But governments are run by politicians, and politicians respond to pressure. No pressure, no progress.

Here is an example of a political figure making progress. In New Jersey, Gov. Jim McGreevey has decided the state will distribute potassium iodide pills—that is, radiation-protection pills—to residents who live anywhere near a nuclear power plant. The pills will be free. They are being given to the state itself, appropriately so, by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If the pills are taken either just before or just after exposure to radiation they hinder the thyroid gland’s ability to absorb radioactive iodine.

This is good. A cheer for Gov. McGreevey. A cheer too, perhaps, for his focus groups. He may have consulted one or two; perhaps they made it clear that they do not disapprove of state leaders making decisions and announcements that are by their nature unpleasant and anxiety-inducing. As focus groups move, so moves the nation.

Here I will repeat what a Democratic official told me in the late 1990s when I asked him, in a private conversation, why Bill Clinton wasn’t moving to make civil defense and defense against terrorism a great issue of his final term. People will thank him, I said, and if he’s so worried about his legacy this is how to get one. The Democratic official, a charming and intelligent man, shook his head. He agreed with me, he said, but Clinton is driven by the polls, he’ll never do anything that isn’t high in the polls.

Well, Mr. Clinton got his legacy. But politics is full of Little Clintons, and if our leaders are not pressed to make our population safer they will not do it. It’s up to us.

It has occurred to me recently that civil defense in America is like being a cancer patient. If you have any friends with cancer, you know they have been forced to become experts on their illness. With so much experimentation going on, with so many swirling changes in the field of cancer research, every protocol, every treatment is debatable. There’s no one sure way to arrest this cancer or that; there are a myriad of possibilities—scores of schools, regimens, theories. More and more, cancer patients are forced to seize the initiative, make the big decisions, study, oversee treatment.

This, in a way, is where we are on civil defense. We have to do it. We have to think and study on our own. And then we have to push the “doctors,” our political leaders. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done.

*   *   *

Which gets us to smallpox. Smallpox as you know is a potent biological weapon that could be used against our country by those who wish us ill. We have known this for a long time. We know also that this virus has the potential to kill thousands, tens of thousands, millions. (When Cortez’s men brought it to Mexico it killed more than three million Aztecs.)

Why would it be so effective now as a weapon against America? Because, as you know, almost no Americans have been vaccinated against smallpox since 1972. We stopped our national vaccination program because it was thought that smallpox had been eradicated throughout the world. The last known case was reported in Somalia in 1977.

It happens that I am lucky. One day in grade school I noticed I didn’t have the scar on my arm that everyone else had. When I was in college and hoping to travel abroad, I went to Dr. Miller’s office in Rutherford, N.J., and asked to be vaccinated. He pulled out a needle and gave me the shot.

I was probably one of the last people vaccinated in America. Lucky me. But my son, born in 1987, was never vaccinated. Were your children? Were you? Not if you’re under 30 you weren’t.

Unless you’re a medical professional. We’ll get to that later.

*   *   *

Last summer, shortly before the attack on America, the Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices came out with its study of and recommendations on the smallpox threat. It makes for fascinating reading. It said use of the smallpox virus as a biological weapon would have “substantial public health consequences” but asserted it was “unlikely.” Why unlikely? Because of its “restricted availability.” How did they know terrorists couldn’t get their hands on it? They didn’t say.

Which was odd. We knew then and know now that there are stores of the smallpox virus in Russia; we don’t know exactly how secure they are, and we have reason to suspect that other nations, including North Korea and Iraq, may have illegal supplies. We know smallpox is highly lethal, and we know it can be spread different ways, including aerosol spray.

But the CDC panel spoke with the kind of authority doctors seem to get the day they receive their degrees, and they had recommendations.

They were: If smallpox happens, we should “declare an emergency.” If you see smallpox, you should call the CDC. As to those who become sick, we must “isolate” and “observe” them. “Medical care of more seriously ill smallpox patients would include supportive measures only.” Why? Because currently, “specific therapies with proven treatment effectiveness for clinical smallpox are unavailable.”

Oh.

Should we look into that? They didn’t say.

What they did say, in short, is that there’s no real reason to inoculate the public, and if smallpox is introduced by terrorists, we should make the sick as comfortable as possible and watch them closely as they expire.

That’s what I call a plan. An idiotic one, but a plan.

This week the CDC is again studying smallpox, and one hopes this time their report will get a lot of attention. The panel—it’s the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices again—has been charged with advising on whether Americans should be allowed to get the smallpox vaccine if they want it. The New York Times reported Wednesday that the leader of the study, Dr. John Modlin of Dartmouth Medical School, is approaching his work with great concern. What is he concerned about? The Times reports he’s not sure the threat of a biological attack using smallpox is real, or real enough, or likely enough.

Odd. Just last summer the committee “knew” terrorists probably couldn’t get their hands on smallpox. So they didn’t move forward with a national vaccination program. Now they can’t move forward because they don’t “know” the actual risk of a bio-terror attack.

It makes me shake my head. Does it make you shake yours?

No one “knew” a year ago that people shouldn’t work above the 50th floor of the World Trade Center. It was “unlikely” terrorists would slam a jumbo jet into the Pentagon—if indeed anyone thought of the possibility at all. That is the essence of our problem: No one knows.

No one knows if smallpox will ever be released into America. But if we have the vaccine (and we do; the CDC once announced we don’t, but in March 2002 a drug company found 70 million to 90 million doses of vaccine that had been forgotten in some freezers in Pennsylvania, and since then the Bush administration has bought more) and people want to be vaccinated, and they are told of the dangers—smallpox vaccinations can make some people sick, and historically, as Sen. Bill Frist, a physician, has noted, the vaccine has caused one death for every million people who receive a first time vaccination—and they agree to sign a waiver saying they will not sue if the vaccination’s outcome is unfortunate, then why not make it available?

Why not let people choose? Why not give them the freedom to protect themselves?

It seems odd that we’re even debating it. The worst that could happen is that in the next 20 years we are never faced with a smallpox epidemic and so didn’t need to be vaccinated. That’s a pretty good worst case.

*   *   *

Right now virtually the only Americans who receive vaccinations against smallpox are medical professionals such as the CDC’s own first-response units. This week the National Academy of Sciences met to discuss smallpox, and asked that local doctors and their staffs be given the vaccine too.

When I read this I thought, God bless doctors, I love them, and they certainly, as professionals who would be exposed by sick patients, need to be vaccinated. But—there’s a very rude thought coming—when medical professionals band together to press for protection for medical professionals, one thinks of the very human tendency for people to take care of their own. And take care of themselves. It makes me wonder if the members of the CDC immunization advisory group have been vaccinated. Somehow I can’t help but think yes. After all, they’re essential.

People have a funny way of protecting themselves while they undertake the strenuous task of debating whether other people, common people, nonessential people, ought to be protected.

People in positions of authority sometimes get like CEOs who complain about the high cost of the company’s medical coverage while seeing to it that the board OK’s payment for the very best and most expensive coverage for the company’s officers and their families.

I hope the CDC’s advisory board isn’t consciously or unconsciously thinking this way. One hopes they’re being serious, respectful, and thinking imaginatively.

*   *   *

The astronaut Frank Borman once said a brilliant thing. He was testifying before Congress on the deaths of the three American astronauts who, in 1967, were incinerated when a fire broke out in the space capsule in which they were training. Congress, rightly concerned, called hearings. When Col. Borman was asked how such a terrible accident could have happened, he could have given many truthful answers. But he chose a broad one of great clarity and meaning. He said, “It was a failure of imagination.” NASA had planned for so many things that could have gone wrong. But they never sat back one night and brainstormed about what would happen in an enclosed, oxygen-drenched environment if a short-circuit created one spark. Which is what started the conflagration.

“A failure of imagination.” One hopes the CDC is not undergoing such a failure. Their immunization panel seems to be asking for certainties—Yes doctors, we are certain al Qaeda operatives will introduce smallpox into America on Nov. 13, 2003, delivering it by five “suicide bio spreaders” who will arrive in five geographically equidistant airports—in the midst of a crisis that derives its very shape and definition from one fact: uncertainty. The unknown. The merely possible.

We don’t know what will happen. We must be imaginative, take chances, do our best, protect people. And if that means giving a vaccination to those who want it, give it. Period.

Will President Bush get his proposed Department of Homeland Security through Congress? Yes. Should he? Yes. Why? Because what preceded it didn’t work; because it is what we have at a moment when time is of the essence; because an administration that has the responsibility of keeping the nation safe from terrorists must be given the authority, power and structure to do so; because no one—no one—knows if moving boxes on a federal flowchart makes complete sense, but giving the administration what it asks for leaves them fully accountable for its success or failure, and that does make sense; because if defending our nation against the terror threat is the great necessity of the age and the government’s No. 1 job—and it is—then a single department dedicated to that function is in order.

We think labor is important and we have a Labor Department, ditto transportation and a Transportation Department. When you have a huge and crucial task being shared by a half dozen departments it doesn’t work. Sometimes you have to tear down and rebuild. A friend of mine, as part of his living, helps big companies merge; he finds the bureaucratic pressure points, the likely weak points, the overlapping, the pending personality conflicts. When I asked him sometime back what the government should do about the FBI/CIA mess, he said: “Start over. Make it new.”

Or as Napoleon said and generals quote, “Never reinforce failure.”

*   *   *

President Bush should do two things to get the department he wants and to increase its chance of ultimate success.

The first and more important is to name Rudy Giuliani now as his nominee for head of the new department.

