Peggy Noonan

In 2016—soon, in just about a month—we’ll find out if Donald Trump voters vote. They say they’re voters and not just rally-goers. In Iowa on Feb. 1 and New Hampshire on Feb. 9, we’ll know if it’s a movement or a moment.

We are going to learn a lot pretty quickly.

In the next few months we’ll find out who emerges as the not-Trump, or not-Trumps. We’ll see a battle. If it is not resolved we’ll have a clearer sense of whether this thing is going to go to the floor of the convention in Cleveland in July. In Washington, what we sloppily but handily call the GOP establishment refers to this possibility as a “brokered convention.” They do this because they think they’ll be the brokers. Will they? Or will they be combatants? If it gets to the floor the correct term will be “open convention,” in the Katie-bar-the-door sense of wild and woolly.

If at some point Mr. Trump appears to be on a sure glide path to the nomination, will the party establishment begin to bolt? If so, what will that look like? If Mr. Trump is done in and his supporters perceive it as the dark work of an underhanded establishment, will they bolt? What will that look like? Will it mean they go home, stay there and refuse to come out in November? Or will they mount a third party with Mr. Trump, having changed his mind once again, at the top? If that happened—here the unknowables and the potential for drama begin to spin out in creative and unexpected directions—could each of three parties garner enough support to produce an Electoral College deadlock? That would be resolved by the House, where Republicans will likely continue to control the majority of state delegations. Would GOP representatives go for the establishment Republican or the third-party Republican?

I have not seen a political cycle so confounding in my lifetime, and it could continue into a year of the most historic kind. If you love politics—the excitement, the unknowability, the to-and-fro—this is the year for you. If you take unhappy U.S. political trends seriously—the shallowness, the restiveness, the division of our polity—you will feel legitimate concern.

We could see a great party split in two. That, I think, is what I’m seeing among the Republicans, a slow-motion break. The question is whether it will play out over the next few cycles or turn abrupt and fiery in this one. Some in Washington speak giddily of the prospect, wondering aloud if the new party’s logo should be a lion or a gazelle. But America’s two-party system has reigned almost since its beginning, and it has kept us from much woe. It has provided stability, reliability and, yes, progress. The breaking or splintering of one of those parties would be an epochal event. Ross Perot in the 1990s was a one-off; the party soon enough healed back into one. Mr. Trump may be a one-off, but the divisions he’s revealed—on how on-the-ground and unprotected people feel about illegal immigration, on the deeper and more dangerous implications of political correctness, on a host of economic and cultural issues—will not, I suspect, be resolved so easily.

If the GOP breaks it will be bitter. The establishment thinks they are saving the party from the vandals—from Trumpian know-nothingism. But Republicans on the ground think those in the establishment were the vandals, with their open borders, donor-class interests and social liberalism.

The distance between the top of the party and the bottom has been growing for years, at least since 2008. The bonds between the two have stretched and stretched, and this year they began to snap. That’s the story of the year, that the snapping became obvious. Mr. Trump and the Trumps of the future are the result, not the cause. The establishment does not see this. They think it’s about him. It’s about them.

Finally, briefly and befitting an end-of-year column, what did I get right and wrong in 2015?

A year ago I said Mitt Romney should not run. “This is a moment in history that demands superior political gifts. . . . Mitt Romney does not have them. He never did. He’s good at life and good at business and good at faith. He is politically clunky, always was and always will be. His clunkiness is seen in the way he leaked his interest in running: to mega-millionaires and billionaires in New York. ‘Tell your friends.’ ” I still think that was right. Whatever is ailing the party now, he is not the answer.

A month later I said I didn’t see Jeb Bush as the front-runner but just another candidate, and one making “a poor impression.” Mr. Bush at that point was “spending much of his time in The Rooms—offices and conference rooms—with millionaires and billionaires.” He spoke their language, his family name provided entrée, his fundraising prowess was impressive. However: “There’s something tentative and joyless in Mr. Bush’s public presentations. He isn’t mixing it up with voters or wading into the crowd. So far he is not good at the podium. His recent foreign-policy speech was both bland and jangly, and its one memorable statement—‘I am my own man’—was the kind of thing a candidate shouldn’t have to say.

“What is most missing so far is a fierce sense of engagement, a passionate desire to lead America out of the morass, a fiery—or Churchillian—certainty that he is the man for the moment. In its place we see a softer, wanner I’m smart, accomplished, know policy, and it’s my turn.”

An October column said: “Jeb just isn’t very good at this.” I said his victory was impossible for me to envision. Still is.

In July I thought Scott Walker would be “highly competitive” for the nomination. He was not. In August I said Ted Cruz would get “deadlier as the number of candidates winnows down.” That seems to be bearing out.

When Mr. Trump announced in June, I knew he’d hit a powerful nerve but did not see him lasting as long as he has. He was a product of voter anger, contempt and lowering standards: “We’re entering Weimar, baby.” In time I saw his power. In August I noted: “The traditional mediating or guiding institutions within the Republican universe—its establishment, respected voices in conservative media, sober-minded state party officials—have little to no impact on Mr. Trump’s rise. Some say voices of authority should stand up to oppose him, which will lower his standing. But Republican powers don’t have that kind of juice anymore.” Traveling around the country, “my biggest sense is that political professionals are going to have to rethink ‘the base,’ reimagine it when they see it in their minds. . . . America is so in play,” and the base is “becoming a big, broad jumble that few understand.”

I asserted his appeal was not limited to Republicans. My highly scientific reason is that in talking to Trump supporters it often emerged that they were Democrats or independents.

Happy New Year; let’s get through it together.

A long time ago in a country far, far away, America had less of everything and holidays were easier and more modest.

Only 50 and 60 years ago, well within human memory, Christmas was a plainer, simpler affair. Everyone—even the rich, but certainly the poor and in-between—had less. Because America had less. You’d get a sweater and socks instead of five toys, or five toys instead of 10. Technology was something that existed at places like NASA. No one’s wish list had a hoverboard, an iPad, or a brightly wrapped drone. There were more big families, whose children understood that even Santa couldn’t cover them all.

You could make gifts. Or you could buy one after saving up, and the recipient could guess the sacrifice involved. And because there were fewer gifts, the one you got made a big impression.

And so a nod to the more modest Christmases of years past. These memories came with a declared or implied, “We didn’t have much, but . . .” And this was said not with resentment or self pity but a kind of pride and wistfulness.

For the New York businessman Vin Pica, one Christmas stands out. “All I wanted was a wooden Daniel Boone ‘musket,’ ” he says, like the one Fess Parker slung over his shoulder as he walked through the woods. “I mentioned it at dinner Christmas Eve, and my father mysteriously disappeared, and magically, the next morning, on Dec. 25, 1959, it was under the tree . . .”

