Peggy Noonan

My most central hopes for 2019 involve, as yours likely do, peace at home and abroad. But I also hope very particularly for personal testimony from those who know whereof they speak. I want those who have worked with President Trump to tell us what it is like in this White House. And I want them to put their name on it.

How does he really operate each day? What do you see as you witness him doing his job?

The press reports he watches television for hours, is inattentive to briefings, doesn’t read, rants, rages, nurses petty resentments, doesn’t listen to those with expertise, doesn’t understand the constitutional limits on his office, is increasingly alone and paranoid. Are these things true?

What else is true? Would you trust him to handle a situation in which sound and immediate decisions had to be made in a clock-ticking crisis? Would you trust him to lead honestly and credibly through a crisis?

Two years is enough time to know. It is enough time to have observed and come to conclusions. It’s enough time to describe with confidence how things really are.

Candor couldn’t be more important than now and in the coming year, which will be politically fraught.

Next week Democrats take control of the House. They will certainly launch new investigations, and impeachment will become more prominent in the national discussion. Special counsel Robert Mueller will at some point report his findings to the Justice Department. Whatever his report contains it will not be compliments, and may include offenses Democrats and others judge impeachable. Tensions will be high and nonstop.

And that’s just one area of life, the president and Congress. Add a deeply unpredictable world and surprise events. Things aren’t going to get calmer, more stable, more placid and predictable in the coming year. Nor will the president.

Why do those who have worked with Mr. Trump so rarely if ever speak in any depth, in public, of their experience? Courtesy—it is traditional to serve quietly and leave discreetly. Fear—once you speak critically of a president, you’re a target. And maybe some aren’t sure what to think. A lot of people in the White House have never worked in one before. It takes time to figure out the difference between the weird and disturbing and the merely idiosyncratic. But again, two years—by now you should know.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said a great deal in his resignation letter, but between the lines. He strongly believes “our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.” We need to treat our allies with “respect.” We must be “clear-eyed” about strategic competitors such as China and Russia. Mr. Mattis’s own views are “informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.” “Because you have the right to have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

He was saying the president does not treat allies and alliances with respect, is inexperienced, is not clear-eyed regarding some strategic threats. There was not a word of praise for the president, nor an expression of personal gratitude. Instead, “I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.”

For this oblique criticism, marked more by what was unsaid than what was said, Mr. Mattis was told to clean out his desk and leave before he had planned.

It was a good letter. But one letter isn’t enough.

The Trump supporters I know are motivated by patriotism, not spleen, bigotry or bitterness. They are so loyal to their man in part because they see all the forces arrayed against him, especially in the media. They believe, legitimately, that he gets only grudging credit for his accomplishments. And they have told themselves a story about the brave if unlikely outsider who sacrificed his own comfort to upend a corrupt system and protect the interests of the common man.

They will never believe the mainstream media when they say this presidency is unstable, dangerous, a threat.

Journalists are sometimes puzzled by this. After all, their books and articles are full of unsparing facts and observations about the president—and those quotes came from White House staffers and other administration officials. But those officials speak not for attribution. They are not named. Trump supporters will not believe anyone who won’t put his name on it, and whose motives are unclear.

But they will believe the generals. They will believe those who’ve worked in the administration in substantial positions and who can define what isn’t working and what the chaos means—with examples. They will believe serious people who gave an inexperienced president a chance, who joined his administration when others were reluctant, who put their careers on the line and tried to help the country.

They will believe those whose motives are clear and constructive.

They won’t believe someone like Omarosa, who wrote a book when she left the White House calling the president a cynic, a “racist, misogynist, and bigot.” They’d see her as a scatty show-business creature who got fired and is hitting back.

They won’t believe the words of “Anonymous,” author of the September New York Times op-ed that became a sensation. “The president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic,” that person wrote. “The root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” The president’s impulses are “generally . . . anti-democratic.” Meetings with him “veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions.” His behavior is “erratic” and is regularly thwarted by “unsung heroes” of the internal resistance.

This electrified the media and reinforced the views of Trump foes, but to my observation left Trump supporters coolly unimpressed. Unsung heroes? Who brokered this, a book agent? Anyone can protect his post-White House reputation with an anonymous hit piece, anyone can rationalize staying in a cushy job. Anyone can shore up his ideological bona fides so he’s not shunned later on by the people who matter to him. The piece seemed written not to expose a problem but to cover the tracks of a self-valorizing staffer who wants both to enjoy the White House and not be tainted by it. It was a career move, not a patriotic one.

Trump supporters will not believe the testimony of unnamed people with unknown motives. They will believe only the testimony of serious people who are obviously patriots.

Turnover has been high in this administration. Many have been fired or resigned. They should tell us what they know.

Those who did that would certainly become a target of the president’s operatives. They might for a time become figures of obloquy. They’d be called rats.

But if you do see this president as ultimately dangerous, you have a responsibility to say it.

We need some noble rats.

May they come forward, speak softly, and make their motives clear.

I didn’t intend to write on Andrew Roberts’s biography of Winston Churchill, because so many smart people have written on it so well. Also, I don’t belong to the Churchill cult. He was a great man, arguably the greatest of the 20th century, and right on the central question of his age, the meaning of Hitler. He had both political and literary genius, the first Western political figure of whom that could be said since Lincoln. He was brave and he was a visionary; he understood and wrote about the implications of splitting the atom long before it was split. He was also a person of titanic self-regard driven by a sense of destiny that occasionally verged on the half-mad. He made blunders for which others suffered and forgave himself too quickly and too much. And he was bloody-minded. “I love this war,” he confided to a friend at the height of World War I, when he was first lord of the admiralty. “I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment—and yet—I can’t help it—I enjoy every second of it.”

He did. War was opportunity. He didn’t think the lights were going out all over Europe, he thought the lights were about to shine brightly on his name.

And yet. What a warm and splendid book Mr. Roberts’s biography is. It is intelligent and fluid; he doesn’t lard things up to show you the depth of his research, but tells you what is important, with verve and sympathy. As you read you trust his judgment.

It reminds me what a moving life Churchill’s was, and what a struggle. His father, who treated him as an afterthought, did not live long enough to admire him; his mother became fully invested in him only once she understood he was a winner and would reflect well on her. His response to their neglect was a love that looks very much like gallantry.

Mr. Roberts gives fresh attention to the meaning and origin of Churchill’s domestic policies, which were central to his political life and usually get short shrift.

This feels pertinent now. Some readers will have found themselves the past few years, even before Donald Trump, certainly since the wars and the crash of 2008, revisiting and questioning political stances and assumptions they’d previously held with confidence. That questioning has been playing out in this space since 2005. For some Republicans, the question has been whether to change the party or leave it. For some Democrats, it’s “Am I completely comfortable in a party that appears to be charging, culturally and economically, to the hard left?”