It is absurd even to consider anyone else. Mr. Giuliani may in fact be the only person who could do it. He has the standing for the job. He is the symbol of Sept. 11 leadership and Sept. 11 suffering, of Sept. 11 success and American toughness. He is a galvanizing, dramatic figure who comes with his own klieg lights. People on the ground admire him, and people in the bureaucracy will fear him. This is good.

Tom Ridge, through little fault of his own, is a symbol of failure, a symbol of a governmental response that so far has not worked. He is Mr. Yellow Alert.

Mr. Giuliani’s unique standing gives him the one thing the new director must have: pull and sway with Congress and the public to do what needs to be done, from profiling to a national ID card to fingerprinting to taking on Norm Mineta’s Transportation Department for its security rules, which at once betray a frightened timorousness and an unwillingness to respect others. (E.g., pilots can’t be armed because they can’t be trusted not to run around shooting people.) Unlike Mr. Mineta, Mr. Giuliani knows what time it is. And he loves to tell people what he knows.

Just as important, the national press is invested in his excellence. The media have been celebrating Mr. Giuliani for nine months as the best we have. (Or, as David Letterman put it, “This, ladies and gentlemen, is a man.”) Because they are invested in Mr. Giuliani’s excellence, they will be invested in his success as homeland security secretary. The story line will go this way: Sept. 11 champion becomes terrorism savior. When reporters are invested in a story line like that they help it come true. They can’t help themselves.

Tom Ridge’s story line will be: The guy who didn’t do it right is given new authority to not do it right. And reporters will help that story line come true, too.

*   *   *

The new department will be a bureaucratic nightmare—a new agency that is the third-largest in the government, employing 169,000 people. It will need an experienced tough guy to run it. Mr. Giuliani has the right background—eight years in New York’s fractious political and bureaucratic fields, eight years in the Justice Department as a killer prosecutor. Remember when he had U.S. agents drag some Wall Street guys off the trading floor in shackles and chains? That’s the kind of overkill that bureaucrats never forget, and that would not, frankly, be utterly and totally unwelcome in the new role.

Moreover, the announcement that it would be Rudy will help get the new department through Congress in one piece. Mr. Bush can’t afford to let it bog down or be torn apart. The White House could send Mr. Giuliani up to the Hill to give testimony on how he envisions the new agency, which would no doubt be riveting, increasing public support and putting new pressure on Congress to move.

None of the other rumored potential nominees carry Rudy’s standing, his ability to rally, to lead, to command respect. Which makes him such an obvious choice you have to wonder why Mr. Bush hasn’t chosen him.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush is often accused of preferring to be around family retainers and what a former colleague of his calls “ethical cronies.” I never completely bought this. Mr. Bush likes to be around talent, but yes, he prefers men and women who, as they say in Hollywood, play well with others. Mr. Bush likes Dick Cheney, for instance, because he’s solid as a rock—but some of his solidity comes from the fact that he is smooth, cool, and doesn’t ruffle feathers that don’t need ruffling.

I think it’s true that Mr. Bush likes those who add to his luster more than those who might outshine him. This in general is true of political figures. But it is something Mr. Bush should get over—especially now and especially in this case. Right now Mr. Bush needs someone on his team to outshine him. He needs someone who is known to be independent, known as his own persona. Mr. Bush needs a star.

Mr. Bush is not the only problem, not the only one reluctant to pick Mr. Giuliani. Democrats aren’t keen to give a historic new platform to a Republican who might run for the presidency in 2008.

But the Democrats should, on this one, be wily. Knowing Mr. Bush doesn’t want him, they should push for Mr. Giuliani. The public will love it, Democrats will get credit for backing the right guy, they will be able to claim it’s for the good of the country and partisanship be damned, and their efforts will make Mr. Bush look smaller. That’s a four-fer. In addition, if Mr. Giuliani gets it and fails they can say he’s a Republican—he’s Mr. Bush’s, it’s his fault. If Mr. Giuliani gets it and succeeds, the Democrats did it. Mr. Giuliani is a half-Democrat anyway; he supported Mario Cuomo over George Pataki in 1994. The Dems owe him.

*   *   *

Of course another problem may be Mr. Giuliani himself. He is enjoying being a hero, making money, speaking, being adored. He has not run out of ambition, but he might think he can move forward politically while unattached to office. Just float, goes this thinking, and see what raft comes by. Keep the options open.

But this almost never works. Ask Dan Quayle, Bill Bradley, Bob Kerrey, Colin Powell. If you want to rise in the game, you better be in the game.

And at any rate, Mr. Giuliani owes it to the country. He knows he’s the best for this too.

Personality and temperament mean a lot in the making of a career. Mr. Giuliani illustrated this when he was mayor of New York. He was both very successful and truly high-maintenance. He led a great city to new heights, and then when the city faced its greatest crisis since Black Friday of 1929 on the black Tuesday of 2001, he led us the way a genius would if he had a big heart.

That day Mr. Giuliani finally found a foe big enough for his aggression. Before then he had brought his own dramas with him, entering each room with a sack of dysfunction on his back, creating new spats and fights when things got slow. His temperament was at odds with peace. He flourishes in war. When there wasn’t a war he created battles just for fun and out of need.

Now we have a war, and it is big enough for him. In this war, as a bureaucratic leader and policy setter, his flaws—impatience, combativeness—will be virtues.

If Mr. Bush is serious about security—and he is—he should pick Mr. Giuliani. Who even comes with an easy nickname—“The Jewel.” Give the Jewel the crown.

*   *   *

The second thing Mr. Bush should do is change the name. The name Homeland Security grates on a lot of people, understandably. Homeland isn’t really an American word, it’s not something we used to say or say now. It has a vaguely Teutonic ring—Ve must help ze Fuehrer protect ze Homeland!—and Republicans must always be on guard against sounding Teutonic.

As a brilliant friend who is also actually an intellectual says, “I think it’s creepy, in a Nazi-resonating way, any time this sort of home-and-hearth language is used by people who are essentially police. When police honestly call themselves police, or ‘domestic security,’ I salute and say ‘Yes officer.’ When they call themselves ‘Protectors of the Hearth’ I get the creeps.” He adds, “I’d argue we want to feel we’re pursuing our old values in a new more dangerous world” and suggests “trusty, familiar-sounding words as our touchstones.”

Who could argue? Not me.

My own imperfect nominee is Heartland Security, which unfortunately sounds like an Omaha-based insurance company, though maybe that’s not all bad. But it’s hokey.

Brilliant readers of this site will likely think of a better name. You are invited to jump in. We’ll send your ideas to Karen Hughes who when she is not beating swords into plowshares is said to read this site, and would I’m sure, as she readies to leave the White House, enjoy giving a new name to the new department as her parting gift.

In October 2001, shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center, an essayist who had worked in the U.S. government summed up the genesis of the tragedy this way:

It was a catastrophic systems failure, a catastrophic top-to-bottom failure of the systems on which we rely for safety and peace. Another way to say it: The people of the West were, the past 10 years or so, on an extended pleasure cruise, sailing blithely on smooth waters . . . through an iceberg field. We thought those in charge of the ship, commanding it and steering it and seeing to its supplies, would—could—handle any problems. We paid our fare (that is, our taxes) and assumed the crew would keep us safe. . . .

The American people knew, or at least those paying attention knew, that something terrible might happen. But they knew the government had probably done what governments do to protect us. The people did not demand this; the government did not do it. . . . It was a catastrophic systems failure, top to bottom.

It is generally not good form to quote yourself, but I do it to make two points:

1. That a system failure occurred has been acknowledged almost since the tragedy took place. It was acknowledged because it was obvious to those with eyes. The Democrats did not say it, nor did the Republicans, but citizens did, writers did, thinkers did, professionals did.

2. The depth and extent of the system failure, at least within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was greater than citizens knew in the months after Sept. 11, and has only now become clear. FBI officials didn’t fail to connect the dots; they refused to see a pattern. And this scandal is going to grow.

*   *   *

You know of the Rowley memo, the 13-page letter written last week by a 21-year veteran of the FBI, the chief counsel to the Minneapolis field office, Colleen Rowley. She has joined the ranks of those women—these days, as others have noted, they are always women—who blow the whistle on sick and shameful actions within powerful organizations.

You can read an edited version of the entire memo on Time magazine’s Web site. It is the story of what happened when FBI agents in Minneapolis discovered the presence of Zacarias Moussaoui’s in their state taking lessons on how to fly planes. They quickly recognized him as a terrorist threat, and arrested him on immigration charges on Aug. 15, four weeks before the World Trade Center became a burial ground. Moussaoui is now infamous as the “20th hijacker”—part of the cell or cells that planned and executed the attack on America.

Days after his August arrest, the Minneapolis FBI received information from French intelligence: Moussaoui was connected to Osama Bin Laden’s terror organization and other groups. The Minneapolis agents asked the FBI in Washington for a warrant to look at Moussaoui’s computer and personal effects; they asked too for a wiretap.

The FBI in Washington already had in its hands the Phoenix memo—the one that warned that Middle Eastern males in great numbers were taking flying lessons in Arizona. The FBI also had in its hands the French intelligence report on Moussaoui. Yesterday we found they had in their hands a report from the FBI’s chief pilot in Oklahoma warning that “large numbers of Middle Eastern males” were receiving flight training in the Sooner State. It was happening “all over the state,” said the Oklahoma agent who wrote the memo. He suggested this might be connected to future terrorist attacks.

The FBI may also have had in hand other clues, tips, warnings and data that have not yet been made public.