Here is a friend of mine, from a large Irish Catholic family in New Jersey—seven kids, no money. She is in her 60s now, but still shy about revisiting those days. She doesn’t recall any specific gifts she received—“It wasn’t like we were going to get a smartphone, it wasn’t like that”—but she remembers the time the baby of the family, Cathy, age 5, let everyone know Santa was going to give her something very special.

But Cathy wouldn’t tell anyone what it was. On Christmas Eve, her resourceful mother finally told her to write Santa a thank-you note and put it under the tree. She did, and later her mother peeked at the note: Cathy thanked Santa for the “bride doll” that he had hidden for her in the bookcase. But it was Christmas Eve—the stores were closed. After Cathy went to bed, one of my friend’s other sisters remembered a pile of old dolls down in the basement. “We found a doll, cleaned it, found a dress, washed and ironed,” my friend recalls. “We combed the hair, we gave it earrings and jewelry.” At dawn, Cathy ran down the stairs and found in the back of the bookcase the beautiful doll she knew would be there.

Susan Woodbury and I were best friends in Massapequa, N.Y., when we were 12. All she wanted when she was 10 or 11 was a wooden guitar. In the weeks before Christmas, she ransacked the house, looking under beds, steeling herself for disappointment. “My mother rarely gave me what I wanted, but what she thought I should have,” Susan says. Then she found it, in the back of her parents’ closet: “It was a blond-wood guitar with this great knotty finish on the back, and simple strings.” Christmas morning it was under the tree, covered by a towel. Susan enacted surprise. “I should have won an Academy award.”

The New York attorney Lloyd Green was a kid in the 1970s in Borough Park, Brooklyn. “My favorite Hanukkah memory was my folks gave me Strat-O-Matic Baseball as a gift, a stats-filled board game. Come Shabbat afternoon, my friends and I would play it for hours, until we had to attend afternoon worship. The game gave me a lifelong appreciation for baseball, and for numbers telling a story. . . . Mom, Dad, and Hanukkah, thank you.”

Kathy Enright and I were in high school together. Her father was in the Navy and often away. “When I was 8 years old in Hacketstown, N.J.,” Kathy recalls, “there was a Pink Lady bike by Schwinn in the window of a store. I wanted it so badly and my mother said, ‘We can’t afford it, we can’t afford it.’ Mostly I got shoes and socks and underwear, things that we needed that were practical.” And yet that Christmas Eve, “I walked into the living room and my Pink Lady bike was in front of the Christmas tree. I rode it until I graduated high school.”

The stories got me thinking this week of the little book that has the best Christmas scene since Charles Dickens, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” by Betty Smith. Francie and her brother, Neeley, are in grade school. Their family can’t afford a Christmas tree, but then a chance arises. The guy who sells Christmas trees down the block always has a few scrawny ones left by midnight Christmas Eve, and to get rid of them he has an annual Christmas Tree Throw. Poor kids and poor fathers gather on the street every year, and the salesman heaves a tree up in the air—if you can catch it and don’t fall, it’s yours. Francie and Neeley stand on the cold, snowy pavement, steady themselves, catch a tree . . . and keep their footing. It’s theirs. They march it triumphantly upstairs to their tenement apartment, and on the way the neighbors, hearing the commotion, poke their heads out their doors, saying, “Congratulations!” and “Merry Christmas!” And Francie’s family stood the tree in a big tin bucket. There were no ornaments, “but the big tree standing there was enough.”

My favorite gift of childhood was so surprising and moving and big. I was 9 or 10 and badly wanted a desk. I needed a desk because I had been selling neighborhood subscriptions to a local weekly newspaper called, as I remember it, the Massapequa Post. My success convinced me that I would someday be a great newspaper executive. I noticed in the old movies that played on channel 9 that what were then called career women—Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn played those parts—often had a long, triangular nameplate on their desks. I made one for myself out of cardboard at school. Now all I needed was the desk. But such a piece of furniture was too expensive, too much to ask for in a family of nine.

I was in a religious phase, however, and prayed. And on Christmas morning, there beside the tree was a rough, oblong piece of beige plywood stapled or nailed to two pieces of plywood supporting it on either side. And if you looked at it with imagination, it looked exactly like . . . a desk. I was in heaven. I got a kitchen chair, sat at the desk and closed my eyes and thanked God. Then, suddenly, with my eyes closed, in my imagination, I saw it. Everything. There was a manger in the darkness and a man and a woman, and it was cold and there were stars in the sky, and hills, and wise men came with staffs and gazed in wonder. I saw it all, as if on film in a newsreel. It hit me like an electric bolt. I thought: “It’s all true. It really happened. I just saw it.”

I never forgot it, of course, and in later years, teaching catechism classes, I’d say at the end, “All you have to do is remember: It’s all true. It really happened. Just keep that in your mind.”

To be given a moment like that and take it through your life—that was some kind of gift.

At a Christmas party in New York the other night an esteemed statesman stood to toast his friends. The bipartisan group leaned forward: His toasts are warm and witty and often capture the meaning of whatever is going on. He paused, looked out and began: “This time next year it will all be over.” There was a half-beat of silence, and then laughter and applause swept the room.

He didn’t have to say he was talking about the election.

What a year of wonders. For a good portion of it there were three Republican presidential candidates who, if you added up their polling numbers, had the support of more than half the voters—and they had never, not one of them, won a political office in their lives. On-the-ground Republicans surveying the past 15 years of unwon wars, great recession, feeble recovery and a world on fire, thought: “Who gave us this world? The professional political class. So it’s time to reach outside politics and consider other kinds of experience and attainment.”

Another wonder: The political parties swapped their longtime roles, styles and ways of being. The Democrats became the party of primogeniture, the Republicans of rebellion. The Democrats were once alive, chaotic and brawling, the Republicans staid and orderly. Not anymore. It is the Democrats who are accepting a coronation, the Republicans who said no to ancestral claims. The deflation of Jeb Bush is a huge story. With his failure to rise, the consultant class and shock-and-awe fundraising took it on the chin. Jeb was not the answer to any question the base was asking.

If the rise of Donald Trump continues, the Republican Party is either breaking in two or changing its nature—either way a huge political development. If it breaks in two it will be because the bottom pushed away hard from the top, which will have to decide where it goes. If the party holds together it will be a more populist one, at least as long as Mr. Trump dominates—more liberal on spending, less interventionist on foreign policy, if we go by his rhetoric.

Mr. Trump is compared to Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George McGovern in 1972, but those comparisons are wrong in substance. Goldwater represented a clear, coherent but extreme conservatism, at least by the standards of the day; he pushed conservatism further than the nation, including Republicans, wanted to go. McGovernism was experienced as pure, unadulterated left-liberalism—philosophically coherent but extreme, and further than the nation, including Democrats, wanted to go.

Mr. Trump is different. His views are not too far in one ideological direction; they go in no particular and every direction. His grab bag of stands, to give it its due, reflects a rough awareness of the historical and political moment we’re in. But it’s not a clear set of beliefs brought to their extreme, it’s a bunch of beliefs brought forward by a man who bops to extremes and back again.

