Peggy Noonan

Those who think about politics and history as a profession can’t resist comparing presidential years. “This is 1968 all over again.” “We’re back to the dynamics of ’72.” We do this because we know political history and love it, and because there are always parallels and lessons to be learned.

But it should be said as a reminder: This year isn’t like any previous time.

This is the year of the sudden, historically disastrous debate, the near-assassination of one of the nominees, the sudden removal of the president from his ticket, the sudden elevation of a vice president her own party had judged a liability, and her suddenly pulling even in a suddenly truncated campaign.

We have never had this year. And it continues to astound.

Kamala Harris just got two excellent weeks in the clear. Donald Trump’s campaign had to take her down early or at least hit her hard—and didn’t. She has the wind at her back; he’s scattered and stuck on the back of his heels. This week she had a good rally in Atlanta; he went before a hostile National Association of Black Journalists, was taken aback by his first questioner’s accusatory tone, matched her energy, and revealed, if you didn’t know, how cutting and personal the coming months will be.

What is remarkable is how surprised the Trump campaign seems to have been by Ms. Harris. Why? Smart people understood Joe Biden would eventually have to step aside, and she was his most likely replacement. Why have they responded as if shocked? We have a trough of videos of her talking, it’s devastating. Where is it? Is that all you’ll need to make a coherent case? When are you going to locate the meaning of this thing?

“San Francisco liberal,” “way too radical.” All that feels tired, the reflex of an aged muscle. It sounds like the 1990s. This isn’t the ’90s. New ages need new arguments, or at least arguments freshly cast.

Can Mr. Trump shift gears? He grew up, as I did, watching “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I’m sure it was on every Sunday night at 8 at the Trump house in Queens. On that show you saw every week the great Borscht Belt comics of 1950-70. Their timing—“Take my wife—please!”—is ingrained in him. What he does now is shtick, because he likes to entertain and is a performer. The boat’s sinking, the battery’s spitting, the shark’s coming! As Hannibal Lecter said, “I’d love to have you for dinner!”

This works so perfectly for those who support him. For everyone else it’s just more evidence of psychopathology. He has to freshen up his act. Can he?

Ms. Harris will dominate the coming week with the unveiling of her vice-presidential choice. Then there will be the convention, in which they’ll pull out all stops. And then August will be over. Meaning a third of the 100-day campaign will be over. Does Mr. Trump know that he’s fighting for his life?

I want to take a quick look at some factors that are major pluses for Ms. Harris.

• She is new. She seems a turning of the page away from Old Old Biden and Old Old Trump. She looks new, like a new era. She displays vigor and the joy of the battle. The mainstream media is on her side. Coverage hasn’t been tough or demanding.

• On policy she is bold to the point of shameless. This week she essentially said: You know those policies I stood for that you don’t like? I changed my mind! Her campaign began blithely disavowing previous stands, with no explanation. From the New York Times’s Reid Epstein: “The Harris campaign announced on Friday that the vice president no longer wanted to ban fracking, a significant shift from where she stood four years ago.” Campaign officials said she also now supports “increased funding for border enforcement; no longer supported a single-payer health insurance program; and echoed Mr. Biden’s call for banning assault weapons but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.” It’s remarkable, she’s getting away with it, and it’s no doubt just the beginning. It will make it harder for the Trump campaign with its devastating videos.

Will the left of her party let her tack toward moderation? Yes. She’s what they’ve got, and in any case people on the wings of both parties have a way of recognizing their own. Progressives aren’t protesting her new stands: That’s the dog that didn’t bark.

• She too is a born performer. She knows what she’s doing when she’s campaigning. She is less sure of what she’s doing when she’s governing. But she gets a race. Running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, she wasn’t good at strategy or policy, but the part involving performing and being a public person and speaking with merry conviction—she gets that and is good at it.

• She is beautiful. You can’t take a bad picture of her. Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce: radiance. It is foolish to make believe this doesn’t matter. Politicians themselves are certain it matters, which is why so many in that male-dominated profession have taken to Botox, fillers, dermabrasion, face lifts, all the cosmetic things. Because they’re in a cosmetic profession.

• She has a wave of pent-up support behind her. By November we’ll know if something big happened. Barack Obama deliberately, painstakingly put new constituencies together. He created a movement. It had fervor and energy. What we may see this year is something different—that a movement created Kamala Harris. That is, the old constituencies held, maintained fervor and rose again when Mr. Biden stepped aside and Ms. Harris was put on top. I’m not sure we’ve seen that before.