*   *   *

How did FBI headquarters in Washington respond to the Minneapolis request for a warrant? It refused. It said no—“no probable cause.”

The days ticked by. Ms. Rowley: “FBIHQ personnel whose job it was to assist and coordinate with field division agents on terrorism . . . Continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis’ by-now desperate efforts” to obtain a search warrant.

The Minneapolis FBI agents finally, frantic to move forward, took an act that required some courage. They went around FBI headquarters to the CIA’s counterterrorist unit. The FBI found out; Ms. Rowley doesn’t say how. The FBI then “chastised” the Minneapolis agents.

And continued to refuse a warrant.

You know when the FBI finally OK’d a search? On Sept. 11—after the attacks.

Even then, it wasn’t without a fight. Ms. Rowley writes that FBI supervisory agent in Washington who had been making the decisions on Minneapolis’s requests seemed to have been “consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents’ efforts.” On Sept. 11, just minutes after the attacks began, the supervisory agent in Washington headquarters phoned Minneapolis, and Ms. Rowley took the call. In that call, she says, he “was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui’s computer.”

Ms. Rowley recounts the conversation this way: “I said something to the effect that, in light of what had just happened in New York, it would have to be the ‘hugest coincidence’ at this point if Moussaoui was not involved with the terrorists. The [supervisory agent] stated something to the effect that I had used the right term, ‘coincidence’ and that this was probably all just a coincidence and we were to do nothing in Minneapolis until we got their [FBI headquarters’] permission.” He added, she says, that he didn’t want Minneapolis to “screw up” investigations “elsewhere in the country.”

Ms. Rowley adds another chilling detail. In the early aftermath of Sept. 11, whenever she told the story of the Moussaoui investigation to FBI personnel, “almost everyone’s first question was: ‘Why? Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case?’ ” She adds that “jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hansen [actually Hanssen], who were actually working for Osama bin Laden.”

This is no laughing matter. When an FBI field operative who is the chief legal counsel of her office tells the head of the FBI in Washington that they’ve been wondering, out in the field, if spies or moles made the fateful decisions, she is saying something huge. She is saying she thinks it is possible that spies within the FBI thwarted attempts to stop or diminish the attacks of Sept. 11. And she wants the FBI director to know this. She uses the word joke, but she knows what she’s doing. She’s saying: This may be true. When she put this information in a memo that she knows she herself will soon hand-deliver to the Senate Intelligence Committee, she is telling Congress, the press and the people to consider the possibility that spies or moles had some part in the attack on America.

*   *   *

Ms. Rowley asserts that a terrible problem within the FBI in Washington, a problem that likely affected the handling of this case, is “careerism.” The FBI is staffed by “short term careerists” who “only must serve an 18 month-just-time-to-get-your-ticket-punched minimum.” The FBI supervisory agent who thwarted the Moussaoui search was one of them. He and his kind are a reason FBI headquarters is “mired in mediocrity.” She made it a point to look up and share with the director the dictionary definition of careerism: “the policy and practice of advancing one’s career often at the cost of one’s integrity.”

Ms. Rowley said she would not use the term coverup to characterize the FBI’s official statements since Sept. 11. She said she will “carefully” use, instead, these words: “Certain facts . . . have . . . been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons.”

What improper political reasons? She does not say. But throughout her memo she demonstrates a seriousness about words, a carefulness as to meaning. It will be interesting when she is asked by Congress or the press what she meant exactly.

*   *   *

Which is where our media come in. Tim Russert, “60 Minutes”: This is the story you’ve lived for. Were there spies in the FBI helping out the other side? What political influences may have dictated or affected their decisions? Why did the FBI ignore all the information coming in from French intelligence, from Phoenix, from Minneapolis, from Oklahoma?

There are those who say sure, the picture is always clear in hindsight. But that itself now sounds like the language of coverup. Bin Laden made his plans clear enough over the years. The World Trade Center had been bombed in 1993, two U.S. embassies in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000. U.S. and Western intelligence have every reason in the world to think something terrible was coming. Anyone who read a Tom Clancy novel knew what was possible, and anyone who read a Tom Clancy novel and had a higher than average IQ knew the possible becomes the probable becomes a tragedy. Sen. Dianne Feinstein had a sense of foreboding about U.S. security; so did many of us. And the FBI is supposed to know more than we do.

It is true, as Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the columnist Ann Coulter have pointed out in different ways, that the long political-media campaign against “ethnic profiling” had an impact on this case and a bad effect on the FBI. It is true that many Democrats and Republicans who now criticize President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft for not combing the flight schools for possible Arab terrorists were previously complaining about profiling.

But it is also true—and here I display what is perhaps naivetè—that a lot of us think the FBI is supposed to be full of people with the sense and toughness to work around irresponsible demands and limitations, and not just fold in the face of potential heat. They’re not supposed to be complete weenies in the FBI. They’re supposed to have some guts and common sense.

*   *   *

If this were a dark Hollywood thriller, Ms. Rowley would feel it necessary to request whistle-blower protection.

She did.

The supervisory agent in FBI headquarters who thwarted and insulted the responsible men and women of the Minneapolis FBI would get a promotion.

He did.

And the attorney general would announce, just days after the Rowley memo became public, that FBI field offices will now be given expanded authority to move independently on terror threats without going through headquarters.

Two hundred sixty-one days after the attack on America, he did.

Every big speech has a text and a subtext. When Ronald Reagan spoke at Normandy on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, in 1984, his text consisted of a remembrance of what had happened there on the beaches on that day in 1944. He spoke of the efforts of the English and Scots brigades, the Americans, the French; he lauded the U.S. Rangers who had clawed their way up to the top of the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc. “And in seizing back this soil,” he said, as he stood on it, “they seized back the continent of Europe.”

It is the text that is remembered: “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.”

But it was the subtext of the speech that was most important, that contained the speech’s true purpose. The subtext was a message aimed at the leaders of the West and the people of Europe. It was: Fellow NATO members, you must remember that just as our fathers beat back the totalitarian Nazis, we now must beat back the totalitarian Soviets—and we can do it, we can triumph if we hold fast, hold firm and stand together just as our fathers did 40 years ago.

That message was important: In those days NATO seemed on the verge of breaking up over disagreements on how and even whether to resist the Soviet Union. Europe roiled with anti-American peace marches. The Pointe du Hoc speech was not a commemorative event but a speech intended to exhort, persuade, and move history.

*   *   *

President Bush will go to Normandy this weekend, to speak at the American cemetery there. Is he foolishly using a stage President Eisenhower used to such benign effect in 1964, that Mr. Reagan used to such famous effect in 1984, and that Bill Clinton also used? Isn’t the stage already cluttered with presidential ghosts?

No. Mr. Bush and his people like the high wire when they think it promises to raise their standing. A presidential speech in Normandy is by definition an event; it ensures wide, broad and lengthy press coverage. The cameras can’t resist the rows of white crosses, Normandy brings out the inner Spielberg-filming-Private-Ryan in every network producer. So the Bush speech will receive big coverage.

Does Mr. Bush fear comparisons? If he did they wouldn’t have scheduled it. Mr. Bush’s people have a clever way of positioning things. They’ll assume no one remembers what Ike said or Mr. Clinton said, and as for Ronald Reagan, Mr. Bush will probably take care of that problem by quoting him, lauding him and putting him away like a pretty Christmas ornament in an old brown box.

Mr. Bush always wants to bring big meaning to big events. He likes to say important things. This is not true of all politicians, and he does not always succeed. No one really remembers the meaning of his acceptance speech in the summer of 2000; no one remembers the meaning of the speech he gave when the election was resolved the following December. In both cases he said too many things, and they didn’t seem like big things; at any rate, people left with a blurry sense of what had been said.

But his speeches since Sept. 11 have mostly been clean, straight bullets. And that’s probably what he’ll do at Normandy, a clean, straight bullet.

I say that in part because that’s what his speech was Wednesday, in Berlin—not only a bullet but a blast.

*   *   *

It was the big speech of the trip, the one I’d been told to watch for a few weeks ago when I asked the White House where the primary statements would be made. You can add Mr. Bush at the Bundestag to the list of speeches with a text and a subtext. I think you can also add it to your small list of great speeches of the 21st century. I think Mr. Bush at the Bundestag is going to be remembered for a long time.

The Text: The American president, at a heightened and dramatic time in world history, travels to Europe to speak to its people of our continued friendship, ties and heritage, and to underscore our shared destiny; and to demonstrate in the process that Mr. Bush, though not a world traveler, is acquainted with the demands and disciplines of high diplomacy; that he is about to demonstrate the seriousness of his leadership by signing an arms agreement with the Russians that reflects the end of old enmity and the beginning of alliance; and that the signing itself shows his desire for and ability to achieve a safer world.

The subtext: Mr. Bush is trying to communicate to European elites that American actions, views and plans on Islamic terrorism are not a threat to Europe but its salvation. He is trying to tell Europe to open its eyes, see the threat, join the cause. He is trying to convince them that this is not America and Israel vs. the world but civilization vs. madmen. If he cannot convince the elites he may at least win new support from the people of Europe—he’s talking to them too. And he is attempting to rally the American people again, using a European stage to drive home his worldview and display what he hopes will be perceived back home as growing personal stature.

*   *   *

A look at some of the speech.