Churchill, elected to Parliament as a Tory and from an ancestral Tory family, crossed the aisle early in his career and joined the Liberals. He later rejoined the Conservatives. Mostly this was due to his sense of what was required at that moment in terms of policy. He had a shrewd sense of the lay of the land; for all his intellectual flights he believed in realism. Like a true aristocrat, Mr. Roberts notes, he was not a snob; he had a filial respect for and sense of responsibility toward “the masses.”

The proximate reason for his bolting the Tories was high tariffs; he was a free trader. But more was at play. His early political career was marked by a gradual coming to terms with the England he was seeing all around him and its ossified politics and parties. He had believed, in Mr. Roberts’s words, “that social reform was not the exclusive preserve of the Liberals but could be appropriated by what he called ‘the Tory democracy.’ ”

But they weren’t good at appropriating. Churchill came out for the progressive income tax, with total exemptions for the poor. He backed the “minimum standards of life and labour,” policies that came to be the basis of the modern welfare state.

But free markets and competition mattered to him. Social spending was desirable—“spread a net over the abyss”—but it depended on “the existing competitive organization of society.” We need private enterprises, he said, “and do not grudge them their profits.” He opposed socialism. Were the early Christians socialist in spirit and practice? “The Socialism of the Christian era was based on the idea of ‘All mine is yours,’ ” he said. The socialism of the Labour Party “is based on the idea that ‘All yours is mine.’ ”

When he turned on the Tories it was wonderful work. They and the “protectionist manufacturers” say they support tariffs “because they love the working man,” he said in a speech in Manchester. “They love the working man, and they love to see him work.”

He was vivid, not vague, about his changes of mind. He told voters, “I admit I have changed my party. I don’t deny it. I am proud of it.” He didn’t think the Tories were an especially moral lot, and he didn’t think they saw the nation or its needs clearly. “I am delighted that circumstances have enabled me to break with them while I am still young and still have the first energies of my life to give to the popular cause.” He told his constituents he had plenty of loyalty—not to a party, but to them.

Years later, when he popped back to the Tories—he had a way of joining each party just before it began its ascent—he acknowledged what people were saying behind his back, and defused it with laughter. “Anyone can rat,” he said, “but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.”

He was candid in other ways. He rudely opposed women’s suffrage and said only “undesirable classes” of women wanted the vote. Suffragettes were rude right back, hounding him at his rallies and ringing bells to drown out his voice. He admitted he found it difficult to change his mind. “I was steadily moving forward to the position of whole-hearted supporter” of women’s rights, but he had been “much put off” by their efforts to curtail his speech and didn’t want to be seen “giving way” to such tactics.

It is good when politicians are frank about their opponents’ methods, and reasonable to admit you don’t want to appear to be bowing to them. Nobody likes to be bullied.

Something especially pertinent to this moment: Churchill was a warrior who threw insults like lightning bolts. He fought hard for his side. But he said political division “does not in my mind prejudice personal relations.” He was broad in his friendships, which encompassed figures of left, right and center. Mr. Roberts notes he was “privately affable” with friends and foes. He dined with the Fabian socialist Beatrice Webb. He separated politics from personal friendship, in part, Mr. Roberts implies, because he understood we are not only political beings. His openness was misunderstood by people “who assumed he was being insincere either in the friendship or in the politics. In fact he was being neither.” If he liked you or valued your mind, you were in.

This old style should be made new again.

And Merry Christmas. May you reconsider whether someone is really a foe, and if he is, dine with him anyway.

Fox News’ year-end poll is interesting. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said they would vote today to re-elect President Trump, with 30% saying they definitely would. Thirty-nine percent say they expect him to be re-elected; 52% do not. At the same time, the president has a 46% job-approval rating, while 52% disapprove.

So the president’s approval numbers have been more or less steady, but not all those who approve of him are ready to vote for him again.

Possible reasons why are suggested deeper in the poll. The proportion who think the economy will be better a year from now has fallen 11 points since two years ago, to 45%—the most pessimistic outlook in Fox’s poll since January 2001. Fifty-one percent say the economy is either fair or poor; 47% see it as excellent or good.

Equally interesting, respondents approve of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation by 56% to 37%—a 19-point margin. Forty-eight percent say they believe the Trump campaign coordinated with the government of Russia in 2016, while 37% see no coordination. Four in 10 expect Mueller will find evidence of crimes, while just over half of those polled do not think they will be impeachable offenses.

In a way the president’s position is solid—his support is not melting down after the midterms and his party’s loss of the House—and in a way not solid at all. He’s not expanding his base. Voters who approve of his leadership give themselves plenty of wiggle room in terms of support, showing skepticism about the economy and open-mindedness on the Mueller probe.

The poll suggests that if the president fires Mr. Mueller, he will pay a hellacious price in public opinion, with even his core experiencing some bleed.

The poll left me thinking of what a high-ranking Republican who himself was once considered a possible president said last week in conversation in Washington. He knows the president and the White House, and he certainly knows politics. He speculated aloud on a hunch he’s had that Mr. Trump might not run for re-election. Think of it, he said. Unrelenting bad news is likely coming—final findings from Mr. Mueller, a new and hungry Democratic House, more investigations, little bipartisanship, economic uncertainty. It’s not going to be fun; the outlook for re-election will dim.

So, the politician said, imagine this: The president wakes up one morning and announces that, actually and amazingly, he’s accomplished everything he set out to do when he ran in 2016—cut taxes, appointed judges, faced off with China, made better trade deals, controlled immigration, improved the outlook for financial markets. “I accomplished in four years what other guys couldn’t do in eight!” the president says: “My work is done!”

And he’s gone. The politician thought this just might happen.

Since we’ve already begun to look toward 2020, a thought on what we’ve been doing the past few cycles.

Here is my concern: Politics is part theater, part showbiz, it’s always been emotional, but we’ve gotten too emotional, both parties. It’s too much about feelings and how moved you are. The balance is off. We have been electing magic ponies in our presidential contests, and we have done this while slighting qualities like experience, hard and concrete political accomplishment, even personal maturity. Barack Obama, whatever else he was, was a magic pony. Donald Trump too. Beto O’Rourke, who is so electrifying Democrats, also appears to be a magic pony.

Messrs. Obama and Trump represented a mood. They didn’t ask for or elicit rigorous judgment, they excited voters. Mr. Trump’s election was driven by a feeling of indignation and pushback: You elites treat me like a nobody in my own country, I’m about to show you who’s boss. His supporters didn’t consider it disqualifying that he’d never held office. They saw it as proof he wasn’t in the club and could turn things around. His ignorance was taken as authenticity. In this he was like Sarah Palin, another magic pony.