She has many particular challenges. One is this: When you see Mr. Trump, that’s Trump. He is what you think he is. He doesn’t hide much. You look at him and think (pro or con), OK, I get it, I know who that guy is. When you see Ms. Harris, is that Harris? Is what she is showing you her? You wonder, “Is this real and genuine?” I wonder how she’ll address that or answer it.

Another: She stumbles in interviews. Will she try to get away with not doing any?

Another: People will continue to wonder how liberal she is, and how strong she is, but I think an equally or more important question will be how serious she is. Does she think seriously, deeply, soberly? I haven’t seen her betray this tendency. Mr. Obama was a serious man, Hillary Clinton was fully understood as a serious woman. (That’s why her campaign could produce and she could capitalize on the famous “3 a.m. phone call” ad.) Is Ms. Harris? Is she a credible commander of the U.S. nuclear arsenal?

Some will respond, “But Donald Trump isn’t serious!” My answer would be: That’s why he lost the popular vote twice. If Democrats lose the popular vote, they almost certainly lose the election.

Mr. Trump himself would reply: I controlled the nuclear arsenal for four years. Nothing blew up.

To the president’s speech explaining his decision to step aside: I wanted to be moved and informed and wound up impatient.

It was a speech that carried a high degree of difficulty. A president of the United States with six months to go can’t declare to the world, “I’d love to stay longer but let’s face it, I’m half gaga.” Nor could he quite admit his party forced him out—that concedes too much volatility in the American political scene. But he could speak somewhat candidly and suggestively about reality, and fill in important informational gaps, while also (and protectively) projecting a certain latent strength. Instead the proud old man insisted on his greatness and centrality. The only sparks came from the banalities crashing into the clichés. The gift of the speech was that it underlined the rightness of his decision to step aside, and his party’s decision to push him.

Vice President Kamala Harris must beware of his trying to glom on to the action and insert himself into the campaign. He won’t want to stay in the Oval Office doing quiet work, his spirit will demand involvement. Statements meant to be supportive will sound patronizing. It will make it harder for her to turn the page. Donors, it’s time to suggest you want very much to contribute to his presidential library and hope you’ll feel free to in December, as the year closes.

Now to the hundred-day race.

I had long thought Kamala Harris couldn’t beat Donald Trump. That’s wrong. She can.

We’re a 50/50 country, each side gets 40 going in, you fight for the rest but it can always go either way. As people who speak the technical language of politics say, Mr. Trump has a high floor but a low ceiling.

But beyond that, something’s happening.

Ms. Harris has not, in five years on the national stage, shown competence. She is showing it now, and that is big news. Her rollout this week demonstrated talent and hinted she may be a real political athlete.

Her past and famous verbal embarrassments, which shaped her public reputation, almost all took place in interviews and ad libbed arias. They obscured a real proficiency.

She was striking and strong in this week’s speeches in Milwaukee and Houston. She knows how to act a speech. When she is scripted she is good. That isn’t all put-down. She knows what a good speech is. She can judge it, recognize good material. Not all candidates can. Most can’t. It is its own talent.

Milwaukee especially had power. Its theme: “We’re not going back.” We’re not going back to Jan. 6, 2021, to the old ways, to unfreedom, to racism, sexism, to Trumpian America. We’re going forward into something new and exciting. She was positing that it is bigger than her.

Among those who follow politics closely and are highly online for political content, views of Ms. Harris hardened long ago. But to those of relaxed engagement, especially the young, she will be a new figure. They’ll be seeing her for the first time. They’ll be open to what they see.

Her party is newly alive and loaded for bear. This is what top Trump staffers feared, according to Tim Alberta’s heavily reported work in the Atlantic. They didn’t fear Joe Biden. What they feared was “institutional Democrats,” in the words of Susie Wiles. The Democratic Party is a machine, a vast network of groups and money lines that knows how to get out their base and a would-be base. A deteriorated Joe Biden couldn’t fully capitalize on this. A dispirited party wouldn’t fully produce it.

But a new and revived candidate who woke everybody up? That would be a danger.

There is discernible spirit already among the young, among liberal women, black women. In my town I am seeing the suddenly clenched jaw of the woman who backed Hillary, was devastated by 2016, and has one last chance to take it to Mr. Trump and get a woman over the line. It is the Revenge of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit. It will have power.