“I am honored to visit this great city,” Mr. Bush said of Berlin. “The history of our time is written in the life of Berlin. In this building, fires of hatred were set that swept across the world. To this city, Allied planes brought food and hope during 323 days and nights of siege. Across an infamous divide, men and women jumped from tenement buildings and crossed through razor wire to live in freedom or to die in the attempt. One American president came here to proudly call himself a citizen of Berlin. Another president dared the Soviets to ‘tear down that wall.’ ”

Good stuff. It reminds the audience that America is Germany’s longtime friend—the airlift, the war against communism. It contains an implicit reminder: Standing with you cost us plenty, but we paid the price because it was right. (Side message to America: Happy Memorial Day.)

Mr. Bush praises the new Germany “made whole”—an elegant reference to unification. He then erects a generational platform from which to make his points, the same platform Mr. Reagan used in Normandy:

“On both sides of the Atlantic,” says Mr. Bush, “the generation of our fathers was called to shape great events—and they built the great trans-Atlantic alliance of democracies. They built the most successful alliance in history. After the Cold War, during the relative quiet of the 1990s, some questioned whether our trans-Atlantic partnership still had a purpose. History has given its answer.”

This got applause. Mr. Bush then jumps to today:

“Our generation faces new and grave threats to liberty, to the safety of our people, and to civilization, itself. We face an aggressive force that glorifies death, that targets the innocent, and seeks the means to murder on a massive scale.”

Here we go. The subtext in full force: Europe, wake up!

“Those who despise human freedom will attack it on every continent. Those who seek missiles and terrible weapons are also familiar with the map of Europe.”

“Are also familiar with the map of Europe” is a delicate but direct way of saying: Guess who’s next?

Mr. Bush continues: “Like the threats of another era, this threat cannot be appeased or cannot be ignored. By being patient, relentless and resolute, we will defeat the enemies of freedom. . . . Together, Europe and the United States have the creative genius, the economic power, the moral heritage, and the democratic vision to protect our liberty and to advance our cause of peace.”

Don’t be pessimistic, he’s saying, we can do it, we’ll get through this. But only if you get serious and face the facts.

He reminds Europe that for all her pain she has been invincible. “From the Argonne Forest to the Anzio beachhead, conflicts in Europe have drawn the blood of millions, squandering and shattering lives across the earth. There are thousands, thousands of monuments in parks and squares across my country to young men of 18 and 19 and 20 whose lives ended in battle on this continent. Ours is the first generation in a hundred years that does not expect and does not fear the next European war. And that achievement—your achievement—is one of the greatest in modern times.”

And so we know peace is winnable. We see this in the rise of the European Community, which is not seen by America as a rival but as living proof that “old hostilities” can be ended.

He asserts that NATO expansion will make Europe more secure; he commits American backing for membership for all European democracies; he asserts as a shared mission the encouraging of Russia to see its future “in Europe, and with America.” This echoes Mr. Bush’s statement in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last June, in which he said he had told President Putin in their first meeting that radical Islam was a threat to Russia, not the West. “Russia has its best chance since 1917 to become a part of Europe’s family. Russia’s transformation is not finished; the outcome is not yet determined. But for all the problems and challenges, Russia is moving toward freedom.”

So: together, Europe and America have transformed the Soviet Union into free Russia. And let us now discuss more deeply what we must again do, together, to survive:

“For the United States, September the 11th, 2001, cut a deep dividing line in our history—a change of eras as sharp and clear as Pearl Harbor, or the first day of the Berlin Blockade. There can be no lasting security in a world at the mercy of terrorists—for my nation, or for any nation. . . Together, we oppose an enemy that thrives on violence and the grief of the innocent. The terrorists are defined by their hatreds: They hate democracy and tolerance and free expression and women and Jews and Christians and all Muslims who disagree with them.”

He says that NATO’s defining purpose now is facing down a threat as great as Europe has faced in the past. Like the Nazis, who threatened Europe by killing “in the name of racial purity,” or the Soviets, who threatened Europe “in the name of class struggle,” our new enemy kills “in the name of a false religious purity.”

The answer is unity. “In this war we defend not just America or Europe; we are defending civilization itself.”

*   *   *

Down to the nitty-gritty:

“The evil that has formed against us has been termed the ‘new totalitarian threat.’ The authors of terror are seeking nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Regimes that sponsor terror are developing these weapons and the missiles to deliver them.” If these regimes perfect their capabilities, he says, nothing will stop them. They will use them.

“Wishful thinking might bring comfort, but not security. Call this a strategic challenge; call it, as I do, axis of evil; call it by any name you choose—but let us speak the truth.”

This is deft. Those who have abjured the phrase “axis of evil” and made their unhappiness with it into a symbol of their opposition: Fine, make up your own phrase, what matters is the facts.

“If we ignore this threat, we invite certain blackmail, and place millions of our citizens in grave danger. Our response will be reasoned, and focused, and deliberate. We will use more than our military might. We will cut off terrorist finances, apply diplomatic pressure, and continue to share intelligence. . . But make no mistake about it, we will and we must confront this conspiracy against our liberty and against our lives.”

What Mr. Bush is saying is simple: We will not back down, we cannot back down, we cannot ignore this threat and survive.

He asks each nation of Europe to make “hard choices” about financial commitments to help the war on terror. He calls for the protection of Israel, the creation of a state for the Palestinian people; he insists peace in the Mideast is possible, points to old hatreds in Europe in which foes became partners and allies.

He says that “poverty doesn’t create terror—yet terror takes root in failing nations that cannot police themselves or provide for their people.” And so we must help—through trade expansion, and humanitarian aid. “We have a duty to share our wealth generously and wisely.”

“Members of the Bundestag,” he says, “we are joined in serious purpose . . . on which the safety of our people and the fate of our freedom now rest. We build a world of justice, or we will live in a world of coercion. The magnitude of our shared responsibilities makes our disagreements look so small. And those who exaggerate our differences play a shallow game, and hold a simplistic view of our relationship.”

We are more than partners and allies, “we are heirs to the same civilization. The pledges of the Magna Carta, the learning of Athens, the creativity of Paris, the unbending conscience of Luther, the gentle faith of St. Francis—all of these are part of the American soul. The New World has succeeded by holding to the values of the Old.”

This is not only liltingly fact-filled; it has, as Henry Kissinger is said to have said, the added benefit of being true. And while Mr. Bush is citing religio-cultural markers, he is also nodding to constituent groups back home.

“Our histories have diverged, yet we seek to live by the same ideals. We believe in free markets, tempered by compassion. We believe in open societies that reflect unchanging truths. We believe in the value and dignity of every life.”

This is known as complimenting the other guy by suggesting he shares your best beliefs. It’s not quite true, but it reminds him of what he ought to believe in. In any case, no one in the Bundestag is going to stand up and yell, “Hey, we don’t believe in the dignity of life, buddy!”

“These convictions bind our civilization together and set our enemies against us,” Mr. Bush ends. “These convictions are universally true and right. And they define our nations and our partnership in a unique way. And these beliefs lead us to fight tyranny and evil, as others have done before us.”

*   *   *

We cannot afford ambivalence, Mr. Bush told Europe. We must not create or have faith in false equivalencies. We have to stay together to stay safe—but if we stay together we’ll be safe.

Good stuff.

They will hear it in Europe. We’ll see if they will absorb it, or come to agree with it, but they will certainly hear it.

And that’s a good start. Watch for Mr. Bush to underscore his message in Normandy.

Let me tell you what I think of the criticism that President Bush (a) reversed a half century of Republican philosophy on free trade and caved in on tariffs, and (b) accepted and endorsed a big-government farm bill that was so greasy, pork-filled and fat-laden that if you took the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 in your hand and held a match to it would hiss, pop and sizzle like bacon in a big black skillet.

I think the criticisms are wholly legitimate. I think they are correct. And I think they miss the point.

Mr. Bush has been justly smacked by pundits, but the man on the street and the woman being polled don’t seem to think much of it, about it or against it. Mr. Bush knows this and likes it. It means the gamble paid off. The base will forgive him, the nonbase hasn’t noticed he did anything that needs forgiveness, and the opposition can hardly knock him for taking policy positions they’ve long supported.

Why will the base forgive Mr. Bush? Because they know it’s all about the war. Which means it’s all about the 2002 congressional elections, less than six months away. Mr. Bush caving in on tariffs helps the Republicans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere; his caving on the farm bill deprives the Democrats of an issue in the farm states.

*   *   *

Right now Mr. Bush is about to take a beating over charges that he was briefed before Sept. 11 with intelligence reports suggesting Arab terrorists might be about to hijack a commercial airliner or airliners. Ari Fleischer has conceded the president was told of the possibility of hijackings but says there was no warning that the planes would be used as missiles.

Clearly we are at the beginning of a new Democratic foray. Mr. Bush’s political enemies will make as much of the story as they can. James Carville yesterday told the ABC News Internet column “The Note” that the question is “What did the President know, when did he know it and what did he do about it?” He is echoing the famous Watergate question in hopes of replicating the famous Watergate disaster.

Why wouldn’t he? Playing political games is what Mr. Carville does as a partisan, as an operative, as a holder of the banner of the opposition. It’s not only a game but a lucrative one. And it’s not terrible, it’s show biz—occasionally funny, often colorful.

And the Democrats happen to be better at it than the Republicans. Democrats on talk shows tend not to be shy about boring in, talking over guests, hectoring, murmuring sarcastic asides. They may not be courteous but they pound their points home. Republicans, in part because they represent the tougher views of the tougher party, often try to be reasonable and sweet, or intelligent and clever. They are no match. When they realize this halfway through the program they tend to try and bark back. But they bark badly, like Chihuahuas who know their yelps won’t deter a burglar.