After two wars and an economic crisis, Mr. Obama gleamed with hope and differentness. This shining 47-year-old intellectual—surely he’ll turn things around. He’d been an obscure and indifferent state legislator who was only two years in the U.S. Senate when the move to make him president began. It was all—a feeling. He was The One. Mr. O’Rourke, who’s shooting up in the polls as a possible Democratic contender, is sunny, friendly, even-keeled. He reminds some Democrats of Bobby Kennedy—soulful, able to see and summon the things you like best in yourself. He even looks like a son of Bobby Kennedy. He is 46, has served only six years in the House, and before that was on the City Council of El Paso, Texas.

Our public political culture has given in too much to emotionalism. Last week at the George H.W. Bush funeral, which functioned as a two-hour portal into the old America, something was unsatisfying. Bush’s political life spanned 30 years. He had a way of seeing the world, thoughts and assumptions about it, a point of view, and these things had an impact on history. But most everyone speaking, and most in the pews, spoke not of the meaning of these things but of his personal qualities. That has its place, but we are talking history here, and the thoughts that produce it. The same was true at John McCain’s funeral.

We are highlighting emotions in our public life at the expense of meaning. And again, emotions are part of life and part of us, but only part, not the whole.

An exultant Chris Christie, cruising to re-election as governor of New Jersey in 2013, told me in an interview what writers don’t understand about modern politics. He said, “They misunderstand what people want from someone in political life right now.” Voters “want someone who’s going to solve their problems. And who’s gonna be practical. . . . And who has a philosophy that they can live with.” Pundits are always trying to check off issues on a list, “and I don’t think that’s what politics is. Politics is a feeling. It’s a visceral reaction to someone. Especially when you’re voting for an executive.”

I didn’t say so at the time, but I personally disapproved: Politics isn’t only a feeling, it’s about thought and judgment, it’s about matters of the head and the heart. But I remember after I quoted him the number of smart people who did not see it differently, who said that guy is pretty smart.

But sober judgment, serious accomplishment, deep knowledge and personal maturity are most important in our political leaders, because of the complexity of the problems we face. History will be confounded that at such a crucial time, trying to come up with a plan to address such issues as artificial intelligence and robotics and the future of work and a rising China and the stresses of the nuclear world, we kept choosing magic ponies and hoping for the best.

I feel it needs to be said again: George Herbert Walker Bush should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership during the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was an epic moment in modern world history, and a close-run thing. “One mishap and much could unravel,” former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said, in his eulogy, of those days when the wall was falling, the Warsaw Pact countries rising and the Soviet Union trying to keep its footing as it came to terms with its inevitable end. Patience and shrewdness were needed from the leader of the West, a sensitive, knowing hand.

In “A World Transformed” (1998), Bush described his public approach as being marked by “gentle encouragement.” It caused him some trouble: “I had been under constant criticism for being too cautious, perhaps because I was subdued in my reaction to events. This was deliberate.” He didn’t want to embarrass or provoke. He reminded Mikhail Gorbachev, at the December 1989 Malta summit, that “I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall.”

It was Bush’s gift to be sensitive even to Soviet generals who were seeing their world collapse around them. He knew a humiliated foe is a dangerous foe—and this foe had a nuclear arsenal. He slowly, carefully helped ease Russia out of its old ways and structures, helped it stand as its ground firmed up, and helped divided Germany blend together peacefully, fruitfully.

You’d think the world would have been at his feet, and the prizes flying in from Oslo. It didn’t happen. Why?

Here’s a theory: Bush’s achievement wasn’t seen for what it was, in part because America in those days was still going forward in the world with its old mystique. Its ultimate grace and constructiveness were a given. It had gallantly saved its friends in the First World War, and again in the Second; it had led the West’s resistance to communism. It was expected to do good.

Having won the war, of course it would win the peace. It seemed unremarkable that George Bush, and Brent Scowcroft, and a host of others did just that.

Bush was the last president to serve under—and add to—that American mystique. It has dissipated in the past few decades through pratfalls, errors and carelessness, with unwon wars and the economic crisis of 2008. The great foreign-affairs challenge now is to go forward in the world successfully while knowing the mystique has been lessened, and doing everything possible to win it back.

Bush came to be somewhat defensive about his reticence in those days. As a former aide I respected his caution, his sense that the wrong move could cause things to go dark at any moment. But I saw it differently: This was a crucial event in the history of the West, and its meaning needed stating by the American president. There was much to be lauded, from the hard-won unity of the West to Russia’s decision to move bravely toward new ways. Much could be said without triumphalism.

It is a delicate question, in statecraft as in life, when to speak and when not to. George Bush thought it was enough to do it, not say it, as the eulogists asserted. He trusted the people to infer his reasoning from his actions. (This was his approach on his tax increase, also.) But in the end, to me, leadership is persuasion and honest argument: This is my thinking. I ask you to see it my way.

Something deeply admirable, though: No modern president now considers silence to be an option, ever. It is moving to remember one who did, who trusted the people to perceive and understand his actions. Who respected them that much.

To the state funeral in the Washington Cathedral: Its pomp and ceremony served to connect Americans to our past and remind us of our dignity. In a way, it was a resummoning of our mystique. It was, for a moment, the tonic a divided nation needed.

There was majesty—the gleaming precision of the full-dress military, the flag-draped casket coming down the aisle, the bowed heads and hands on hearts, the bells tolling, the dignified solemnity.

For those of us in the pews there was none of the sadness and anguish that accompanies the leaving of a soul gone too soon, or tragically. This was a full life happily lived, and we were there to applaud, to see each other and say, “Remember that time?”

There was a sense of gratitude that the old man had, the past week, gotten his due. For decades the press and others had roughed him up—“wimp,” “lapdog.” His contributions had not been fully appreciated. Now they were. We were happy but not triumphalist.

We were reminded: History changes its mind. Nothing is set. A historical reputation can change, utterly. Sometimes history needs time and distance to see the landscape clearly.

And history is human. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the seniormost world leader, was there. Back home her party was in the middle of a battle to choose her successor, and she couldn’t afford to be gone. But when she heard of Bush’s death she said she had to come to Washington. She told reporters that without Bush, she “would hardly be standing here.” She had grown up in East Germany.

There was something else. She had told Bob Kimmitt, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, that Bush had treated her “like a somebody when I was not.” Meeting with the obscure junior minister in the Oval Office in 1991, the president treated the young woman with great personal and professional respect. And so there she was this week, because history is human and how you treat people matters.

Two other points about the funeral. Its unembarrassed religiosity and warmly asserted Christianity were beautiful, and refreshing. The burial rite was from the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, and it was a great and moving moment when the presiding bishop, Rev. Bruce Curry, met the flag-draped coffin at the Great West Doors and said: “With faith in Jesus Christ, we receive the body of our brother George for burial.” Such simple, humble, egalitarian words. “Our brother George.” The frozen chosen done themselves proud.