Online, the rise of the TikTok voters, the Harris supporters and their Brat video memes. They have taken Ms. Harris’s past incoherent statements and elevated them into their own Dadaesque art form. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? Ha ha! I love Venn diagrams. It is strangely mesmerizing. I started to think this isn’t idiocy, it’s Ezra Pound. This would be an unalloyed part of the sheer joy of politics if TikTok weren’t a Chinese espionage operation.

“Obama hasn’t endorsed her yet.” Barack Obama isn’t a guy who joins a chorus. He deploys himself carefully, for maximum impact. Wait for a magical rally. It will be like the one where the Kennedy family anointed him during the 2008 Democratic primary. Mr. Obama had a real coalition. He is going to get it out.

Finally, mainstream media will want to get back onside. They just did Joe Biden in, they’re not going to do in his heir. Also: Donald Trump, so what the heck.

In the end it will come down to issues and positions. She should scramble toward the center and try to hold it every day. It isn’t at all clear that is her intention. In her Thursday speech to the teachers union she took straight, down-the-line progressive postures.

Maybe she thinks all the common wisdom is wrong: She can win through a titanic battle of left and right. Maybe she can. What that will look like will matter a lot.

A final note. Everything is about to get meaner, more vicious and primal.

Biden supporters were deep down unsure, and it made them milder. Ms. Harris’s energy revives the party’s hunger; its angers will be more awake. Mr. Trump and his forces can’t not be mean, it is their essence when threatened.

Here is some urgently meant advice. The American political story right now is one of instability. We claim to be the indispensable nation, the biggest power, the secure one that can be trusted with the nuclear arsenal. If you would be all-powerful you must be an obviously stable political entity. We have been failing at this for some time and are failing now. It will have reverberations down the road.

*   *   *

For now, to cool things:

Stop showing pictures of Donald Trump with blood running down his face. Stop obsessing on the assassination attempt. It excites the unstable. I can do that too. The sick and the evil don’t need more inspirations.

Stop obsessing publicly over the inadequacy of the Secret Service. (Washington, obsess on it quietly, and fix it.) It tells the sickest among us how easy it is to get around security and get your shot. We have to stop telling them this.

America’s enemies are excited by vulnerability, weakness, a sense things are scattered. On an average day key figures in our government—the secretaries of state and defense, heads of intelligence and domestic agencies—are on the road, in the conference in Prague and the meeting in Seoul. Right now, with the aged president and the volatile politics, they should stop, stay close to home, be in their offices in Washington.

Be there, not on planes and in hotel rooms. The look of solidity is almost as good as the real thing.

I will make something clear before sharing some honest, perhaps startling thoughts. I did not support either of the major party presidential candidates in 2016 and wrote about it here. I could not endorse either in 2020, and explained why here. I fully expect my third consecutive write-in this November, for the same reasons as stated in my 2020 column, plus the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the attempt to overturn the results of the election, which was not a failure of “decorum” and “norms” but something else and, I believe, more sinister.

But I strongly believe that in my profession and as far as you are able you must not let your views and convictions become cataracts over your eyes that cloud your vision. You have to see as clearly as you can and say what you see. And you must be alive to the spirit of things, and their meaning.

I state all this for clarity’s sake as the political year heats up. If I say the Republicans had a stupendous convention I am not saying I am Trumpist; if I urge Democrats to climb their way out of the Slough of Despond I am not declaring myself a Democrat. It has been said of this column that it does balls and strikes, and I take it as a compliment but I don’t think it’s true. Umpires don’t tell the pitcher to try a fastball or the batter to shift his stance. I do. My advice to both parties is shaped by my thoughts, which are those of a political conservative. I want both parties to be clean and constructive and to shine, and I want to be moved by their excellence.

And so, to the Republican National Convention: It was stupendous, a triumph in every way from production through pronounced meaning and ability to reach beyond the tent. It moved me. Madeline Brame, speaking of the stabbing death in New York of her son, and District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “soft on crime” response, moved me. The Gold Star families whose sons and daughters died at the Abbey Gate during the botched withdrawal from Kabul and were later abandoned by the White House moved me. What love—and what an indictment.