Why are Democratic operatives more effective? Because they see politics as total war. When you see yourself as a captain in a great unending struggle you not only fight harder, you rationalize fighting meaner. Why are Republican operatives less effective? Most of them don’t believe politics is total war. It’s only about government, it’s not as big and important as life. If they thought it were that big they’d fight as if it were total war, but they wouldn’t be Republicans; they’d be people who think government is everything.

Another problem for Republicans: Some of them are actually dignified and reasonable. A few of them are actually nice. And a lot of them are trying to avoid being stigmatized by the press. If a GOP operative—a nervous, please-like-me Scott Reed, a well-meaning and courteous Alex Castellanos—attempts to be as crude and manipulative as a Paul Begala, and actually succeeds, the press will not say he is a worthy opponent. The press will paint him as dark-jowled and Nixonian, a hater, a hammer. The press doesn’t like rude Republicans.

There is also this problem for the Republican Party on TV: Their most spirited battlers are either in the White House (Mary Matalin, Torie Clark) or not Republican. Ann Coulter could eat her lunch off Paul Begala’s head and use his tie as a napkin, but Ms. Coulter is not a Republican, she is a conservative. She’d knock Mr. Bush harder on pork and tariffs than Mr. Carville would.

*   *   *

Back to Mr. Bush and the criticisms he faces. I think the Sept. 11 charge will have some traction. It’s easy to understand, and it plays into cultural assumptions dearly held by both Republicans and Democrats. (Democrats: Those sneaky Republicans always screw up and then blame it on Bill Clinton! Republicans: Those jerks in government are stupider than we noble folk.)

The story will be around for weeks, maybe months, and Mr. Bush will have to address it. And it will have traction. But not that much.

The reason is Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The reason is that GWB is doing an FDR.

And I think people know this without quite knowing it.

FDR would sacrifice anything, he’d tack left right and center, to win World War II. You can almost literally trace the end of FDR’s New Deal legislation to the beginning of the war in Europe in September 1939. Yes, the court-packing scandal had something to do with it, and so did the Supreme Court finding aspects of the New Deal unconstitutional. But after Hitler moved on Poland, Roosevelt sacrificed almost all his liberal domestic plans, angering his own supporters and disappointing his party’s interest groups, in order to mollify conservatives and refocus voters’ attention away from the Depression and onto the war. He knew he would need broadened support to execute a war. He disappointed much of his base to get it.

Mr. Bush is doing the same thing. He is accepting what he thinks he has to accept (pork, a bad trade bill) in order to keep or expand the power balance he has in Washington, and in order to keep from angering or offending your basic, normal, politically nonobsessed citizen.

If Mr. Bush’s popularity falls, his party’s popularity suffers. The congressional elections six months from now could produce a Democratic House and a more heavily Democratic Senate. Mr. Bush will do almost anything to keep that from happening. Because if it happens his ability to prosecute the war will be weakened, perhaps fatally. Power would shift and his opposition, no longer fearing his popularity, would go for his throat. The war effort, such as it is, would be compromised. He has to keep his popularity high.

So Mr. Bush is doing an FDR, and angering only a base that will forgive him.

*   *   *

It is interesting that FDR too was dogged, from Dec. 7, 1941, onward, with the charge that he and his administration had repeatedly and even emphatically been warned that the Japanese were about to move on Pearl Harbor. Somehow FDR didn’t hear the warnings, or heed them. Editorialists howled, Congress held hearings, Republicans tried hard to nail him. But they didn’t get anywhere, really. Not because there wasn’t any evidence but because the public knew what the Congress seemed to have forgotten: There’s a war on. The thing to do is win the war, concentrate your efforts on it, focus, don’t fritter away time and resources on a question we don’t have to answer just this second. We have to build bombers just this second.

The Dec. 7 question remains alive, but is muted. Whatever the truth, the people were right: Winning the war was more important than finding out what the president knew and when he knew it.

And FDR won his war, clear and clean. Mr. Bush will have to do that too or history, and the people, will not be so forgiving.

How is George W. Bush doing? In Washington the past weekend everyone I spoke to answered that question by referring to the recent USA Today poll that said the president’s popularity continues undiminished and, amazingly enough, for reasons apart from the war. People like him. They respect him. Almost eight in 10 said they thought he was doing a good job as president.

Nor is the press fully immune, or so it seemed to me. After Mr. Bush gave his humorous speech at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, I mentioned to an acquaintance, a veteran journalist at a national newspaper and presumably not a reflexive Bush supporter, that I thought the president’s speech all right but undistinguished. “Wasn’t as good as Clinton,” I said. Bill Clinton’s material at dinners like this was top-notch.

“But Clinton was vulgar!” the journalist said. Mr. Clinton’s very smoothness, the fact that he was at his best doing shtick for the media, was vulgar. Mr. Bush is more like a president: boring.

Presidents should be boring. We don’t hire them to entertain us, we hire them to be stable, sane and sure-handed.

*   *   *

What is the key to Mr. Bush’s popularity? I think the source of it is something that isn’t new. He walked into the White House with it. But it has become more apparent with time and is, I think, more appreciated.

It is that he does not need the job. He did not lust for it and does not hunger for it. He does not need the presidency to fulfill a romantic sense of personal destiny. He does not have a neurotic fixation on the office. He does not love having or wielding its power. He views the presidency as a responsibility, and sometimes a burden. But he tries each day to meet it. Sometimes it is pleasurable for him, sometimes not.

There is with Mr. Bush an almost palpable sense that he would rather be at the ranch. He would rather be enjoying life and having fun with baseball teams, he would rather have privacy, he would rather go for a drive. He radiates a sense that he has given up a lot to be president. He radiates a sense that he will enjoy it when he gets back what he gave up. But right now he has work to do.

I do not mean to suggest that Mr. Bush is or seems ambivalent about the presidency. I don’t think he is or does. He means to be a good president, that is obvious. He works hard, is committed, ambitious and serious. He means to win the war. He is capable of wielding the power he has to wield, and one senses he has enough vanity to believe he is as good a wielder of it as any, and maybe better than most.

But . . . he doesn’t need it.

He doesn’t love celebrity, doesn’t gravitate to the glamorous, doesn’t seem to think fame can bestow magic, gladness, personal contentment. I watched him sitting on the dais Saturday night; he looked like he was thinking about whether the jeep needs tires. He was not excited to be surrounded by the glittering prizewinners of Washington, who were arrayed in tuxedoes and gowns before him. His wife, also on the dais, smiled pleasingly at everyone, but her smile is unvarying, almost inexpressive, and still seems to hide more than it reveals. She too radiates a sense that she’d be happy back home, kicking her shoes off with the girls and then falling asleep with a book.

When the Mideast was blowing up a few weekends ago, the president was at the ranch. When asked why he wasn’t more involved in what was happening, he groused that he was; he’d spent half of Saturday morning on the phone. If he had been LBJ or Nixon or Bill Clinton he would have been a Toscanini of the telephone, talking to world leaders and attempting to bring some personal magic to the drama. Mr. Bush doesn’t seem to believe in magic. Yesterday afternoon, talking in the White House to reporters about the struggle he has had getting his judicial nominees through Congress, he looked like someone who was indignant and frustrated but not loaded for bear. He looked like it was work.

*   *   *

Why does Mr. Bush’s seeming not to need the presidency contribute to his popularity? Why would it be, in fact, a central reason for his high poll numbers?

Because when you know they don’t need it, you know they won’t do anything to keep it. And you can start to trust them.

When you know a man experiences an office not as a prize to which he is entitled but as a burden by which he is bound, you feel you can comfortably appreciate him and his efforts.

When a leader doesn’t need the office he holds, the electorate feels free to have faith in him. They infer from his lack of need a simple thing: He will be less likely to sacrifice the country’s interests to his own. He will not tend to put his own passing political interests over the needs of the nation in order to win. Because he doesn’t have to win.

When you know a man doesn’t have to win, you know he probably won’t do anything to win. And when you know he won’t do anything to win, you feel more secure in letting him win.

In the Vatican after they have chosen a new pope, they lead him to a room off the Sistine Chapel where he is given the clothing of a pope. It is called the Crying Room. It is called that because it is there that the burdens and responsibilities of the papacy tend to come crashing down on the new pontiff. Many of them have wept. The best have wept.

That in a way is why people like Mr. Bush. They can tell he has been to the crying room. They respect him for it.

“Former President Bill Clinton met with NBC executives Wednesday in Los Angeles to discuss hosting his own talk show, according to several television sources.”—Los Angeles Times, front page, May 2

*   *   *

As befits our subject, I will begin this piece with an assertion of my brilliance. Years ago when asked what I thought Bill Clinton would do after his presidency, I began answering that he would probably have a TV talk show called “Here’s Bill!” People would always laugh. I would explain that talking is what Bill Clinton does, that the subject matter of daytime chats would be congenial to him, and that he is a handsome, sunny-seeming and, as they used to say in the Clinton era, compelling figure. So why not?

His entire presidency seemed like a talk show. Or actually his entire presidency seemed like daytime TV—a talk show followed by a soap opera followed by a news bulletin followed by another talk show. Sometimes the last show of the day had the tone of “Washington Week in Review,” sometimes “Jerry Springer.” Looking back, one sees that at the end of his presidency Mr. Clinton was like Dave Attell in “Insomniac,” the Comedy Central show in which a charming and apparently aimless man stays up all night looking for company.