And there was a consistent message in the speeches. George Bush in his 94 years asked for and received everything—a big, loving family, wealth, position, power, admiration. But the lesson of that life was clear: He worked for it, he poured himself into it. He gave it everything he had. He made sacrifices to be who he was.

We gave a lot of attention to his life this week, in part because we want to remind ourselves that such fruitful lives are possible. We want to show the young among us what should be respected and emulated, and that public service can be a calling, and that calling brilliantly met.

This was a good man, a brave one who proved himself solid when major edifices of the world were melting away. He was kind and gentle.

And he loved America.

We were lucky to have him—the steady one, the sensitive one. The diplomat.

December marks the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. There are many recent retrospectives on the scandal that led to it, including former Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s mildly indignant “Contempt” and Alex Gibney’s superb documentary series “The Clinton Affair.”

As I look back 20 years on, I’m more indignant about some aspects, less about others.

I didn’t believe the story when I first heard it—presidents and staffers don’t carry on like that. When I came to see it was true, I was angry. I wrote angrily in these pages.

I see it all now more as a tragedy than a scandal. I am more convinced than ever that Mr. Clinton made the epic political miscalculation of the 20th century’s latter half. He had two choices when news of the affair was uncovered: tell the truth and pay the price, or lie and hope to get away with it.

If he’d told the truth, even accompanied by a moving public apology, the toll would have been enormous. He would have taken a hellacious political beating, with a steep slide in public approval and in stature. He would have been an object of loathing and ridicule—the goat in the White House, a laughingstock. Members of his party would have come down on him like a ton of bricks. Newt Gingrich and the Republicans would have gleefully rubbed his face in it every day. There would have been calls for impeachment.

It would have lasted many months. And he would have survived and his presidency continued.

Much more important—here is why it is a tragedy—it wouldn’t have dragged America through the mud. It only would have dragged him through the mud. His full admission of culpability would have averted the false testimony in a criminal investigation that became the basis for the Starr report and the two articles of impeachment the House approved.

The American people would’ve forgiven him for the affair. We know this because they’d already forgiven him when they first elected him. There had been credible allegations of affairs during the 1992 campaign. Voters had never thought highly of him in that area. His nickname the day he was inaugurated was “Slick Willie.”

If he had chosen the path of honesty, Americans wouldn’t have backed impeaching him, because they are adults and have also made mistakes and committed sins. They would have been more like the grand-jury member who spoke comfortingly to Monica Lewinsky as she wept near the end of her testimony: “Monica, none of us in this room are perfect. We all fall and we all fall several times a day. The only difference between my age and when I was your age is I get up faster.” That is the sound of an American looking in the face of remorse.

And we know Mr. Clinton would have been forgiven because in September 1998—after the Starr report was released, amid all the mud and lies and jokes about thongs and cigars—a Gallup poll asked, “Based on what you know at this point, do you think that Bill Clinton should or should not be impeached and removed from office?” Sixty-six percent answered “should not be.”

Bill Clinton, political genius, didn’t understand his country’s heart.

And so he lied: “I want you to listen to me. . . . I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”—and the year of hell, the cultural catastrophe, followed. That’s what it was, a year in which 8-year-olds learned about oral sex from the radio on the way home from school, and 10-year-olds came to understand that important adults lie, angrily and consistently, and teenagers knew if the president can do it, I can do it. It marked the end of a certain mystique of leadership, and it damaged the mystique of American democracy. All of America’s airwaves were full of the sludge—phone sex and blue dresses. The scandal lowered everything.

It was a tragedy because in lying and trying to protect himself, Mr. Clinton was deciding not to protect America. And that is the unforgivable sin, that he put America through that, not what happened with Monica.

Mr. Clinton’s foes made the catastrophe worse. The independent counsel was obliged by law to “advise the House of Representatives of any substantial and credible information . . . that may constitute grounds for an impeachment.” The Starr report ran 452 pages and contained an astonishing level of sexual detail, of prurient, gratuitous specificity. Congress could have withheld it from the public or released an expurgated version. It didn’t have to be so humiliating. But Mr. Clinton’s enemies made sure it was.

Almost immediately on receiving the Starr report, Congress voted to release it in full, “so that the fullest details of his sins could be made public,” as Ken Gormley writes in his comprehensive 2010 history of the scandal, “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr.” They put it up on the web. Its contents wound up on every screen in America, every newspaper, every television and radio.

Lawmakers released the videotape of Mr. Clinton’s grand-jury testimony, so everyone could see the handsome presidential liar squirm.

Mr. Starr’s staffers said they needed extremely detailed, concrete specificity to make the American people understand what happened. At the time I assumed that was true in a legal sense. Now I look back and see mere blood lust and misjudgment.

I see the desire to rub Mr. Clinton’s face in it just as he’d rubbed America’s face in it.

Top to bottom, left to right, a more dignified government, one that cared more about both America’s children and its international stature, would have shown more self-restraint and forbearance. And there might have been just a little pity for the desperate, cornered liar who’d defiled his office.

It wouldn’t have so ruined the life of a woman who, when her relationship with the president commenced, was only 22. She paid a steeper reputational price than anyone. Charles Rangel, at the time a senior Democratic congressman, said on television that she was a “young tramp.” The White House slimed her as a fantasist. She went into hiding, thought about suicide.

And in the end, 20 years later, she put the Clintons to shame.

Publicly for two decades she has reacted with more style and dignity than they, said less and with less bitterness and aggression, when they were the ones with all the resources, and a press corps eager to maintain good relations with them because Hillary would surely one day be president.

Monica told her side and kept walking, and even refrained from blaming her shaming on the Clintons. Feminists abandoned and derided her. She took it all on her back and bore it away. In my book, after all this time, she deserves respect.

Sometimes America gets fevers. They don’t so much break as dissipate with time. Twenty years ago we were in a fever. Others will come. The thing to do when it happens is know it’s happening, notice when the temperature is high, and factor it in as you judge and act, realizing you’re not at your best. Twenty years ago, almost none of our leaders were.

Since tradition is on our mind I’ll tell you of one that has been happening in a Manhattan home the past 20 years or more. A core of a few dozen old friends and relatives, enlivened by surprise guests—once we had an Indian maharajah in a turban—gather with their children for Thanksgiving. It’s a varied, bubbling, modern crew: former spouses, co-workers, step children, the woman across the street. Every year after dinner we put on a play about Thanksgiving. Everyone takes part—a broadcast journalist is Samoset, a grade-schooler is a Pilgrim woman, a businessman is Lincoln.

There is a narrator, whose job it is to intone: “In the year of our Lord 1609 a hardy group of dissenting Christian Protestants, called Pilgrims, left their native England in hopes of finding religious freedom abroad. They tried Holland, but it didn’t work. And so they decided to leave old Europe, and journey to what was called . . . the New World.”