The convention was wild in the way things that are alive are wild. Harmeet Dhillon covered her head with a shawl to sing a Sikh prayer; Amber Rose, the beautiful young woman with face tattoos being cheered for speaking about what it is to support Donald Trump in her media world, and why she is willing to pay the price; Shabbos Kestenbaum, the Harvard grad suing Harvard for discrimination over its failures after Oct. 7; J.D. Vance’s mother throwing kisses to the crowd as it chanted her name, and her son saying maybe they’ll have her 10th anniversary clean and sober in the White House. The citizens were so much more eloquent than the professionals.

And of course Sean O’Brien, head of the Teamsters, railing against corporate greed to a Republican convention whose delegates warmly applauded.

And none of that was even the headline. The headline: This wasn’t a divided party, it was a party united. It wasn’t only Mr. Trump’s party, it was an explicitly Trumpian party.

We saw something epochal: the finalization and ratification of a change in the essential nature of one of the two major political parties of the world’s most powerful nation. It is now a populist, working-class, nationalist party. That is where its sympathies, identification and affiliation lie. There will be shifts, stops and accommodations in the future, no party ever has a clear line, history intervenes, but it is changed, and there will be no going back.

This was a party that at least for a week could turn the page on its obsessions. Election denialism was out, a post-DEI future in.

Observers have noted how joyous the delegates seemed, and they did. It is not only that they believe the assassination attempt, and Mr. Trump’s response to it, which has entered American political mythology, seemed to confer an air of the mystical and an affirmation of their loyalty. They were also happy because it’s settled now, and they won.

The first time this Republican Party gathered it was 2016 and the mood was darker, defensive around the edges. For many it was their first convention. The party was split. People were less sure of things than they said. Does a handful of real and legitimate grievances amount to a philosophy? I own a string of dry cleaners in Indianapolis, and I’m up against the Bushes and Skull and Bones. Maybe the establishment would strike back and smite them in November.

All that is over. A movement that was a joke nine years ago is a party now. Its members are certain they will win in November because they believe the vast majority of Americans feel just like them: a hard no on illegal immigration, unstopped street crime, foreign entanglements. They believe they speak for normal people. Meaning in spite of past apocalyptic talk of civil war, they believe the majority of America is still normal. And like them. There was a funny little affirmation in that.

In any case the long-heralded change has happened, and will have some real part in shaping American politics in the 21st century.

Why did Mr. Trump pick Mr. Vance? For intellectual heft? Sure—he’s policy-focused and fluent. As an attack dog? It’s not as if Mr. Trump needs one but sure, Mr. Vance, in his brief political life, has shown he isn’t shy to pull off the scab. But he is interesting and something new, and the choice strikes me as revealing about Mr. Trump. When he first ran, and in the first years of his presidency, he flailed about because he didn’t know the implications of his own policies. Some of those policies were new to him, a grab bag based on whatever the crowd cheered. In choosing Mr. Vance, Mr. Trump is saying: I know and have embraced a specific policy approach grounded in particular principles and assumptions, and I will institute it. Trumpism has journeyed from the chaotic to the intentional.

It should be added that it was creepy to see members of the Trump family dominating prime speaking slots all week. This was carelessly cultish, and in its carelessness insolent. Mr. Trump’s speech was surprisingly muted, scattered and low-energy. It lacked drama even though he was narrating what it is like to be shot.

To give you a sense of how powerful I think all this has been, I have a feeling it’s going to change the Democratic Party in the coming weeks.

They are professionals; they saw what Milwaukee was. They want to be bold too, they want to be winners, they want to unite and turn the page. Mr. Vance is 39 and about to ignite imaginations. Everything feels open.

Do the Democrats have a golden magic pony among them? Is that what it takes to change? To win? They’re going to find out.

A final point. We have, many of us, for some time—months, certainly the past few weeks—felt various degrees and kinds of horror. But oh these are exciting times. Things are moving, shifting. Again, this is big history. Hold on to your hat.

Oh no, not again. I got that feeling you get of chaos and horror and no one in charge. That terrible, cratering feeling you’ve had before.

I was watching it live, on television, as I readied to go to dinner. Donald Trump was in a red MAGA hat, talking about the border. I turned away for a moment. Then I heard a scream and looked back at the screen. The podium was empty. Mr. Trump seemed beneath it, with Secret Service agents running toward him, surrounding him. There was more screaming than seems apparent in the replays.

I texted my dinner friend: “Something happened.” I called a relative, said put on the TV. We watched as Mr. Trump was hauled up. We saw the blood near his ear. When they trundled him off and he threw up his fist, pumped it at the crowd and shouted, “Fight,” my relative said, “Well, that’s over.” Meaning the election. Meaning you don’t give America an image like that and go on to lose, you give America an image like that and it enters political mythology forever.