So: I was ahead of the curve in saying the talk show would happen. Now I wish to be ahead of the curve in telling you why it won’t. And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with the debate on whether he’d be sponsored by Haines Underwear or The Gap.

The primary reason Bill Clinton won’t host a talk show is that Hillary won’t let him. She won’t let him because she is not a stupid woman. She doesn’t want her husband in a job that would put him back on the media radar screen on a daily basis. She knows that if he had a TV show he’d wind up in the kind of trouble presidential spouses aren’t supposed to get into. And she intends for him one day to be a president’s spouse.

*   *   *

The Clintons are already wealthy. He is raking in tens of millions a year, including a record-breaking $12 million advance for his memoirs. More to the point, he is wealthy with little effort.

Talk shows take effort. A talk show is real work and not just talk. And Bill Clinton is a talker. Those who witnessed his presidency up close speak of its iconic moment: the endless bull session, with the president talking issues every which way and from every angle. Some suggested he did this to fill time while he avoided decisions; his labor secretary Robert Reich said he thought Mr. Clinton enjoyed talking so much because the sound of it made him feel like he had real beliefs.

At any rate he loves to talk but not necessarily to work—to decide, to carry through.

Talk shows require discipline. You get up early, have conference calls, hold meetings, read every newspaper and magazine to stay current. You oversee the tone and topics of the show, prepare for plan interviews, rehearse skits and bits. You meet with writers, you coddle, dominate, bond with and coolly fire producers. You meet with the network to discuss the focus-group data that say people think your hair is too thin, and then spend an hour insisting that you can’t start wearing a toupee as you’re a woman, or you can’t start wearing black leather as you’re a 56-year-old man.

You make the hundreds of personal appearances that boost the show. You manage the charities you’ve created or agreed to head because how could you not—you’re rich and famous in America. You take care of the band leader going through a personal crisis and attend the drummer’s debut with Paul McCartney’s band. This allows you not only to show solidarity with your colleagues but to get to know Paul, which you must do in part because it will help to get the exclusive when Ringo dies.

You also do 128 more things, all the while getting the daily ratings that tell you if you’re slipping or gaining, which information will be in the papers tomorrow with your producer’s reaction, an amusing one-liner the two of you just made up on the phone.

Talk shows are not for sissies. They are not for lazy people. Talk shows take actual leadership. And you have to do them without the power of the government of the United States behind you.

*   *   *

America is a great democratic meritocracy and an odd thing about it is that those at the very top of it, our media stars in New York and Los Angeles, who have more job security than political figures (Jimmy Carters come and go, but Tom Brokaw is forever) and are certainly better paid and more famous, actually work like slaves. They work like staff! Yes, they are wildly compensated, but they don’t get enough sleep, they travel all the time, and half of them say on a semiregular basis, “I hate my life.” Because they’re always tired. Because they carry great responsibility. Because they have to prove they’re good citizens and show up for the speech, the dinner, the fund-raiser, or else a gossip columnist will say they’re not nice, and the bad publicity will hurt the show, whatever the show is.

Luckily for them they tend to love movement and action as it keeps them from having to think. But some of them really do think. And they suffer.

Which gets me back to Mr. Clinton. Not that he’d suffer, just that this would all be too much for him.

Also, Bill Clinton cannot do a talk show because he cannot do the monologue. He cannot do the monologue because to this day, 17 months after his presidency, the most consistently reliable subject of mirth and merriment in monologues is Bill Clinton. (Indeed, Mr. Clinton’s inability to do a monologue last night became the subject of a monologue, as Jay Leno joked that the former president “couldn’t do a late-night show because he couldn’t do Clinton jokes. You can’t do a late-night show without Clinton jokes.”)

And Bill Clinton cannot have a talk show because exactly half the guests on talk shows are young actresses who are beautiful and giggly or soulful and serious. And part of the longstanding talk show tradition is that the host, the Leno or Letterman, flirts with them, either eagerly or awkwardly or both.

Bill Clinton can’t do that because . . . well, back to Hillary.

She knows her husband cannot have a talk show because it would give him a new alternate universe into which to bring his Billness. It would immediately be a success—early numbers at least would be wonderful. Mr. Clinton is and always will be a walking talking event. But success would give him the kind of pleasure that in his case is always the prelude to personal disaster.

He will be so happy he will get into trouble. It will be bad and public trouble. And if he gets into bad and public trouble, Mrs. Clinton may have to handle it. She would have to consider distancing herself from him even more than she does. She might have to divorce him to keep the scandal goo on him and not get it all over her. And one can imagine she does not want to divorce him for many reasons, including that there would be no clear political gain in it. There would be loss and a rehashing of old finger-waving film clips, and it would get in the way of her White House bid in 2004 or 2008.

I’ll bet the talk show won’t happen. Sometimes two people who’ve had a certain relationship for a long time experience something big and even painful: a power shift based on a status shift. With her election to the Senate and her slow subtle emergence as the country’s leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton’s career is the dominant one in the Clinton family, and the one most promising of future dividends.

The coming departure of Karen Hughes has been covered every which way but mostly as a story about a modern woman who, having it all, decided to relinquish some of it, at least for a while, so she could lead a more personally enjoyable life back home, in Texas, with her son in a local school with longtime friends and her husband, a lawyer, able to practice his profession free of the constraints necessarily placed on spouses of powerful Washington personages.

All of which is a long way of saying she wanted to return to life.

*   *   *

What is life? It is the nice big thing you enter each morning when the alarm goes off and you put your feet on the cool floor and then stand, with your hands on the bottom of your back, and look out the window.

Life is putting on coffee, picking up the newspaper and putting on the radio and listening for a few seconds to see if something huge and terrible happened last night. You can tell by the sound of the voices. Once you hear everyone sounds calm and nice and boring, you keep the station on but don’t really listen.

The mist from the coffee in the mug is rising. The sun hits the newspaper you’re reading as you stand at the kitchen counter and you feel it on your hand. You think: That’s the feel of the sun on my hand.

You open the kitchen window and breathe in fresh air—grass, the man next door just mowed. It’s fresh and cool. You hear birds. You leave the window open so you can keep hearing them. You think, I’ll put a bird house back there.

You notice you do not have a hard little ball in your stomach. Your acid glands do not appear to have launched the morning’s guerrilla attack on the bagel you’re eating. Your heartbeat is not accelerating. You do not have the slight tremor you sometimes get when the phone rings so often it’s come to seem like a constant alarm.

The rictus muscles around your mouth are not tightening. You are not frowning.

What’s happening? Oh—you’ve returned to life.

*   *   *

You are standing there reading the front page. And the front page does not contain information you must respond to. It contains information other people must respond to—the mayor, say, or the head of the arts committee. You wish them well.

You have only one fear. For a long time you’ve had a hunch that fear keeps you slim. That anxiety creates a quicker metabolism. That happiness will make you fat.

You think: I’ll worry about this next week. Or next month.

You dress in soft clothes. That’s what cops and firemen and members of the armed services call not being in uniform. You wear soft old jeans and a thin cotton sweater. They smell of Tide and fabric softener. They feel warm from the dryer. They drape on you light as an oversized glove.

When Karen Hughes worked in the White House she wore hard clothes—wool blend suits and heels and jewelry and makeup; there were buttons and fasteners and flecks of mascara in the eye. She doesn’t have to wear makeup now. She can have a soft face. She can wash her face in Dove foamy cleanser, pat it dry, put on a nice-smelling moisturizer and walk onward into the day.

In that day she can daydream. This is especially important for intelligent people; it’s how they find out what they think.

She can walk and go for long drives. This is important for adults as it allows them unconsciously to absorb through their eyes a changing landscape while they think about things big and small, all of which relate to time going by, meaning to a changing of landscapes.

She can not answer the phone. Not answering the phone is a great gift in life. When you answer the phone, other humans very often bring you their need. “I need you to listen/know/react/advise.” They get you on their agenda.

When you don’t answer the phone you stay on your agenda. Which may or may not be clear but at least is yours.

She can shop. Shopping is a wonderful thing. It’s more wonderful if you have money to buy what catches your eye if you want to own it, but it’s also fun if you don’t have money. It’s really wonderful to just sort of walk along the mall and see what your country is selling, buying, offering. You get to see the other people look at and judge your country’s products. You can buy a big soft pretzel at a stand and sit on a bench and watch the mothers and daughters buy shoes together. If you sit close enough to hear them you’ll be hearing how mothers and daughters talk to each other these days. That’s a good thing to know.

Then you can have lunch with friends and bring each other your agendas, which is a word you never use with friends because you don’t have to. You know each other so well you don’t have an agenda. Or you have one but it’s unspoken, shared and simple: It is: We’re friends, we help each other through life.

Then you can go home and read a book in a chair outside, or on your bed, with the sunlight streaming in on the comforter. It’s good to read. When you read books by people who know things you don’t know, or rather who know things you don’t know and would benefit intellectually, spiritually or emotionally from knowing, you are giving your brain/soul good nutrients. No one ever got stupider, shallower or worse from doing this.

*   *   *

You can think of dinner. You can make it or order it. You can think of what everyone would enjoy and then try to make sure it’ll be good for them too.

You can watch the news and be interested like a normal person by what’s going on, as opposed to being interested like an abnormal person—a person who works for a president, say. You can watch TV shows with your son and husband and just enjoy them. You can daydream to them and have uninterrupted thoughts about what’s happening in Hollywood and what’s happening with people who are 27 and secretly running the country. You can have these thoughts uninterrupted by bells that ring like alarms and agendas that are thrust on you and things you must attend to or the president may suffer.