Can he win the nomination? Yes. If the year has taught us anything it’s that we don’t know what’s going to happen. He’s leading in every primary state. Maybe that will change; maybe his deficit with women will turn out to matter. He could fail to win the Iowa caucuses in six weeks, which would leave him dinged. The past six months have been nothing but one headline: “Trump is Winning.” An Iowa loss would be “Trump Loses!” His mystique would be damaged and the damage could spread.

On the other hand he could triumph in New Hampshire, where he continues well ahead in the polls. And he could win that open primary with support from independents. (It is not only Republicans who would like to fire Washington.) In that case the headline would be “Trump Expands the Base—Trump Grows the Party!” That would make Trumpism less easy to dismiss, more like a movement than a mood.

Do Mr. and Mrs. Longtime Republican in the suburbs think a Trump victory would be a good or acceptable outcome? No? Then they’d better get ready to press the viable non-Trump candidates to stay, and all others to leave. If after New Hampshire Mr. Trump is triumphing, Republican candidates who aren’t going to make it should be pressed to sacrifice themselves to narrow the field and let the viable non-Trumps rise. Jeb Bush, by stepping down, could become what he wanted to be this year—a hero, a history changer, a man who enhanced his own and his family’s legacy.

But really, what a year. Nobody, not the most sophisticated expert watching politics up close all his life, knew or knows what’s going to happen. Does it go to the convention? Do Mr. Trump’s roarers turn out? Does he change history?

And no one saw it coming.

A last thought, on what we saw of the parties.

This week, about 18 million people watched the fifth Republican debate on CNN. It was the third-most-watched primary debate of all time. The first debate, on Fox News in August, broke all records with about 25 million viewers. All the debates in between were heavily watched. All featured fisticuffs, argument, real to-and-fro.

The Democrats in that time had two debates, with little fanfare, with a vibe of “please don’t watch.” It was less like public officials running for president than people in the witness protection program accidentally strolling onto a stage. In the second debate the stage was almost empty—front-runner Hillary Clinton, an aged Vermont socialist with Einstein hair, and a fit young heartthrob with nothing to lose and nothing to say.

The Republicans are out there on every show and get cuffed about. They expose themselves to the scrum every day and take all comers. Mrs. Clinton considering interview requests is like a queen pointing at necklaces arrayed on a jeweler’s pillow: “I’ll take that one, not that one. I’ll think about that one.”

The Republicans are finally, fitfully fighting out real issues—ISIS, privacy. Mrs. Clinton is forced to fight no one, makes pronouncements and glides on.

The Republicans draw censure with their big, bodacious brawl. The Democrats should draw it for not struggling, grappling. The Republican Party was told to make Jeb king. No, they thundered. When the Democratic Party was asked to do a coronation, they pulled on their forelocks, bowed and said, “Yes, sire, may I do anything else?”

This is not like the Democratic Party! It was once a big brass band marching through the streets—loud, dissonant, there. “I’m not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers famously said. “I’m a Democrat.” For generations Democrats repeated that line as a brag. They knew disorganized meant vital, creative, spontaneous, passionate—alive.

Now that party acts like this tidy, lifeless, fightless thing, a big, gray, dead-hearted, soul-killing blob. “I have the demographics,” it blobbily bellows, “I have the millennials.” Maybe it doesn’t have as much as it thinks. It is no honor to the Democratic Party that it is not fighting things through with a stage full of contenders this epochal year.

The Republicans are all chaos and incoherence, it’s true. But at least they’re alive. At least they’re fighting as if it matters.

As tribune of the base Donald Trump is successful and inadequate. You see it in the Muslim question. His strength is that he responds to and appears to share the concerns of those who are legitimately worried about whom we allow into the United States—our visa protocols, our vetting, our standards. This is a national-security issue. We have entered the age of ISIS-inspired and ISIS-directed attacks on the West. The latter (Paris) have tended to be bloodier than the former (San Bernardino), because they involve more operatives, more simultaneous targets, more weapons. Whether inspired or directed, the idea of future hits in the U.S.—and everyone, from the most sophisticated desk-jockey intel analyst in Washington to the receptionist at your dentist’s office, will tell you they believe more are coming—is very much on the public mind.

A Paris here would change everything, transposing a detached debate about strategy into a hot and immediate political exigency. There is the real danger events will outstrip sober decision making. The smartest thing I’ve heard the past few weeks was the suggestion that America figure out the most effective and constructive things it could do after a Paris-style attack, and start doing them now. I hope everyone who runs the country is thinking about this. They’d better have a plan.

But to Mr. Trump. The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul, said Monday that U.S. intelligence officers believe ISIS terrorists are attempting to use the Obama administration’s Syrian refugee program to enter the country themselves: “I believe 2015 will be seen as a watershed year in this long war—the year when our enemies gained an upper hand and when the spread of terror once again awoke the West.” The director of the FBI previously told Congress the U.S. cannot adequately vet the 10,000 Syrians the administration wants to accept.

Under the circumstances public concern is entirely warranted. Good on Mr. Trump for addressing it—and, in addressing it, forcing other candidates to come up with their plans. Bad on Mr. Trump—very bad—for doing it in his usual way. Colorfully, yes—this is a man who knows how to break through the clutter!—but crudely, seemingly off the top of his head, and using his mouth as a blunt instrument. He doesn’t think it through, doesn’t anticipate legitimate pushback, doesn’t try to persuade, only declares. And of course he was confusing and contradictory. We’ll ban all Muslims! Including U.S. citizens returning from an overseas trip? Yes! No! It’s only temporary, a pause. It’s not about religion, it’s about security! He ignores civic and cultural politesse when that politesse is not just old sissy stuff but a melting-pot tradition that exists for good reason. In defense of his stand he evokes FDR’s actions during World War II, which included putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Mr. Trump seems to think that was a good thing because FDR did it. But it is regarded as an American embarrassment and a stain on FDR’s legacy. And this is not a Secret of History. Congress officially apologized for internment 27 years ago.

All of this forced us into the nonsensical but at this point compulsive media cycle in which Mr. Trump says something rash, the media pounce, and Republican contenders are told they must denounce him or forfeit their place among the just and the good. Mr. Trump then announces he is misunderstood—that in fact he loves women, Mexicans, Muslims, whoever he has offended this week. Oddly enough, I think he is sincere about this and feels genuinely injured. But one thing an effective leader must always do is know what can be misunderstood and guard against it, what can be misconstrued and used to paint you—and your followers—as bigoted. Leaders try hard not to let that happen. It is the due diligence of politics.

A continuing mystery of Mr. Trump is his failure to impose on himself political discipline. He has been front-runner for six months but he doesn’t act as if he has absorbed the fact that he could become the nominee. At this point he owes it to his country—he owes it to his own ambition!—to become disciplined in terms of statements and policy. It is possible for candidates to be vivid but careful, dramatic but responsible. When you’re winning you can’t just keep pulling it out of your orifices. Mr. Trump’s lack of discipline should worry his supporters. I know it doesn’t, but it should. Because indiscipline shows disrespect. And people pick up on it, they see it.