Mr. Trump had heard at least one shot, maybe a few. One grazed his ear. He hit the deck, was lifted up in shock, pale. He should have been swiftly rushed from the stage. But no, this is the great genius of American political theater and the reflex kicked in, the same reflex that kicked in after he had Covid and was returned to the White House from the hospital, and wanted to pose on the White House balcony in a Superman shirt with a big S, and somebody talked him out of it. So too at the rally Saturday—he got to his feet, he didn’t wipe the blood from his face, he wanted you to see and understand the whole picture. He got his look of tough-guy fury, the one he showed for weeks walking into court in New York, the one on the mug shot. He raised that fist, pumped it, shouted “Fight,” as part of the crowd began to chant “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

It was epic. Whatever you feel about him, whatever your stand, grant him one of the great gangsta moves of American political history.

An hour or so later a friend called, a journalist. I told him of my relative’s reaction. He said he wasn’t sure, we are living in a time of such turbulence, too much drama and hatred, maybe in November people will vote for calm. Silence. I said, “But Joe Biden doesn’t make anyone feel calm.” He’s angry, resentful, may not finish the thought. “He makes everyone nervous.”

Beyond all that is the crushing knowledge that this is bad for America, bad for its morale, for its confidence in the idea of its continuance. And of course it is terrible in the eyes of the world, more proof that we can’t hold it together. Europe was asleep when it happened, it was just after midnight in Paris and Berlin, and when they woke up to the news it was clear that the target of the assassination attempt wasn’t seriously wounded and had gone home, and the would-be assassin dead. Still, an American living in England wrote from there, crestfallen: “Our beautiful country, in the gutter.”

That was a better, truer sentiment than the responses of our political leaders, whose reactions have seemed so harrowingly pro forma. “Violence has no place in our country.” They always say those rote and vacuous words. But it does have a place here, it claimed it long ago; that’s our problem. As I write, they are calling the 20-year-old would-be assassin “a loner.” They have been calling assassins and mass murderers loners since I was a child, since Lee Harvey Oswald. For loners, they sure are a big group.

Here might—might, if we aren’t past this—be a better response from the famous. “America, I love you and am of you and grew up here and know your heart. We beg you, and will do our part, at least for a moment, to show real regard and affection for whoever you feel is ‘the other side.’” If you are anti-Trump, here is something deserving praise: His supporters left that rally last night shaken and full of woe and yet many stopped, kindly, to tell reporters what they saw and experienced, so that everyone might better understand what had transpired. It was moving how generous and patient they were, though they’d witnessed something that shook their souls.

Mr. Trump says rough things and rough things are said about him. He does rough things, too, and many of his enemies truly hate him and are accused of trying to thwart him in ways just and unjust.

Can we hope for any improvement? Any amelioration of the bile? Maybe for a short term. The long term? I don’t know. But shocks like an assassination attempt can reorder things in the political culture at least for a while. When something like this happens—when you are shot, and if you’d turned an inch or two this way and not that way, that was the difference between a grazing wound and death—what impact does that have? How do you feel when you see someone you hate assaulted and hurt by a nut with a gun at a public meeting? Does it feel good, or more like a caution, a warning?

We’re all at least united in one hope: that what happened last night will be the worst thing that happens in the 2024 campaign.

Everything is about to change. It won’t stay stuck.

We don’t know exactly how the change will come but it will come, because what we have now can’t continue. Joe Biden can’t sustain a demanding campaign and is incapable of functioning for 4½ more years as the American president. We all know this. Only three people don’t know it. They think they can tough it out. But reality doesn’t care how tough you are, reality will have its way.

When things move, they’ll move fast. What should the Democratic Party do?

Sometimes in life the romantic route is the realistic one. That is true in this case.

The realists wish to accept and anoint. The realist says Mr. Biden is a problem but you can’t remove him, so hunker down and try to survive the down-ballot drag as the old man hands Donald Trump the presidency, and likely Congress, and, uh oh, the next president may get two seats to fill on the Supreme Court so let’s cement Mr. Trump into the judiciary too. But this isn’t “realistic,” it isn’t “sophisticated,” it’s suicidal, and the suicide of dullards, too. The realist route, if Mr. Biden ultimately steps aside, is to limit debate, forestall trouble and anoint Kamala Harris as the new nominee.