In September 1620 they set sail from Plymouth, England, on a ship called the Mayflower. Aboard were about 100 passengers, among whom roughly were 40 were Pilgrims, who came to call themselves Saints. The remaining were called Strangers, not religious dissenters necessarily but a mixed lot of tradesmen, debtors, dreamers and I hope a brigand or two. If you’re going to start a new nation it might as well be an interesting one.

The journey would be long, just over two months, and hard. The seas were high, the wind against them, hunger spread, disease followed. People got on each others’ nerves. Disagreements arose among Saints and Strangers.

Here the kids read their parts with great enthusiasm.

SAINT: “Stranger, you do not worship as I do or dress as I dress. You are odd! This makes me want to ignore you, and forget to give you bread at dinner.”

STRANGER: “Saint, you people wear funny hats, and strange buckles on your shoes. You take your religion seriously, which is nice, but God wanted us to have a sense of humor, too. Please don’t be so stern and righteous.”

At this point of course comes forward Pilgrim leader William Bradford. He’s usually played by a distinguished guest.

BRADFORD: “Gentlemen and ladies, there is no need to fight. We are not enemies, but friends. We are fleeing Old Europe—together. We journey to a new home—together. We will make our lives on the new continent—together. Let’s think things through and create a new arrangement to better order our relations.”

And so they did. Meetings were held, debates ensued, agreement reached. There would be full equality between Saints and Strangers. They would govern themselves by majority rule. They would mark their unity by calling themselves by one name: Pilgrims. All the Pilgrim gentlemen signed this agreement, which they called the Mayflower Compact.

It was the first, great founding document of what would become the United States of America.

Here sometimes someone goes, “Hear, Hear!”

Now land is sighted, Cape Cod. A Pilgrim girls shouts “Land ahoe! Hard to starboard! Mainfast the jibney!” She’s talking gibberish because she’s excited: It’s the New World!

The Mayflower eventually finds a small natural harbor, named years before by Captain John Smith. It is called Plymouth. In time, one by one, the Pilgrims disembark and step upon Plymouth Rock.

Here—hokily, happily—we have a brief moment of silence.

Building a settlement is hard going, snow and sleet slow things. Almost half the Pilgrims died.

Then springtime, and a miracle. A lone Indian brave walked into the settlement. The Pilgrims were afraid—they’d never seen an Indian up close. The brave, Samoset, sensed and understood their fear, and said to them the one word he knew in English: “Welcome.”

They invited him to stay the night. He did, and later returned with another Indian named Squanto.

Our young friend George usually plays this part, because of his ebullience.

SQUANTO: “Hello. Good to meet you! I have known many English over the years. In fact I’ve been to England. The Captain of one of his majesty’s vessels took me there a few years ago. I learned the King’s English and people were good to me, and now I return the favor. I will teach you how to tap maple trees for sap to turn into syrup. I’ll show you which plants can be turned into medicine, and which are poisonous. I’ll teach you how to grow and harvest Indian Corn. I’ll show you where to fish.”

Squanto saved their lives. Harvests improved, and in time the Pilgrims had enough food to put away for winter—vegetables, fish packed in salt and cured over fires.

The Pilgrims wanted to thank God. And so their new governor—William Bradford, of compact fame—proclaimed a formal day of gratitude.

Here in the play Bradford stands and ringingly invites everyone—the settlers, Indians, parents and children, to meet, pray and thank Providence for the abundance with which they’ve been blessed.

Bradford’s speech gave us our sweetest memory of the play. Our friend Harry, editor and Englishman, had become an American citizen. He was so moved by Bradford’s words his voice broke. His wife hugged him, and we all went AAHHHHH.

Everyone came to the first Thanksgiving—Squanto and 90 braves and their families. There were foot races and games. The braves demonstrated their prowess with the bow and arrow, the Pilgrims with their muskets. One man played a drum. Everyone ate together at big tables and on blankets.

Years later, George Washington proclaimed a day of thanksgiving, as America won its war of independence. But it was Abe Lincoln who, in 1863, formally declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. In our play, as in his proclamation, he readily acknowledges the horror of the Civil War, but then takes a very American turn. There is much to celebrate. Peace has been preserved between America and all other nations. Harmony has prevailed everywhere except the theatre of direct battle. Our population has increased. We have every reason to expect a “large increase of freedom.” No human hand has done this. “(These) are the gracious gifts of the most high God.”

At the end, the players declare their hopes for the future:

SAMOSET: “For the broad establishment of peace,”

PILGRIM GIRL: “For the spreading of prosperity,”

SQUANTO: “For increases in human health, and great strides in the areas of human inquiry and invention,”

WASHINGTON: “For the continuance of our Republic,”

LINCOLN: “And the deepening of our democracy,”

BRADFORD: “That ye remember with special gratitude Squanto and his little ones and tribe, who were so very kind to the Pilgrims in those hard days long ago.”

*   *   *

And so our little play, put on again this year, in the heart of sophisticated Manhattan. I’m always struck: there’s such division in America, and so much country-love. I don’t know the political views of all our players. I’d put most as moderate liberals, with me a confessed conservative. But halfway through our show we are captains and Indians and presidents. We are moved by the story of how we began. We honor it. And we are not saints and strangers but pilgrims, together.

First lady of the United States is a hard job. It’s not formally defined yet entails many demands; it has an impact on history but no formal powers; it’s the focus of all eyes, but people like to make it clear nobody elected you. Its locus is the East Wing, which the West Wing considers the silly place. You must be guided by tradition but be open to novelty so no one accuses you of being boring.

Melania Trump has been a figure of sympathy, at least in this space, lauded for her grace, elegance and stoicism. She’s married to a man who, emotionally and intellectually, is not exactly in the middle of the bell curve. She wound up in a job she never particularly wanted, in a time of unprecedented national division. She has done it pretty well. She has brought chic, American glamour and beautiful manners to the world’s capitals. (There was the “I Really Don’t Care Do U?” jacket, but at least that was spirited.) She humbly presented a gift in a Tiffany box to the Obamas on Inauguration Day, while her husband forgot to help her out of their car. She has self-control, and the independence to disagree with her husband—when she said separating families at the border is no good, when she stood up for LeBron James after the president called him stupid. She’s slapped his hand away when he gropily attempts to portray normal unity. She’s put up with many scandals, some personally mortifying.

So it was a surprise to see her issue a hissy-fit of a statement about the deputy national security adviser, Mira Ricardel. “It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House.” Yowza.

Granted, Ms. Ricardel’s public reputation suggests she’s quite a blunderbuss. But Mrs. Trump’s statement added to—and included her in, for the first time—the White House’s reputation for chaos, the sense that nobody’s in charge, that it’s all factions, head-butting and rumors about who’s going to get fired next. Wednesday Politico had a quote from an unnamed former White House staffer describing the atmosphere: “It’s like an episode of ‘Maury.’ The only thing missing is a paternity test.”