It is odd too that, as the longtime front-runner, he doesn’t attempt to reassure those who will have some impact on his future, such as state and national party leaders. In his daily actions he could continue to excite his base while subtly signaling to party elders that while he might be an unusual nominee he would, in some recognizable way, be a responsible one. Instead he ties them in knots each day and embarrasses them. That limits his popularity, lowers his ceiling of support, and reinforces the idea he’s an impetuous flake.

He tweets out taunts alerting party stalwarts to his continued popularity in the polls, and noting that while he does not intend to go third-party he certainly could. This is a form of blackmail: Nice little party you’ve got here. Shame if someone blew it up.

GOP leaders seem to be doing the only thing they can—watch the process play out and hope for good outcomes. Sooner or later, they hope, the field will winnow and it will be Mr. Trump with his 35% versus one, two or three non-Trumps who’ll fight over the 65%. Party leaders’ position is delicate. They are certain they cannot win the presidency with Mr. Trump as the candidate. And they know they can’t win the presidency if embittered Trump supporters stay home or bolt. They can’t win with him and can’t win without his people.

Meanwhile Mr. Trump’s supporters, like Mr. Trump himself, appear to care nothing for the GOP. They believe America is in danger and this is no time for party loyalty. In any case they haven’t felt that loyalty for years because the party has disappointed them for years. Mr. Trump is both the expression and a deepening cause of the party’s fissuring.

The biggest reason has been the distance—the chasm—between the party elite at the top, who are more or less for illegal immigration, and the bulk of the party on the ground, who are opposed. In this case there is a chasm between elites concerned that they personally will look bigoted if they take action and voters concerned about who comes into America in the age of ISIS. It is a split, a distance; it is primarily the fault of the top, not the bottom; and Mr. Trump, who through his popularity could choose to be a bridge across the distance is instead functioning as a deepener of it.

If the nominee is not decided in the primaries and everything is fought through at the convention—well, that will be some convention. In the old fashioned, fisticuffs sense.

I mean this Thanksgiving column to go from a small fact to what I think a large truth. The small fact is that looking back now on an enjoyable book tour, a surprise was that a lot of people are interested in the specifics of how others work. Early on I was asked in an interview why I listen to movie music when I write, a habit of 25 years. One reason is that I love movie scores and have since childhood: When I didn’t understand all the dialogue the music would make clear what was being said. The other reason is that film scores exist to help the story along; they don’t yank you away from your work, your thought. Other music—an opera, a great Broadway show, an old album you love—intrudes and, with its power, summons you away. But movie music is the river on which the story sails—and all writers, in whatever field or discipline, are telling a story.

When the interview aired, a small Twitter community sprang up with people saying they too listen to movie music as they write, and asking what I listen to and offering recommendations. One suggested Ennio Morricone’s theme from “The Untouchables.” Yes—the rousing music when the cops mount horses to catch the mobsters at the bridge. When I hear it I always think: If I listened to this each morning, every day would be a heroic one. From @michaelkaplun came the soundtrack to “Rudy,” by Jerry Goldsmith—“a little fighting Irish inspiration.” “The Last of the Mohicans” was suggested by @Go_Beach. Someone put forth the score of “Out of Africa” by John Barry, someone else the “Patton” theme, again by the great Jerry Goldsmith. From an email friend came the song the soldiers sing after the Battle of Agincourt in Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V.” Yes—a soulful, soldierly hymn.

I want to mention a few I listen to a lot, and then get to something maybe deeper behind the music. I love Alex North’s score from the old Kirk Douglas movie “Spartacus.” It’s rich and varied. The music used in the scene of the freed slaves coming together in community and the love theme together remind me of the sweetness of life and the ever-present possibility of valor. Leonard Bernstein’s score for “On the Waterfront” is dramatic, crashing, tender—to me it speaks of cities. It, and the screenplay, reminds me of the importance of everyday human endeavor—that even if you think you’re just a beat-up nobody, a former contender with a one-way ticket to Palookaville, you can find within yourself a nobility you never guessed was there.

The scores of Kevin Costner pictures are often better than the movies themselves. The soundtrack of “Wyatt Earp,” by James Newton Howard, gets some play in my house. Lately I’m listening again to the score of that not fully appreciated masterpiece “Empire of the Sun,” from the opening’s sweet-voiced boys choir to the more dramatic music of terror and reconciliation. But there, as with “On the Waterfront,” I sometimes get yanked into memories of brilliant dialogue, in this case from Tom Stoppard’s genius of a screenplay: “I thought it was Mrs. Victor’s soul.”

An acceptance speech at a great national convention should sound like the score of “A River Runs Through It,” by Mark Isham, and like the end of Norman Maclean’s great book on which the movie was based: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.” Read those last words aloud. They are music.

But for me, always, the greatest movie score, the one I listen to when I need it, is the most perfect pairing of story and music in the history of film: “The Best Years of Our Lives,” composed by Hugo Friedhofer. Three men coming home from World War II wind up by chance in the nose of a beat-up bomber, itself heading home to the junkyard. Suddenly at dawn, after a long night’s flight, they see America unfurling below them—the Midwest, and now Boone City, their (fictional) home. There’s the stadium where one of them played high school ball. There’s the bank where one worked. The music soars. I’m telling you, you hear in it: America. The men look down at what they’d left years before, and it’s still there, and they wonder what their lives will be like now, having been for so long and in so many ways so far away . . .

A left-wing cable anchor once told me he couldn’t watch that scene and hear that music and not cry. I said, me too.

I think I’m admitting I listen to movie music not only because I love it and it helps the story along. I listen also for the reason a friend, a journalist, put his finger on when he told me of a setting he uses on Spotify. It plays the music he loves at the speed of his exercise: “It’s like it’s creating a movie soundtrack just for you. When I do this I feel like I should stop my run and save a kitten from a burning building, or make a certain speech on a tarmac before seeing my girl off one last time.” It rouses him. It takes him outside the dailiness we all live in and brings to mind the idea of valor. It reminds him of courage. Which, seen in a particular way, is another word for love.

Movie music does that for me. It stirs me. It is derived from an American art form, film, and reminds me of the America I love as I do my work, which mostly deals with the daily muck of politics and culture, which is not always so lovable.

The larger point, I suppose, is this: A year from now we will have chosen our new president. Which means we have just less than a year to get it right.

We all need to be stirred. We need to know and believe the breakthrough is possible, the fight against the odds will end in victory, something good is just around the corner.

We don’t need the drab, manipulative ideological arguments we so often get, and we don’t need the shaming that comes from so much of our political discourse—you’re insensitive, racist, sexist, check your privilege, quit appropriating my culture. We don’t need the two things we so often get from our government and its practitioners, the defensive whine and the impenetrable babble.