The romantic route is to take personal responsibility and push the president to step aside. What follows is the Hail Mary pass: Say a prayer, throw the long ball and see who catches it. Devise a process—mini-primaries, open convention, figure it out—that lets the people of the party decide. Devise a formula whereby delegates can choose from five or six candidates. But open this thing up, anoint no one.

Elected officials, operatives and donors can’t in some grand cabal choose Ms. Harris as the directed heir. The country won’t respect it. Many in the party will resent it. They think she’ll lose. In four years she has, according to consistent polling, left most of the nation unimpressed. The Democratic establishment, such as it is, lost credibility by previously insisting on Mr. Biden when they could see he was impaired, and by blocking primary challenges. They can’t block all challengers again.

The vice president is never just “given” the presidency when he or she runs. They have always had to fight for it.

“It’s Kamala or chaos.” Then take chaos: Have the fight you fear. “We’ll have an intraparty war.” Then have it. “But Jeffrey Katzenberg says—” Whatever he says, do the opposite.

Ms. Harris deserves to be in the pool of candidates. Beyond that she can fight like everyone else.

The romantics are right and are seeing the situation clearly. They aren’t innocent: They understand the chaos that will ensue. But they know what U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq used to say: “Embrace the suck.” Open this up, take a chance. You may electrify America.

Here is a story of a party that was a mess—destroyed, riven and without hope. The Democratic Party of 1948 was a train wreck wrapped in a dumpster fire encased in the Marconi Room of the Titanic. Its left wing split and formed the Progressive Party, whose leader, Henry Wallace, became the presidential candidate. The right wing, the mighty Southern segregationists, stormed out during the party convention and decided to run their own presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond. The New Deal coalition that lasted 16 years had fallen apart.

President Harry S. Truman, 64 and at the peak of his powers, was at the bottom of the polls. Party leaders couldn’t help him make his convention a success because they were too busy trying to draft Dwight Eisenhower to take his place.

The convention opened on July 12 in Philadelphia during an oppressive heat wave. The huge crowds that were expected didn’t come. David McCullough, in his biography “Truman,” noted local cab drivers complained they had the wrong rigs: “They shoulda given us hearses.” Floor fights broke out, the Dixiecrats marched, the convention was “pathetically bogged down in its own gloom.” Speeches were long and windy, the balloting long. Truman arrived at 9:15 p.m. for his acceptance speech. He didn’t go on until almost 2:00 in the morning.

To make matters worse, before he spoke the convention had to watch a former senator’s sister unveil a special treat: a 6-foot-tall “Liberty Bell” she’d constructed, containing 48 pigeons designated as “doves of peace.” They would fly majestically through the air as the band struck up “Hail to the Chief.” But they’d been cooped up in the heat for hours, and when the bell opened some of them dropped out dead. The rest, distraught, flew wildly through the hall, smashing into television lights, rafters and drapes. Historian David Pietrusza writes: “They dive-bombed delegates. Men and women shouted, ‘Watch your clothes!’ ” Some pigeons went for the podium. Convention chairman Sam Rayburn “frantically shushed them away. One nearly landed on his glistening, bald head. Another headed straight for the blades of a thirty-six-inch electric fan, saved from filleting only by Rayburn’s quick action. ‘Get those damned pigeons out of here!’ he screamed over live radio and TV.”

Truman hadn’t prepared a formal speech, and went from bullet points. The crowd loved it. I judge it the worst of his career—snotty, militant, more than a little demagogic.

But up against it he showed plenty of fight. McCullough: “Critics on the left and the right found themselves grudgingly moved by such nerve and audacity in the face of the odds.”

Lovers of political history, the real romantics, know how the story ends. A long journey by rail, the famous whistle-stop tour. “I want to see the people,” said Truman, whose own idea McCullough says it was. He crossed the country, then through the Midwest, then up and down the cities of the East, town after town. And something started to happen. “No president in history had ever gone so far in quest of support from the people,” McCullough wrote.

People started arriving in the morning for an afternoon speech. In Detroit on Labor Day 100,000 people filled Cadillac Square. Labor muscle put them there, reporters said, and they were right. But 90,000 showed up in Des Moines, Iowa. At Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles Truman was met by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and introduced by New Dealer Ronald Reagan. Truman was blunt: communists were “guiding and using” the Progressives.

But he could be humble too. He liked that people wanted to talk about “the welfare of the country.” He said, “You don’t get any double talk from me.”