You can become reacquainted with your country.

You can become reacquainted with the idea of normality.

You can find out how much—or how little—you miss The Great World. You can figure the difference between how much it needed you and how much you needed it.

You can find out how much you need the distractions you used to complain about. You can find out if you were right that you didn’t need them.

You can find out what comes in to fill and take the place of the pressure, pleasure and importance you just left. You have to try and make sure that space is filled by better things. But you have to be open-minded, easy and welcoming about the word better. It can have broad meanings you didn’t expect.

*   *   *

All of this sounds really nice to me. Does it sound nice to you? Then you may want to consider the Hughes Plan, if you can, if you’re able to, if it’s possible, if you’re at a point in life where it’s doable.

Let me tell you why I’m riffing along. I have a feeling the Hughes Plan is related to Sept. 11. The other day a writer friend e-mailed me and said quick, give me a quote on how Sept. 11 changed your life. She was writing an article and just needed another voice to jump in and give words she could put quote marks around.

I didn’t know the answer, or rather I knew a bunch of answers but not one. My friend, however, needed one. So I sat and thought, and then I knew. I wrote back: “Let me tell you what 9/11 did to me. It made me hungrier for life. It made me feel more tenderly toward it and more grateful. It’s all short, even in the worst life it’s too short, and you want to really feel and experience it and smell it and touch it and thank God for it.”

I realized, again, that Sept. 11 had given me a case of Judith Delouvrier. Judith Delouvrier was a wonderful woman who was my friend; our boys went to school together and she was a fine mother and a happy spirit and she loved her husband and they’d just left their apartment and bought a house in my neighborhood. She had a million plans. She jumped on a plane one summer day and never came back. It was TWA 800.

It was all so impossible, so jarring, so unnatural. And in the months and years after her death, if I was walking along and saw something nice—an especially cute dog, a sweet moment between humans, a pretty baby, a beautiful pair of shoes in the window—I’d feel my usual old mild pleasure. And then I would remember that Judith couldn’t see this boring common unremarkable thing. And it made the boring common unremarkable thing seem to me more like a gift, more precious and worthy of attention and appreciation, and even love.

So Sept. 11 did to me what Judith’s death did, only deeper and newer.

And Karen Hughes, who was with the president that day and the days after, maybe she got a case of Sept. 11 too. And maybe it made some part of her want to be more immersed in life. Or more urgently aware that life is not only what you’re doing right this second at the desk, it’s also going on out there beyond the desk, it’s going by like the wind and if you want to you can step out and feel it.

To the extent her decision reminds us of the life outside the desk it is a public service. Not many public servants do things that you can immediately experience as a benefit. So thank you Ms. Hughes. And now I’m going to go read Michael J. Fox’s memoir. And then walk across the Brooklyn Bridge because it’s fun.

This week an old giant returned to speak of what roils us. His words were welcome, heartening and necessary. But they were not, I think, sufficient.

In Rome John Paul II, our warrior-saint of a pope, addressed, finally, the sex scandals that continue to rock the American Catholic Church.

Now the pope is a great man. From almost the moment of his election to the papacy in 1978 he raised his staff—the silver crosier he carries in public, which bears at the top the crucified Christ—turned toward the east and, in effect, commanded the atheist Soviet Union to recede. And almost from that moment the Russian dictatorship began to recede like the great debris-filled wave it was. John Paul II is not only a warrior, of course; he is a mystic who believes the hand of the Mother of God literally guided the bullet away from his heart the day, 21 years ago, that he was shot. He is said to pray seven hours a day—alone, at mass, while doing work. He is a holy man.

In his Holy Thursday letter to the Catholic priests of the world, the pontiff spoke on the sex-abuse scandals that have engulfed the American church. His words were strong and direct. They were also brief, comprising only about 10% of his letter. Here in toto is what he said of the scandals:

At this time too [he refers to the new millennium] as priests we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of Ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the mysterium iniquitatis at work in the world. Grave scandal is caused, with the result that a dark shadow of suspicion is cast over all the other fine priests who perform their ministry with honesty and integrity and often with heroic self-sacrifice. As the church shows her concern for the victims and strives to respond in truth and justice to each of these painful situations, all of us—conscious of human weakness, but trusting in the healing power of divine grace—are called to embrace the mysterium Crucis and to commit ourselves more fully to the search for holiness. We must beg God in his Providence to prompt a whole-hearted reawakening of those ideals of total self-giving to Christ which are the very foundation of the priestly ministry.”

So, the pontiff said that the priests who have abused and seduced teenage boys and adolescents had given in to the most grievous forms of “the mystery of evil.” He did not call the guilty priests only disturbed or in need of therapy; he said they had done evil and betrayed God’s gift to them, the gift of the priesthood.

One could not read the pope’s words and doubt his dismay. One could not read them without imagining too the anguish behind them. Surely they gave heart to the good priests and seminarians who need to know the pope is on their side; certainly the bad priests, and their protectors in the hierarchy, understood what the pope thinks of them and their actions.

*   *   *

And yet, one must hope the pope’s letter was only a beginning, only a prologue to action more grave and definitive.

To those who have campaigned on the airwaves and in the newspapers of our country, reporting the cases of abuse, payoffs and coverups, and attempting to force the American church toward a new honesty, a new toughness; and to those who have called on Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law to resign, to offer up his career as a sacrifice to demonstrate in a dramatic and unmistakable way that the leaders of the American church have been wrong in their coverups, regret them, feel shamed by the abuse of teenage boys and will begin to clean the church; to all of these people I suspect the pope’s letter seemed both necessary and, sadly, insufficient.

It was heartening that the pontiff broke his silence, heartening that he did not say that priests who prey are only sick, which is how the American cardinals have treated them in the past.

The pope did not say some things that many if not most—I think almost all—Catholics here yearn to hear. He did not speak of defrocking the abusers, of defrocking serial seducers of the young and their protectors. And he did not speak of the victims of abuse and their families, except to assert the church always intends to treat them justly and with sympathy.

But it has not always treated them justly, truthfully and with sympathy, not on our shores.

*   *   *

Some have already said the pope’s statement seems to reflect a mindset in which the church in this drama is more victim than victimizer. I do not think that can fairly be inferred from his letter, but I’m afraid neither can this: a sense that the pope has fully absorbed that the scandal in the American church is not just a heartbreaker but a potential history-changer.

The most ardent American Catholics I know, and an imperfect and sinful lot they are, and I would know as I am one of them, but the most ardent Catholics I know, the ones who are the church—who take the sacraments, go to church, get ashes, go to confession, visit the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of a busy day, who give money to the local church to fix the roof and get new computers for the local Catholic school, who love the church, adhere to it as best they can and hold it high—are the most angry, shocked and disgusted by the scandals. They do not in this tragedy defend the leadership of the American church, as they have in the past. They are not complaining that a few cases of misbehavior are being blown up by a hostile press to attack the church, as they have in the past. Instead they send each other e-mail attachments containing new reports of abuse, and they welcome calls from prominent Catholics such as Bill Buckley and Bill Bennett to clean out the stables.

For the first time in my lifetime ardent Catholics, or perhaps I should say orthodox Catholics, no longer trust their cardinals and bishops to do what’s right. They have pinned their hopes on the Vatican, and on the old warrior saint, JPII. They want him to hold up his silver crosier with the crucified Christ on the top and demand that priests who seduce teenage boys—or who sexually abuse, molest or seduce anyone—be thrown from the church, and that their protectors, excusers and enablers be thrown from it too.

As the scandal has escalated, the language used to describe it has become more shaded, more full of euphemism. Any scandal involving sex in the modern world will become in time an ideological/political scandal, and the little dishonesties of ideological discourse have worked their way into this drama. And as usual they haven’t made things any clearer. But here are some things that appear to be true of the overwhelming majority of the known cases: they involve not rape but seduction; they involve not a sole sin, mistake or indiscretion but a series of seductions by priests who are serial seducers; the seductions do not involve priests in pursuit of sexual relations with women or girls but of priests in pursuit of sexual relations with boys and young men; and most of the victims have been young male teenagers, not little boys.

*   *   *

How did this happen? How did we reach this pass? Perhaps great books will be written in answer to these questions. I think of the simple wisdom of an Irish Catholic grandfather in his 70s who has 11 children and 35 grandchildren and who always seems to be silently praying. He is a low-key leader who has led his family by example, and who is unkind about no one.

I asked him a few months ago if the church was having this trouble 50 years ago. He said no. I asked why. He said, “Because 50 years ago the church had a bigger pool from which to pick its priests.”

It’s true. Half a century ago in the American church the pool from which young seminarians were chosen was wide and deep, fed by belief, love, tradition and large families. But in the decades since, the world has changed, and the pool from which the church picked her priests became narrower, shallower. So much that had fed the pool dried up. America went on a toot—and I would know as I was at the party, as perhaps you were, though I must say the very best people I know seem not to have been. But America went wild in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, and the priesthood got fairly strange too.

Fifty years ago hale and eager young men entered the priesthood out of devotion and gave their celibacy and chastity to God as a gift, to join in His sufferings and deepen their commitment to serving others—to serving, that is, a family of strangers in a place called a parish. There were scandals here and there and problems; some priests left to marry, or for other reasons. But mostly it worked.

But in the past 30 years or so, many young men who were less clear-minded, who were ultimately less devoted, put themselves forth for the priesthood. And the church took them. Some, perhaps many, were sexually ambivalent, or confused, or burdened. Certainly some of them saw themselves as homosexual in their orientation, and some perhaps hoped the church’s very limits and strictures might help them, might protect them from their own desires. And some no doubt became priests in part in hopes they would find comfort surrounded by those who shared their burden.