There is a hunger to be reminded we’re all in this together, that this thing we’re all part of is, in fact, a great and noble project.

We all want to be moved by the public acts of public men and women. We all want to be stirred by the soundtrack of the nation we love. We all want a leader who is equal to the music.

I hope next Thanksgiving we will think perhaps we got one.

A happy Thanksgiving weekend to the great and fabled nation that is still the hope of the world.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes—

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—

In the days after Paris Emily Dickinson’s poem kept ringing through my mind as I tried to figure out what I felt—and, surprisingly, didn’t feel. I did not, as the facts emerged and the story took its full size, feel surprised. Nor did I feel swept by emotion, as I had in the past. The sentimental tweeting of that great moment in “Casablanca” when they stand to sing “La Marseillaise” left me unmoved. I didn’t feel anger, really. I felt grave, as if something huge and terrible had shifted and come closer. Did you feel this too?

After the pain of previous terror incidents, from 9/11 straight through to Madrid 2004 (train bombings, 191 dead), London 2005 (suicide bombers, 52 dead) and Paris 10 months ago (shootings, 17 dead), the focus was always on the question: What will the leaders—the political and policy elite—think? This attack immediately carried a different question: What will the people think, Mr. and Mrs. Europe on the street, Mom and Pop watching in America? What are the thoughts and conclusions of normal people who are not blinkered by status, who can see things clear?

I feel certain that in the days after the attack people were thinking: This isn’t going to stop. These primitive, ferocious young men will not stop until we stop them. The question is how. That’s the only discussion.

Madrid and London took place during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and could be taken as responses to Western actions. The Charlie Hebdo massacre was in its way a story about radical Islamic antipathy to the rough Western culture of free speech. But last week’s Paris attack was different. It was about radical, violent Islam’s hatred of the West and desire to kill and terrorize its people. They will not be appeased; we won’t talk them out of it at a negotiating table or by pulling out of Iraq or staying out of Syria. They will have their caliphate, and they will hit Europe again, as they will surely hit us again, to get it.

So again, the only question: What to do?

On this issue the American president is, amazingly, barely relevant. The leaders and people of Europe and America will not be looking to him for wisdom, will, insight or resolve. No commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces can be wholly irrelevant, but to the extent one can be, Mr. Obama is. He has misjudged ISIS from the beginning—they were not, actually, the junior varsity—to the end. He claimed last week, to George Stephanopoulos, that ISIS has been “contained.” “I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” he said just before Paris blew.

After the attacks Mr. Obama went on TV, apparently to comfort us and remind us it’s OK, he’s in charge. He prattled on about violence being at odds with “universal values.” He proceeded as if unaware that there are no actually universal values, that right now the values of the West and radical Islam are clashing, violently, and we have to face it. The mainstream press saw right through him. At the news conference, CNN’s Jim Acosta referred to the “frustration” of “a lot of Americans,” who wonder: “Why can’t we take out these bastards?” The president sighed and talked down to him—to us. He has a strategy and it’s the right one and it’s sad you can’t see it.

Let him prattle on about climate change as the great threat of our time.

All he can do at this point is troll the GOP with the mischief of his refugee program. If he can’t work up a passion about radical Islamic violence, at least he can tie the Republicans in knots over whether they’re heartless bigots who want to prevent widows and children from taking refuge from the Syrian civil war.

This is a poor prioritizing of what faces us. The public is appropriately alarmed about exactly who we might be letting in. It would be easy, and commonsensical, to follow their prompting and pause the refugee program, figure out how to screen those seeking entrance more carefully, and let in only the peaceable. If that takes time, it takes time.

If Mr. Obama had wisdom as opposed to pride and a desire to smack around the GOP—a visit to Capitol Hill this week showed me he’s thinking a lot more about them than they are about him—he would recognize the refugee issue as a distraction from the most urgent priorities.

Those would include planning for and agreeing on how to deal with both the reality and the aftermath of a parade of possible horribles on which we should once again concentrate—anything from shootings in Times Square to suicide bombings in Washington to a biological device in, say, Greeley, Colo. It would include planning for any military activity that might likely follow such an event or events.

If what we are experiencing now results in an epic collision, are we ready?

Deeper attention now will go to candidates for the presidency. Hillary Clinton Thursday delivered a speech on her strategy to face the current crisis; it sounded a lot like Mr. Obama’s strategy, whatever that is.

But Paris should have impact on the Republican debate that has cropped up the past month about defense policy. It’s been approached as a question of spending. That may quickly come to look like the wrong approach.

Exactly what is needed now in terms of America’s defense, what is needed to deal with a possible parade of horribles? What might be needed down the road? There is a possible grim short term, and a possible grim long term. Who is thinking all this through? Are they getting the resources they need?

The Director of the FBI, James Comey, doesn’t feel he has the manpower to do what needs to be done to find and track bad guys.

What’s going on with intelligence, what’s their need?

There will be powerful public support now for spending—wisely, discerningly—whatever is needed for the short term, and a possible long term.

Finally, continued travels through the country show me that people continue to miss Ronald Reagan’s strength and certitude. In interviews and question-and-answer sessions, people often refer to Reagan’s “optimism.” That was his power, they say—he was optimistic.

No, I say, that wasn’t his power and isn’t what you miss. Reagan’s power was that he was confident. He was confident that whatever the problem—the economy, the Soviets, the million others—he could meet it, the American people could meet it, and our system could meet it. The people saw his confidence, and it allowed them to feel optimistic. And get the job done.

What people hunger for now from their leaders is an air of shown and felt confidence: I can do this. We can do it.

Who will provide that? Where will it come from? Isn’t it part of what we need in the next president?

During a week of book-tour talks, meetings and conversations in New York, Southern California and Washington, a question consistently emerged: What is going on in the Republican Party?

My thoughts as they evolved through seven days of thinking aloud:

What is going on, and not only with Republicans, is that American voters are surveying the past 15 years. At home they see an economic near-collapse followed by a feeble recovery, a culture that grows every day grosser and more bizarre, falling educational results, a bigger, more demanding and more corrupt federal government. In the world: two unwon wars, ISIS, a refugee crisis greater than any since the end of World War II, Putin on the move, American clout and prestige on the decline.

They think: Who gave us this world? Who led us the past 15 years? They realize: It was the most credentialed, acclaimed and experienced political professionals in both parties. The pros gave us this world—the people who knew what they were doing! Who had a lifetime of political attainment!

They conclude: Maybe we have to expand our idea of “credentials.” Maybe we need another kind of “experience.” Maybe individuals with “attainments” outside the political world are the ones who can get us out of this mess.

Thus Donald Trump the businessman, Ben Carson the neurosurgeon and Carly Fiorina the former CEO. Add their poll numbers up—consistently, for 100 days now, so it’s not a blip but a real trendline—and you have more than half of likely Republican voters saying yes, I want an outsider.