Also it was kind of a Hillary Clinton move. It is not the first lady’s job to hire and fire national-security staffers, any more than it was Mrs. Clinton’s to design a new health-care system.

Modern first ladies are rarely sissies, but when they make their moves, they do so privately, not publicly. When Nancy Reagan didn’t want someone around, she was peerless at planting the seed and upping the pressure. But she never made a public declaration that forced the public to have a view.

The oddest thing about Melania’s statement is that it lessens her power. The essence of her power is that she is a mystery. No one knows what she’s thinking. No one knows how she really views her husband and his presidency. She keeps herself apart and carries an air of deliberate opacity. She’s never made the mistake of asking to be understood.

Now, in moving aggressively, she has shocked Washington and provided an opening for already bubbling stories that actually she’s rather willful and ignores good advice. Those stories will come.

Unforced error.

Here is what is for me the mystery of Michelle Obama: Like Melania she is glamorous and elegant, a beautiful woman and a disciplined one. I read her autobiography this week mostly to find the answer to a question.

I always wondered, knowing something of her life: Did she understand how fortunate she was? She won the Trifecta. Does she know it?

She came from a good family, solid and stable, which successfully transmitted love. Her parents’ economic circumstances were modest but stable—it wasn’t all foreclosures and moving and divorce and no money. And she was born with a solid, attaining mind, able to excel in academic work.

That is the Trifecta. People with that background these days are, no matter their color or economic level, almost American aristocracy. Solid family, solid framework, solid mind, built to rise—a lot of working-class Americans, white or black, would thank their lucky stars to come from that background. Most of them have to deal with brokenness, chaos, love that never coheres. And those things make it so much harder to live healthy constructive lives.

Love, stability and talent for something—there are a million kinds of talent to have—will set you firmly into the future. The rest is effort and luck, and Mrs. Obama had these too, working diligently and meeting a man with whom she could share an interesting life.

I had this question because when she was first lady, she often seemed to me to carry with her an air not of gratitude but of grievance.

The book makes clear she did know how fortunate she was, though she has struggled to incorporate it into her attitudes.

The best part focuses on her childhood. Her parents were fabulous. “My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word.” Her mother, Marian, “showed me how to think for myself and use my voice.” They provided guidance, order and affection. The Robinson family lived in the upstairs apartment of a tidy, two-story brick bungalow that was owned by a relative who taught piano and directed a church choir. It was in a middle-class, racially mixed neighborhood where people owned their homes. There were relatives all around.

She remembers sitting on her father’s lap hearing him narrate a Cubs game. He loved jazz and art, had a solid union job for the city of Chicago, and wore a uniform to work. Her mother taught her to read early and took her to the public library.

This was an aspirational family.

It was hard for her to go from a racially mixed grade school to largely black classrooms, and later to a 90% white university, where she felt a differentness that was painful—“poppy seeds in a bowl of rice.” She was demoralized by assumptions she was there because of affirmative action.

But I wondered if she knows how universal, how apart from race, some of her more painful memories are. She had a terrible experience in high school with her college-placement counselor. Her heart was set on Princeton. The counselor looked at her record—top 10% of her class, National Honor Society—and issued a swift, dismissive judgment: “I’m not sure that you’re Princeton material.” Michelle was crushed, traumatized—then galvanized: I’ll show you.

When I was entering high school my guidance counselor looked at my messy self, my up-and-down grades, and told me that in the future I might, if I applied myself, become a clerk or a secretary. College was not for me. I’ll never forget that either. Even then, with nothing behind me, I was dreaming of something different. I didn’t feel “I’ll show you!”; I felt shame and confusion. It seemed early to write me off.

And yet here we are.

Never let idiots stop you.

She went to Princeton.

I don’t see it as everyone does. To me the headline is that for the first time since the election of the most polarizing president in modern memory, the American people yielded a national verdict on his first two years of his governance. And it was not a sweeping rebuke.

A record 114 million Americans went to the polls and did what they tend to do in normal presidencies. Since World War II, the average loss for the president’s party in a midterm is 30 House seats. Mr. Trump’s party appears to have lost 35. (Barack Obama’s Democrats lost 63 in 2010.) This wasn’t the registering of a national rejection, more like business as usual.

For an outlandish president, business as usual is a bit of a boost.

Democrats threw everything they had into the battle—money, organization, passion. They got more votes than Republicans, but the election was also a test of what a friend calls the Democrats’ Death Star—the unprecedented mobilizing of the entire culture industry on their behalf. The “go vote” messaging was a tremendous effort, from the commanding heights of the culture, to make voting cool to Democratic-leaning groups, to make it a sign of existential goodness. And it did goose millennial turnout, but not enough to save Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum in Florida, Richard Cordray in Ohio, Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Stacey Abrams in Georgia.

Barack Obama took to the stump to no apparent effect. Oprah dazzled but couldn’t pull Ms. Abrams over the line. Taylor Swift informed her 112 million Instagram followers that Marsha Blackburn was the enemy. Everyone cheered. Mrs. Blackburn won by 11.

Showbiz ain’t what it used to be. America isn’t as simple as it seems.

What now? What will the Democrats do with the House?

We saw the mood of the moment in the Jacksonian melee of Wednesday’s news conference. The president was conciliatory until the mood passed. He’d “like to see bipartisanship,” but if Democrats come at him with new investigations, he will take a “warlike posture.”

The Democrats will launch new probes, in part because they can’t help themselves. It’s in their DNA, and they’re all jacked up on Watergate retrospectives in which the heroic congressman finds the searing truth and lectures the dart-eyed White House staffer.

A priority is said to be reinvestigating Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It still hurts so much. But several Democratic senators who voted against him lost. Democrats, for your own good and the good of the nation, suck it up. America has fought that battle. It ended how it ended. Grown-ups know when it’s over.

Two years of fruitless fighting seems inevitable, doesn’t it? But it will be hard on America, another demoralizing mess. There is a better way. It begins with the idea that deals are good, not bad. America would benefit from legislative agreements on health care, immigration, infrastructure.

First Democrats need to change their style. They have spent the past two years, since the beginning of the post-Clintonian era, hissing at hearings and wearing pink hats. They looked like fools. Sen. Claire McCaskill acknowledged it in the closing argument of her losing campaign: “I’m not one of those crazy Democrats.” They should try to present themselves now as a serious governing party, as people of stature.

They should wait for Robert Mueller’s findings, which will come soon enough. Until then any new probes should be few and orderly. A smarter way to operate would be for Democrats to move on legislation while holding the threat of investigations over the president’s head. The new speaker could confide to him in the Oval Office that he or she has personally stopped 16 probes this week, at some personal political cost.