In any case some of them rose, gained power, prestige and local respect, and became sexual bullies—predators who preyed on 12- and 14-year-old boys in their ambit. And they got away with it. And one priest saw another get away with it, and he tried to get away with it too.

*   *   *

The church turned a blind eye, not institutionally but in case after case, instance after instance, until it might as well have been institutional policy. And for a long time the church got away with it.

Why? Part of the answer is that so many of the serial seducer priests preyed on the powerless. They moved on adolescent boys in families in turmoil, teenage boys in families that had no connections, no status, no one to look out for them. They preyed on families without fathers. In fact, in some of the grimmer cases they were asked in by overwhelmed mothers who were trying to hold to the church in a rocky and dangerous world. The mothers wanted their sons to know a man they could look up to.

One wonders if those who run the American church fear that if they remove all the sex-abuser priests the church, which has a shortage of priests as it is, simply won’t be able to operate anymore. Local churches would close; schools would be understaffed. And this is perhaps the central reason—not the only reason but the biggest one—the cardinals have reassigned abusive priests, and sent serial seducers for psychotherapy, sending them back to parish work when they’d been “cured.”

But the pragmatism of the cardinals and bishops has resulted in scandal for the church—a scandal that will take at least a generation to heal. Now it has resulted in tragedy for the hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocent victims. And now it has resulted in shame and embarrassment for the faithful, striving and suffering priests who have done right, and not wrong, through the years. For they have been tarred by this, and badly.

People who call themselves pragmatic are often the least practical of people. The cardinals thought they were pragmatic.

*   *   *

The other day, like a fool, I thought to myself these words: The church needs a savior. This was followed by the thought: But the church has one. He is its meaning, its purpose, its light. He threw the abusers and predators out of the temple in a great rage; he said “Suffer the little children to come unto me” and gave the innocent His love. He hangs, crucified, on the top of the crosier carried by the pope.

If the Catholic Church throws out the evil priests, its Savior will no doubt see to it that good priests come forward to take their place. That Savior is after all the God of miracles.

Some cardinals have no doubt chosen to keep the sex-abuse stories quiet in order to protect the assets of the church. And in truth the church has assets that deserve protection—great cathedrals, great works of art, schools in which poor children and immigrant children are given a good education and where all are welcome no matter their faith. And local churches with high heating bills where new Americans and old Americans gather, work together, know each other.

The church does so much good! So much of what it is should be protected.

But not, of course, at the price of betraying what the church stands for. The Catholics I know, and I know all kinds, left, right and center, would rather see the cathedrals sold for condominiums than see the decay continue.

Which is where the old pope—the mover of mountains, defeater of tyrannies, killer of communism, holder to the faith whose most special gift has been his power to show the powerless of the world, the peasants, the workers with grim hands, that he was their protector, that he loved them in the name of the church—comes in.

The powerless need his protection now. They need that old crosier held up again, to tell the dirty wave to recede.

Which is why so many of us are hoping that what we heard this week will not be remembered by history as “the pope’s statement” but as “the pope’s first statement—the one that led to a great shaking of the rafters in 2002.”

I have a small thought. I would like to speak of it in a low-key manner. My thought is that we are all talking too much, or rather too dramatically—too colorfully, and carelessly—about things that are really quite dreadful. And we should stop it.

I will start with this: I have been thinking about hospitals for the psychologically and emotionally unwell, and how they run.

Now, there are many wicked people in the world, and some of them are stone evil, but some are also not at all sane. They are frighteningly obsessed or delusional; they have illusions of omnipotence, or no control over their impulses and desires; they hear voices, are unhinged by fantasies of rage and revenge, imagine that they are the reincarnation of Napoleon, or Saladin.

You can ponder whether Saddam Hussein is more evil than crazy or crazy than evil, but anyone who’s seen him on the news would likely conclude that Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber who failed to blow himself and 400 other people out of the sky, is quite clearly unstable.

And there are of course many Richard Reids. The problem in this age of weapons of mass destruction is that we don’t have one Saddam to worry about but cells of Saddams, rings of Reids, scores, hundreds of independent operators, some of whom are trying to create their own weapons of mass destruction, their own obliterates aimed at obliterating life in this place or that.

And many of them are not fully sane. Which is a problem. Which is why I’m thinking about mental institutions.

*   *   *

If you have ever worked in one or visited a friend in one, you’ve probably observed some things about how the unwell are treated. For instance: It is always wise when speaking to the unstable to speak softly if you can, and soothingly if possible. It isn’t good to be loud or theatrical in your subject matter or usage. It is wise not to speak with heightened drama, because for the unstable things are quite dramatic enough. They have storms going on inside them. They don’t need your howling verbal gusts. So, a general rule: Never excite the unstable.

At the same time some of the unstable are dangerous or potentially so, and this cannot be ignored. So it’s always good to be planning ahead. It is wise to be preparing restraints, to have areas in which the dangerous can be segregated from the general population, to have security guards who speak softly but, as they say, carry a big stick. It is wise to have serious plans for treatment, wise to make sure that they cannot get their hands on, say, the ingredients to build a bomb.

Nurses and doctors in such hospitals know all this, especially the part about not bringing unneeded drama to their patients. They do not tell someone who may behave violently, “We hate you and plan to do terrible things to you. The next time you are bad we’re going to kick you, punch you, push you in a hole and put a large cover on it. Then we’re going to cover you with Italian dressing, let you marinate overnight, and cook you.” That kind of language would less likely discourage dramatic action than summon it.

And that’s what I think we all ought to be keeping in our minds these days, how not to summon dramatic action from the marginally stable.

*   *   *

We are at war. This is a grave time. And yet in some ways we are being quite careless in what we are saying and how it might be received. We are being too colorful, too vivid, and unnecessarily so. We are acting as if we are not fully aware of the gravity of the moment.

One gets the sense, reading the newspapers and columnists and Web sites, and listening to news conferences, that we are talking too much these days, saying too much and saying it too graphically.

We are being noisy and clamorous.

We are frightening the inmates. This is not good.

*   *   *

“Let’s Nuke Em All!” Britain’s Daily Mail headlined this week. The story was about the U.S. government review of its nuclear capabilities. Someone—Mary McGrory wondered in her column if it was “doomsday planners” or “a subversive showoff”—leaked the news that the U.S. may be re-evaluating its nuclear posture, strategy and potential targets with an eye to breaking the taboo on tactical nuclear weapons. The New York Times, one of the great newspapers of the world and received by some in the world as a voice of the West, ran an editorial in which it likened America to a “rogue state.” A columnist in the Boston Globe said President Bush is “as frightening as al Qaeda.”

All of this of course followed the previous week’s story of secret plans to invade Iraq.

On Wednesday, President Bush took to the airwaves in an informal news conference and refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in the war, explaining that his position was “a way to say to people who would harm America: Don’t do it. . . . There’s a consequence.”

Indeed there is, and it would no doubt be terrible. But one wonders if this subject is not better confined to a grave and formal speech to the nation from a somber president, and not served up along with teasing of the press—“That you, Stretch? Oh, it’s Superstretch”—and jokes about the length and complexity of follow-ups. Perhaps this is the White House’s way of showing the president is utterly unrattled by the facts of the new world. But there are other ways to show that he is unrattled, if that has to be shown.

*   *   *

Why are we being so careless and colorful, so offhand, at a time when what faces us is so somber? Maybe we in the media are not thinking of the impression we make en masse, all together, on the world. We think of the impression we make individually, not as part of a media wave that rolls over the globe each day.

And people, even the most sophisticated, tend to project some of their inner world on the outer world around them. The unstable see themselves surrounded by threats, or secret signs. But the stable have illusions too. People who are sane tend to project sanity onto others. Those who, like the writers at great Web sites and great newspapers, are fully stable, imagine that their thoughts and words are received by the stable. And of course that is true. Except when it isn’t.

What they think and write and say is also disseminated throughout the world of America’s enemies, and is not always received in a way that is sober and measured. Some of those who see, on the computer in their home outside Tehran, the headline “Let’s Nuke Em All!” will take it quite literally. They will receive it as yet another reason to get back to work packing the dirty nuke into the backpack. The man who leaked the nuclear review story perhaps thought he was making the world safer—that everyone would understand it as he did. But not everyone will.

*   *   *

“Children will listen,” the old song says. But so will the fragile and mad, and it’s not good to excite them. We should not be leaking that we are reviewing our nuclear capacity; we should be quietly reviewing it. We should not be reporting in hyperventilated tones the review of nuclear policy; we should remember that this only feeds the sickness of those who mean us harm. We should be very quietly debating in the offices of government what an appropriate response would be to the bombing of America; we should reach conclusions, create a plan, and very quietly tell the leaders of the real rogue nations exactly what will happen to them, and to the terrorists who slumber within their borders, if they should dare to bomb an American city. Our words should be blunt little bombs whispered in the ears of Arab leaders in a manner that leaves them with the kind of ringing headache you sometimes get when you’re told terrible news that is true.

But we should probably not be having chatty conversations about whether or not it would be a good idea to take out Mecca.

This is not censorship, it is using judgment in a time of war. It is awareness that projecting stability and sanity onto others, while polite and even touching, is not always warranted.

We should lower our voices, and be chary with words. As if we were well-meaning professionals in an asylum who want to keep everyone safe, and help the sick, and keep them safe as possible too.