And you know, they have a point. They are derided in the media as irrationally angry, but they shouldn’t be dismissed. They’re trying to make things better, to break through the logjam.

But as we get closer to the voting, there are two things they have to keep in mind. One is that reaching outside doesn’t necessarily make things better. It might. It might make things worse. The fact of outsiderness is no guarantee of anything except a lack of political experience. The other is that, as Carl Cannon of RealClearPolitics has noted, politics is actually a profession, even for some a vocation. You learn important things as you practice it. Experience deepens your ability to decide, to persuade, to lead. Political knowledge can be a handy thing when you hold the country’s highest political office.

Is it possible what we need right now isn’t a nonpolitician but instead a brilliant and gifted politician to lead us through these times? (Yes, I know: Who? I don’t know. The powers of the most successful pols tend to be clearest in retrospect.)

There are two important pieces of context within the above dynamic. One is that the great, enduring issue that divides the wise men, elders and big donors of the GOP (who are the natural protectors and supporters of the party’s professional politicians) and the base (which is turning to the outsiders) is illegal immigration. The base hates it. The elders and donors vary in their support—some accept it for practical reasons, some are enthusiastic, some are true open-borders ideologues—but they all support it. That taints their warnings to stick with politicians who know how things work.

The party on this huge issue is split between the top—the affluent and influential—and the bottom—the indignant, the worried and working-class.

Another part of the year’s context: 2016 is in a way like the dramatic, portentous year 1976. That year Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan fought over one question: Will the Republican Party stay a midcentury moderate-liberal party or become a conservative party? Reagan’s landslides in 1980 and 1984 answered the question: The GOP would be a conservative party, and has been since. But this year’s question is equally fundamental: What does conservative mean in the 21st century?

Is it conservative to spend whatever it takes, and it will be a lot, to create and maintain the best national defense in the world? (The world is safer when America is stronger.) Or is it conservative to care about spending, to look to our allies to pick up their part of the burden? (Build too beautiful a military and you’ll only encourage the politicians to use it.)

Is it conservative to say we have to cut back entitlement spending to cut our unsupportable deficits, or is it conservative to say a deal’s a deal, generations paid into it and have a moral right to everything they were promised? Is it conservative to say there’s plenty to be saved by cracking down on fraud and waste but in a time of economic stress the people will not accept benefit cuts and no serious party that lives in and respects reality should attempt it?

Is it conservative to attempt to be the leader of the world, its sole and acknowledged great power, or is it conservative to be, as they say, the friend of liberty everywhere but the protector primarily of our own interests?

This is a lot to work out. It will probably take more than one election cycle. It’s to the credit of Republicans that they are having these debates. But a party wrestling with these issues is by definition not unified.

The Democrats, for all their small struggles, are. They are disciplined. Their central organizing principle is getting and holding power.

The Republicans this year have more intellectual vitality and engagement. That they are split about ideas, stands, principles is to their credit. They are acting out what politics was meant to be. But that civic virtue is a political liability.

At this point—early, but certain trends are obvious—the Democrats have the advantage. They want one thing. The Republicans want many serious and opposing things.

Which gets us to the subject of super PACs and the damage they can do. The other night in the Fox Business debate some candidates touched on the practical and philosophical disagreements in the party. It was edifying. We need more.

But the first candidate whose super PAC money goes to killing another candidate with heavy opposition research will likely be the killer of more than one candidacy.

While all this is roiling the Republican Party, while all the divisions are thrashed out, is this the time for candidates to do to each other what Newt Gingrich did to Mitt Romney in 2012, grinding him up and handing him on a platter to the Democrats? I wondered last spring if 2016 would come down to Boring versus Bloody—a dull, peaceful Democratic coronation; a Republican rumble from which the nominee emerges damaged beyond repair.

The Democrats are depending on the Republicans to bloody each other in that way. They’re depending on Republicans to be stupid.

There have been reports Jeb Bush’s PAC is considering going after Marco Rubio. If it does, Mr. Bush will look like Al Pacino in “Scarface,” with his allies wielding all that super PAC dough and saying: “Say hello to my little friend.” The Pacino character took out all his enemies, but what’s so memorable about that last scene is that he shot up the entire mansion, pretty much brought the house down, and of course went down himself, in the end.

We’ll begin with what went wrong with the Republican debate in Boulder, Colo., then look at what went wrong with Jeb Bush.

CNBC’s debate moderators have famously come under fire for questions, statements and a tone that were obnoxious. They were. The moderators seemed intent on trivializing the field. When you say, “Candidate A, you have criticized Candidates B and C, turn to them now and tell them why they’re dopes,” you are presenting yourself as the puppet master and them as puppets. They must either attack their colleagues as instructed and look weak, or push back against the moderator in a way open to charges of defensiveness and cynicism. They can’t win. (Though later one did.)

There’s nothing wrong with mischief from debate moderators, but this was dumb mischief, plonkingly obvious in its ideological hostility. What’s your greatest weakness? Should fantasy football be regulated? These questions were merely shallow.

To Jeb Bush: “Governor, the fact that you’re at the fifth lectern tonight shows how far your stock has fallen in this race, despite the big investment your donors have made.” Donald Trump uncorking a taunt, right? No! It was moderator John Harwood! He followed up: “Ben Bernanke, who was appointed Fed chairman by your brother, recently wrote a book in which he said he no longer considers himself a Republican because the Republican Party has given in to know-nothingism. Is that why you’re having a difficult time in this race?”

It is very hard to imagine a candidate in a Democratic debate being asked if he’s not doing well because his party is ignorant and vicious. Jeb’s response to being smacked around like this was some vapidity about how “the great majority of Republicans and Americans believe in a hopeful future.”

There was browbeating, and interruptions aimed at forcing a candidate’s thought-train off its tracks:

Since Chris Christie has called climate change undeniable, asked Mr. Harwood, what would he do about it? Mr. Christie said his solutions would not be the usual Democratic ones involving more taxes and more power to Washington.

“What should we do?” Mr. Harwood pressed.

“What we should do is invest in all types of energy, John—”

“You mean government?” Mr. Harwood interrupted.

Christie: “I got to tell you the truth, even in New Jersey what you’re doing is called rude.”

That was a lovely moment. The best belonged to Ted Cruz. “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And if you look at the questions—‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘ Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?”

He continued, over a moderator/interrupter: “I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, ‘Which of you is more handsome and wise?’ ”

Again he barreled past an interrupter: “Let me be clear. The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than every participant in the Democratic debate.”

Pressed to answer the original question, Mr. Cruz said he’d be happy to. But Mr. Harwood turned to another candidate.

“So you don’t want to hear the answer, John?” Mr. Cruz challenged.

“You used your answer on something else,” said Mr. Harwood, curtly.

He sure did.