Tuesday night gave party leaders new room to maneuver. For two years established Democrats have been freaked out by the rising progressives of their base. Those progressives are an angry lot, and demanding. But they just had a bad election. Their darlings fell. At the moment—just the moment—they should be tended to, but not feared.

Democrats should understand the president wants a deal. He’s in another circus phase; he needs to show he can roll with history’s punches. And there’s a sense he actually yearns for greatness. When he talks about deal-making he sounds almost wistful. He wants to do something big.

Do it with him. Newt Gingrich wasn’t the friend of the calculating, louche Bill Clinton, and Mr. Clinton didn’t like those mean-minded, selfish right-wingers. Yet together they made pretty good music—balanced budgets, welfare reform. It served their interests, but they also had a sense of historical responsibility. Democratic leaders in the House have to be equal to Newt in impulse control. It’s not a high bar!

They have the president at a disadvantage. He is a businessman who’s never had to answer to a board. His whole professional life it was him and his whims and his hunger and a series of organizations of which he was sole or principal owner. Democratic leaders should see themselves as his board. They’ve got a CEO they don’t like, but they’ve got some power and they’re using it to save the company. A united board can scare a CEO. Donald Trump up against a board will not be so sure-footed. He will agree to a lot of what you want.

Progress on illegal immigration and controlling the border would please the working class, show Democrats as capable, hearten the nation. And when the caravan walking north (and future caravans) know both major parties are against what they’re doing, they’ll stop it or slow down. They’re a caravan only because they know the American parties are divided, and they see an opening in that division.

Progress on immigration would require concessions from the Democrats, and might take a major issue away from the Republicans. But progress on health care would take concessions from Republicans and take a major issue away from Democrats. A deal there would almost certainly give Democrats a lot of what they want. But the president has signaled flexibility.

And it’s not as if such deal making would wound his political soul. He’s a moderate New York Democrat anyway. The play he should have made early on, as a unique political figure with a populist base, was always Chuck and Nancy, not Paul Ryan. Why not do it now?

Throughout the election it was clear Democrats couldn’t tell you who they are, and Republicans didn’t tell you what they’d do. They didn’t know; the president hadn’t told them. But sometimes when things are unclear, new possibilities emerge.

What politicians forget in the day to day, chest-deep in the fray, is the reason they are there. It’s not to serve themselves and their party. If you’re a member of Congress, it’s to represent a portion of America, a little sliver of the country, to see to its realities and interests while keeping an eye, first, on the nation as a whole.

This country could use some deals.

This is actually a time of promise and possibility because it’s a time of movement. Nancy Pelosi loves her country. So, I think, does Donald Trump. They should do something big for it, and not just devote themselves to two years of a fruitless fight.

We’re going to the polls and looking for leaders. What do we want? What a voter told Bret Baier a week ago, live from the campaign trail: someone she can cheer for. She was such an American, half hopeful, half wistful.

When people have real leaders, there’s a feeling of security: Somebody reliable is in charge. When a majority don’t feel that, there’s a sense of unrest, of jitteriness that filters out and down. America’s never at full peace, it’s not our style, but there’s a greater sense of soundness, and less frantic scrolling down for the latest horror, when you feel there are solid folk in office.

There are suddenly a lot of new books on leadership. I asked Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the easygoing yet scholarly “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” why. “Because we feel the absence of leadership now, not only in the president but in the Congress—the inability to get together and get things done.” When you lack something, you try to define exactly what it is so you can find it. We feel “a yearning for togetherness” and wonder which political figures might help set the nation in a common direction.

Ms. Goodwin asks questions in her book—“Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership?”—and suggests answers through profiles of leaders under duress. She focuses on personal qualities. Leaders assume responsibility for pivotal decisions, transcend personal vendettas, try all paths to compromise. She tells me a good leader has “an ambition for self that becomes an ambition for something larger.” Leaders remind us we’re citizens, “part of the American story,” not merely anxious spectators. “In every moment of our turbulent times it wasn’t just the leader who was present, it was the American people.”

In his magisterial new “Presidents of War,” Michael Beschloss notes that since the founding, presidents “have taken the American people into major wars roughly once in a generation.” They have too often “seized for themselves the power to launch large conflicts, almost on their own authority.” The founders would be “astonished and chagrined” that the “life or death of much of the human race has now come to depend on the character of the single person who happens to be the President.”

Mr. Beschloss tells me his thoughts go to the qualities of leadership that Americans should demand when choosing candidates for that office: probity, judgment and “towering empathy” for those Americans who fight and endure our wars. “Lincoln demanded that a new military cemetery be located where he could often see it, so that he would be painfully confronted with the terrible results of the decisions he was making.”

I add these thoughts on political leadership (and “he” includes “she”):

A leader is someone who first of all means it, and you can tell. He sincerely holds the views he espouses: He is serious. Advancing them is his project and purpose.

The ideas he stands for are not merely policy points on an issues matrix. They are held together by a central overarching intention. The new nation called America will survive and thrive while holding to its liberties. The Union must hold. The Cold War will be won, and we will win it. The intention springs from a general but discernible political philosophy.

Politicians who can’t turn the dots into a picture are not artists but failed pointillists. They don’t present a full picture. In the end it’s all just dots. No one ever voted for long for a dot.

Great leaders are capable of arguing for the things they believe in. They can make the case. They can make you think along with them, logically, from point A to point B and beyond. Their words aren’t emotional, as politicians’ tend to be now in an attempt to make a sated audience feel something. (And also because they’re confused about what eloquence is; they think it means fancy.) When leaders rely on logic and fact, voters do feel something: gratitude at the implied respect, and a feeling of warmth at membership in a community of thought and belief.

Eloquence in political leaders is desirable but not necessary. Too much is made of it even as the real thing disappears. It’s good if you can make the case in a way that is memorable, and that voters can hold in their heads. FDR and Reagan were great and eloquent. But Dwight Eisenhower led American forces through World War II, managed the early days of the Cold War, and built the interstate highway system. Yet listening to him talk was like making your way through children pillow fighting—lots of noise but nothing that made an impression. His actions were eloquent.

Good leaders live in the real world. They don’t insist on grand ideologies they can squish down on your heads. They know the facts and work within them. They respect reality.

A leader is aware he is the object of many eyes. This puts a responsibility on him to act in a certain way—with respect for his own dignity and yours. Even if he’s not in the mood, he must uphold standards of presentation. Children are watching and taking cues. That means the future is watching.

A leader isn’t just trying to survive for himself, to hold on to power. Yet a leader tries always to survive. Good leaders are survivors: That’s part of how they show loyalty to what they stand for, by being there to stand for it. How to survive? Shift strategies and tactics but not principles. And admit when you’re wrong, in part because it’s refreshing. Politicians so rarely do it.

A serious leader bothers to have command of the facts. Leadership isn’t all airy impulses, it’s knowing local and national facts because you’ve studied and absorbed them. You did the work.