I don’t know if fights like this win you anything, but the pushback was deserved, and instructive for future moderators: Be tough, incisive, follow up, dig down. But don’t be a high-handed snot, don’t wear your bias on your sleeve. That helps nothing. Don’t you get that?

To Jeb. He has not succeeded this year, and there is no particular reason to believe he will. Yes, he still has money, but what has money got him so far?

You could see almost all of what wasn’t working in his exchange with Marco Rubio, whom Jeb tried to zing in an obviously prepared attack on missed Senate votes.

“I’m a constituent of the senator,” said Jeb. But he’s not showing up for work. “I mean literally, the Senate—what is it, like a French workweek? You get, like, three days where you have to show up?” He suggested Mr. Rubio resign “and let someone else take the job.”

Well, said Mr. Rubio, you’ve said you’re modeling your campaign on John McCain’s in 2008. “I don’t remember . . . you ever complaining about John McCain’s vote record. The only reason why you’re doing it now is because we’re running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.”

Mr. Bush began to respond but let Mr. Rubio cut him off: “My campaign is . . . not going to be about attacking anyone else on this stage. I will continue to have tremendous admiration and respect for Gov. Bush. I’m not running against Gov. Bush, I’m not running against anyone on this stage. I’m running for president because there is no way we can elect Hillary Clinton to continue the policies of Barack Obama.”

Mr. Rubio shut him down, just as Mr. Trump had in previous debates.

It’s widely believed among high Jeb supporters that Mr. Trump—“The Gong Show,” as they call him—has kept Mr. Bush from rising. But Mr. Trump isn’t the problem, he was the revealer of the problem: Jeb just isn’t very good at this.

He’s not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party. He seemed to understand the challenge of his name in the abstract but not have a plan to deal with it. It was said of Scott Walker that the great question was whether he had the heft and ability to go national. The same should have been asked of Jeb. He had never been a national candidate, only a governor. Reporters thought he was national because he was part of a national family.

He was playing from an old playbook—he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness. The expectations he faced were unrealistically high. He was painted as the front-runner. Reporters thought with his record, and a brother and father as president, he must be the front-runner, the kind of guy the GOP would fall in line for. But there’s no falling in line this year. He spent his first months staking out his position not as a creative, original chief executive of a major state—which he was—but as a pol raising shock-and-awe money and giving listless, unfocused interviews in which he slouched and shrugged. There was a sense he was waiting to be appreciated.

I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don’t mean it rudely. It’s just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible.

An interesting question for history is who was the real leader of the West the past half-dozen years, Angela Merkel of Germany or Canada’s Stephen Harper, voted out this week after almost 10 years as prime minister. His great success was in helping bring his country through and past the global meltdown of 2008. He was loyal to Western principles and a friend of America even when, as in recent years, its leaders’ decisions left him doubting and dismayed.

A general rule of politics: After 10 years they are going to throw you out. But the vote was overwhelming after a charmless, dour campaign. The incoming prime minister is the 43-year-old son of charismatic former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Justin Trudeau has been a snowboard instructor, schoolteacher, bartender, bouncer, speaker on environmental and youth issues, and advocate for avalanche safety. Sensing “generational change” and gravitating toward “a life of advocacy,” he entered politics and served two terms in Parliament. He has been head of the Liberal Party two years. He is handsome, has a winning personality, exhibited message discipline during the campaign, and is a talented dancer. There’s a sense we in the West have entered a new screwball phase. Watching Mr. Trudeau’s victory speech, I remembered the columnist Dorothy Thompson reaction on watching the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy. There’s something not fully stable there, she thought. But we have to let history do what it enjoys doing, which is surprising us.

Joe Biden’s decision not to run for president left me sad. He would have enlivened things. He has always reminded me of what Democrats were like when I was a kid—kind of normal and earthy and fun. They did not spend their time endlessly accusing people of being sexist-racist-homophobic-gender-biased persons of unchecked privilege. They would have thought that impolite.

I can’t imagine Joe Biden ever needed an image consultant to coach him on how to be himself. As if he had a choice.

Going in, the question about Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi Committee was: How will she come out? Would she emerge triumphant, bruised, stronger, exposed? How would the Republicans, who’ve proved themselves largely hapless in grilling those involved in various scandals, do this time? In 2013, in front of a Senate committee, Mrs. Clinton blunted attacks with her dramatic rhetorical question: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” When I watched I thought, “She just won.” But afterward “What difference does it make?” became a kind of shorthand for high-handed theatrics. It is hard to judge the impact of most Clinton performances in real time because Mrs. Clinton is a practiced actress and it takes people time to figure whether they believed the act or not.

Her goal was clearly to take all comers and end this. She wanted to make the Republicans look like tiresome obsessives, which usually wouldn’t be hard.

She took her seat in the hearing room handsomely coiffed, beautifully made up, wearing a sober, dark high-end pantsuit. Young journalists tell me I’m not allowed to describe how she’s dressed or whether she looks tired (no, well-rested) or stressed (no, cool as a cucumber). I tell them if they’re going to be journalists they can’t start out as word cops. Nor should they in their work put politically correct limits on their ability to describe a scene. If you mean to be a craftsman, you cannot start your career as a censor.

Chairman Trey Gowdy (nondescript suit, hair under control) wasted no time: “We are going to pursue the truth in a manner worthy of the memory of the four men who lost their lives.” He set a tone not of theatrics but factuality. He defended his committee’s investigation by asserting previous congressional probes had not been “serious” or “thorough” because they lacked sufficient access to relevant documents.

This undercut Mrs. Clinton’s ability to make points by repeating, as she has recently, that this is the eighth investigation. Mr. Gowdy cleverly brought up Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s witless comment suggesting the purpose of the investigation had been to damage her popularity. He blunted every charge and complaint he knew she was about to make.

She sat blank-faced, furiously thinking.

Elijah Cummings, the panel’s ranking Democrat, said in his statement the investigation is political, a “taxpayer-funded fishing expedition.” Having watched him in hearings the past few years I cannot determine whether his chronic umbrage is real or feigned.

In Mrs. Clinton’s opening statement she spoke slowly, in a calm, lower-register voice. When she spoke with personal warmth of the late ambassador, Chris Stevens, she was actress-y in a way you’d like if you like her and not if you don’t.

The preamble was meant to posit her as a person who felt authentic pain at what had happened in a way that suggested she’s suffered enough

She then perhaps cheekily pivoted to what we can learn from the tragedy. This was meant to establish her deep experience and command and was occasionally off-point: “Retreat from the world is not an option.” She evoked the Reagan-era deaths of 258 Americans in the Beirut Marine barracks and, more cleverly, security failures in the administrations of her husband and of George W. Bush. That was meant to make Benghazi—only four dead—look comparatively insignificant.

The first hour-and-a-half seemed to focus on niggling things, as if no one could get their hands on the thread. Viewers at home may have given up. Then the pace quickened. There were hundreds of requests regarding security issues in Benghazi in 2012, and Mrs. Clinton said not one reached her desk. This is remarkable. A secretary of state who supported a military action that unleashed chaos and sends her friend, the ambassador, into that chaos has no awareness of his requests for more security? Sidney Blumenthal had her personal email address but Chris Stevens didn’t?

There were substantive fireworks when Rep. Jim Jordan suggested the administration used a protest over an anti-Islam video as a cover story for what Mrs. Clinton knew to be a planned and deliberate terrorist attack. He suggested a motive: The attack came less than two months before the 2012 election. He presented proof she knew Benghazi wasn’t a popular protest about a video. She never really answered the charges, falling back on quickly unfolding events, confusion, a fluid situation. She dodged, and it was obvious. “I wrote a whole chapter about this in my book,” she attempted. She pretended the line of questioning was an insult to those who died. No, it was an insult to her. She was passive-aggressive: “I’m sorry that it doesn’t fit your narrative, Congressman.” She later spoke of how wounding it is to have one’s assertions received with such skepticism. This was unpersuasive.

How did she do? How did they do? The Republicans were able interrogators. For Mrs. Clinton it was mixed. At moments she was poised and in command, at others more scattered and scrambling. She has considerable faith in her talent for double talk. She suffered through and survived, and will soon be saying what she wanted to say: I took any and all questions, there is nothing to add, the issue has been addressed. Next.

Something big happened at the Democratic debate. It didn’t have to do with Hillary Clinton besting Bernie Sanders or Jim Webb. What she had to do, after the long, battering summer, was show she is up to the battle, ready for it, capable—that she can do this. She did. She was crisp, lively, a presence. In demonstrating that she is up to the race she deprived Vice President Joe Biden of his rationale for getting into it. People say he didn’t have a rationale but of course he did, it just wasn’t something he could say or leak. His rationale, at 72 and having recently experienced great loss, was: The party’s in trouble, the front-runner can’t win, she’s too encrusted by scandal, in an act of heroic sacrifice I’m going to swoop in and save the day.

But she had to tank, and very obviously, for him to swoop. She didn’t. If she had, I suspect we’d be spending the weekend hearing about his impending candidacy. We won’t.

I don’t see how he gets in now.

Too bad! Mr. Biden would have added a layer of affection to a so-far cold enterprise. He would have added an element of old-time normality to the field. He would have been as entertaining in his way as Donald Trump, and it would have been instructive to see how Democrats respond to the entrance of President Obama’s two-term vice president. Who has the party’s heart?

It would have been great. But if he jumped in now he’d look like a spoiler, doing it not to save the party but fulfill his sense of destiny. He won’t want to look that way. If he were willing to look that way he would have announced six months ago.

Luck matters in politics as in life and Mrs. Clinton has now been lucky twice in a short time. Kevin McCarthy blunted Republican arrows on Benghazi, then Bernie Sanders blunted arrows by saying the email scandal doesn’t matter. To many of his supporters, presumably, it did. Now all Democrats have permission not to care. It’s nice to get a pass like that!

And now the one candidate who could have derailed her will likely not get in. She is on a roll.

The Democratic debate revealed two other things. The 2008 Democratic contest was a rush to the center, with both leading Democrats, Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama, trying to show they were moderates at heart. The 2016 primary is a rush to the left. We are now not embarrassed to argue America should be more like Denmark, we are proudly socialist or severely progressive, and by the way Republicans are the enemy. Asked which enemy she was proudest to have made, Mrs. Clinton mentioned the NRA, the Iranians, some others and “probably the Republicans.” She was smiling, but if any GOP hopeful declared “the Democrats” to be on his enemies list he would be roundly condemned as polarizing, and people like me would be saying: “You don’t demonize the other team, you win them over!” It is interesting that in Mrs. Clinton’s case that isn’t happening.

If the Democratic candidates are rushing to the left it’s because they know some significant quadrant of the base is there. If Hillary feels free to speak of the Republicans as enemies it’s because she knows there is a portion of the base that is angry, polarized and ready to respond to an aggressive tone.

We hear a great deal about uncompromising anger on the Republican side and none about the take-no-prisoners resentment on the Democratic side. But it’s there.

Which gets us to Donald Trump, who had another good week with smashing polls in Connecticut, Nevada, South Carolina and Virginia. ( Robert Costa of the Washington Post says the untold story now is Mr. Trump’s state organizing.) But the smartest new data I saw this week was from Target Point, which conducted a national poll of likely Republican primary voters from Sept. 29 through Oct. 1. I call it smart because it confirms my own observations and biases.

It found the GOP electorate to be “extremely fluid.” No candidate is close to a majority. The average respondent is still considering six different candidates. Twenty-nine percent of those polled didn’t express a clear preference for any one candidate. Most are trying to choose between two favorites. Those enjoying increased consideration are Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio.

Mr. Trump, according to Target Point, is not slumping. But “he does appear to have plateaued.”

That’s what I’m seeing too. Talking to Trump supporters this week I’m getting a sense of stalling or slight deflation. The early thrill is gone. No one mentions that it’s something he said or did. I get the impression some supporters are saying: “It’s not you, it’s me.” They’re wondering if they themselves will continue to feel the early electrical charge of Mr. Trump. They’re wondering if they will find another candidate they like as much or more. They’re not sure. A relative and early Trump enthusiast said Wednesday on the phone, “He’s—he’s not going to go in there and say, ‘I’ll bomb someone,’ right? I mean he’ll have the regular professional generals and all the military people surrounding him, giving him advice—right?” I could hear a certain wavering. But then he stopped talking because he didn’t want to wind up in a column.

Mr. Trump announced in June and has been in the lead through now mid-October, and every political sophisticate I know continues to be gobsmacked at what it all means and portends.

I have been seeing my friends go through the five stages of Trump, which are like the Kübler-Ross stages of grief. The first is denial (“He’s going nowhere, he’s a farce”). Second is anger (“This vulgar slob of a fool has some nerve messing with the American electoral process for his own enjoyment”). Next, bargaining (“If we make him promise to support the party if he doesn’t win, and he refuses, won’t that ruin him with the base?”). Then depression (“He’s a reality-TV star! He has the hair of an abnormal person! He’s our next president? I must have picked the wrong year to give up hallucinogens”). And finally acceptance (“We’ve had worse”—a Democratic political professional actually said that to me).

The only thing I feel certain of is how we got here. There are many reasons we’re at this moment, but the essential political one is this: Mr. Obama lowered the bar. He was a literal unknown, an obscure former state legislator who hadn’t completed his single term as U.S. senator, but he was charismatic, canny, compelling. He came from nowhere and won it all twice. All previously prevailing standards, all usual expectations, were thrown out the window.

Anyone can run for president now, and in the future anyone will. In 2020 and 2024 we’ll look back on 2016 as the sober good ol’ days. “At least Trump had business experience. He wasn’t just a rock star! He wasn’t just a cable talk-show host!”