A good leader knows the difference between stubbornness and perseverance. When you’re afraid to look like you backed down, to yourself or others, it’s stubbornness. When you’re willing to pay a price for where you stand, every day, it’s perseverance.

A shrewd leader knows what time it is. He watches each side and sees what tendency is coming up, and going down. In that movement he spies openings. A politician fully alive to signs and signals would have seen the meaning, in 2010, of the town hall uprising’s major cry: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” The media found it hilarious: these stupid Republicans hate ObamaCare but love their entitlements. Democrats saw it as hypocrisy, Republican professionals as schizophrenia. Few saw it for what it was: a new Republican populism was rising, one fully aligned to big state entitlements people felt they’d earned.

When you, the voter, aren’t presented with candidates who look like real leaders, what do you do? Pick the closest to the ideal. Fall back on the practical. Make do with what you have, which is what we usually do.

Mr. Beschloss, in an email: “Choose a candidate whose values and heart and life experience you feel comfortable with, so that you can feel confident about the vast majority of political decisions they will make, if elected, that you will never hear about.”

The attempted bombing of political figures is domestic terrorism meant to disrupt and intimidate. That it came to light less than two weeks before an election whose outcomes may constitute a national rebuke to—or soft boost of—President Trump’s controversial leadership means that passions are high and will stay so. Things are feeling primal, tribal.

There’s more than enough time before the voting for the gates of hell to open. Let’s try to keep them shut.

What can help? Some things I’d like to see:

It is crucial that law enforcement use every resource to find the bomber or bombers. They should do this not only actually but showily, to help return an air of order. All law enforcement should be extremely, unusually forthcoming about the facts and state of the investigation. We’re all tired of their swanning around after school shootings with their secret information we can’t have. Be as open as possible without injuring the investigation. This may help calm the finger pointing. “It was a left-wing false-flag operation!”

Everyone running for office should admit things have gotten too hot, too divided. Then they should try to cool the atmosphere. Next Tuesday will mark one week before the election. Candidates should devote the day to something different. It would be good to see every one give a speech or statement containing their most generous definition of the aims and meaning of the opposing party. A Democratic nominee might say, “Whether they always succeed or not, Republicans do want to protect the liberties that have allowed this nation become the miracle of the world.” A Republican might say, “At its best and most sincere, the Democratic Party hopes to help those in peril, and to soften disparities of wealth and opportunity.”

The dirty secret of most political professionals is that they do see virtues in the other party. And when you show respect for people, they tend to put down their rocks.

Does this sound dreamy or otherworldly? Yes. But a tender moment isn’t the worst thing that could happen to us right now, and enraged people will find it boring. We want them bored. And actually I don’t mean it as sentimental but reorienting—a reminder for some and an education for others about what it is we’re trying to do here.

Claire McCaskill, Sherrod Brown, let us hear you on what you know to be admirable in the Republican Party—and in Republicans. Ted Cruz, Martha McSally, the same from you on the Democrats. Show some largeness. We’re dying of smallness.

Both parties could absorb an essential truth of the moment.

Democrats really and sincerely see the threat of violent words and actions as coming from the right. It’s Mr. Trump—he’s hateful and has no respect and it sets a tone. He encourages fights at his rallies; he said the other night that a congressman who pushed around a reporter was his kind of guy. He calls the press the enemy of the people. He widens all divisions, mindlessly yet opportunistically. No surprise his adversaries are being sent bombs.

Republicans and the right truly, deeply see the threat as coming from the left. Rep. Maxine Waters and Sen. Cory Booker actually told crowds to get in Republicans’ faces; Hillary Clinton says you can’t treat them civilly. Republicans see the screamers and harassers at the Kavanaugh hearings, the groups swarming Republican figures when they dine in public, antifa. A man who wrote “It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” on Facebook didn’t insult Rep. Steve Scalise last year; he shot and almost killed him. The intimidation is coming from the left.

Trump supporters don’t take him seriously when he issues his insults. He’s kidding; he doesn’t mean it; he’s Trump. You’re lying when you say he makes you afraid.

But the left finds him, and some of his allies, honestly—honestly—dangerous.

Just as the right finds Ms. Waters and Mr. Booker and Mrs. Clinton and the swarms and the hissers and antifa honestly—honestly—the threat.

Neither side appreciates—neither side credits—the anxiety the other side legitimately feels. They have no sensitivity to it. They had better get some.

When conservatives see a liberal or progressive not condemning Mr. Booker or Ms. Waters, they assume it’s because the liberal agrees with what they say—that intimidation is part of the plan.

There is too much blindness to how the other side is experiencing the situation. It’s in the news media, too. Politicians should have a greater awareness of their own role in the drama.

Thursday morning New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was on television, saying words that were meant to be helpful. We’re not Democrats and Republicans really, he said, we’re Americans; we can’t be divided. It was good, he clearly meant it. But he spoke as if he had no memory of strikingly divisive words he’d uttered just a few years ago. In January 2014 he said of those who are pro-life, pro-traditional-marriage and pro-gun that they are “extreme conservatives” who have “no place in the state of New York.” No place in the state of New York? That is an extreme and aggressive statement, and it speaks of how too many progressives and liberals feel about conservatives. This kind of thing isn’t new, and it’s contributed to the moment we’re in.

Politicians, don’t lecture us. Clean up your own side of the street.

As to the president, one thought. He will never lead effectively at moments like this because he can’t. It’s not within his emotional range or in his intellectual toolbox. The targets of the would-be bombs have been his antagonists. He’s not believable when he issues pained vows of unity. Everyone assumes his staff told him to do it and in a burst of amiability he did. When he’s obnoxious, people believe he’s speaking his mind.

Mr. Trump has ushered in a new presidential era of verbal roughness. At his rallies he sees himself as being provocative and humorous and teasing. His crowds know he is entertaining them and they have fun back, re-enacting their old 2016 fervor with “Lock her up!” and “Build the wall!” They don’t emerge whipped into a rage; they leave in a good mood, though tired from standing so long because he speaks so long.

The president knows half the country is watching, and dislikes and disdains what it sees. What he doesn’t seem to know is that the unstable are watching, too. They get revved up, ginned up, pro and con. There is danger in this.

Mr. Trump seems to think only about his audience and his foes. He doesn’t seem to proceed with a broad knowledge that there are the unstable among us, and part of your job as president is not to push them over the edge. It can get ugly when you do.

In a funny way he seems to think everything’s more stable than it is, that the veil between safety and surprise is thicker than it is. Maybe you assume everything’s safe when you’ve spent your whole adult life, as he has, with private security and private cars, surrounded by staff. Maybe that makes you careless, or too confident.

But few of our political leaders seem especially sensitive to the precariousness of things. I wish they worried about the country more. That really is dreamy and otherworldly, isn’t it?