“Give ’em hell, Harry,” people started to shout. Later he’d famously say he didn’t give ’em hell, he just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

And on Election Day, Nov. 2, 1948, his shocking victory. It wasn’t even close.

It’s old lore. It’s romantic just to remember it.

But Democrats should be Democrats again. When everything in your world is about to change, reach back to your old, best self.

Admit the chaos, own it, open this thing up, go for broke. Tell the press: “You’re gonna see everything but the pigeons.”

We are living big history. We do that so often we don’t always notice. But a proud president is hunkered down in the White House, and his party is frantically trying to decide whether to press him to step aside from his bid for re-election after a catastrophic 90 minutes revealing that he is neurologically not up to the demands of a campaign or a second term. (And revealing, too, that his true condition, the depth of his decline, had been kept, quite deliberately and systematically, from the American people. Oh, the histories that will be written, and the villains that will be named.)

To me it feels like August 1974. The president’s position isn’t going to get better, it is going to get worse. The longer he waits to step aside the crueler his departure will be.

The post-debate polls show he is losing support both overall and in the battlegrounds. A cratering like that doesn’t happen because you had a bad night, or a cold, or were tired. It happens when an event starkly and unavoidably shows people what they already suspected. It happens when the event gives them proof.

Before the debate a majority of those polled said they no longer thought he had it in him physically or mentally to do the job of president anymore. After the debate that number reached 72%. You can’t un-ring that bell.

There’s no repairing this. His staff can’t spin or muscle their way out. He is neurologically compromised, we can all see it, it isn’t his fault. You have no governance in how you age and at what speed, or what illnesses or conditions arise. You only have governance in what you do about it.

Those who support the president offer suggestions on conference calls. “Just get him out there—long, live interviews, lots of news conferences, a big rally in the round with Q&A from the voters.”

They don’t know what they’re talking about. He can’t do what they want him to do. He can’t execute it. He tried to do it last week—the debate was, in effect, a live, high-stakes interview. He won’t be able to do it next week or next month either. Old age involves plateaus and plummets. It gets worse, not better.

The president’s staffers fantasize that they can plow ahead with teleprompter events—he looks stronger at the podium. But no one doubts he can stand and read. His staffers think they can smooth past things with supportive interviews with sympathetic journalists, but that won’t work either, not long term. Because everyone saw the debate, or, since, has seen pieces of it, and the image of a debilitated president has burned its way into the American brain and there’s no erasing it.

A big part of the president’s personal mythos, and it is shared by all of Biden-world, is that the guy’s a survivor, he always pulls through, you knock him down, he gets back up. An inner belief like that can get you far and gird you. But it can also harden into mere conceit and unrealism, and blind you to the real facts of current circumstances.

I don’t agree with the narrative that what was revealed in the debate was a sudden and dramatic decline. What he has been showing, for at least two years, is a steady and unstopping decline. In January 2022 we worried here about the president’s propensity for “unfinished sentences, non sequiturs; sometimes his thoughts seem like bumper cars crashing and forcing each other off course.” In April 2022 we wrote of a poll in New Hampshire that asked if Joe Biden was physically and mentally up to the job if there is a crisis. Fifty-four percent said, “not very/not at all.” In June 2022 we said there’s a broad sense it’s not going to get better: “He has poor judgment and he’s about to hit 80 and it’s not going to change.” Voters feel “unease.” In December 2022: Mr. Biden doesn’t think he’s “slipping with age,” but he’s wrong. “He’s showing age and it will only get worse, and he will become more ridiculous, when he’s deeper into his 80s.” Trusted Biden intimates must tell him to get out of the race. “You got rid of Donald Trump. You got us out of Afghanistan. You passed huge FDR-level bills that transformed the social safety net. . . . You did your job in history. You fulfilled your role. And now you should go out an inspiration.”

In September 2023 Mr. Biden had been busted in the press for telling tall tales that didn’t check out. We noted that while repeated lying is “a characterological fault, not knowing you’re lying might suggest a neurological one.” “The age problem will only get worse.” “In insisting on running he is making a historical mistake. . . . He isn’t up to it.”

What we saw in the debate isn’t new. That’s why voters won’t accept the idea that it was just a bad night. They think it’s been a bad and worsening two years.

It doesn’t feel right that the final decision will come down to one family’s psychodrama—that feels too small a thing for such big history. In any case it isn’t about one man’s personal needs, or his family’s enjoyment of importance and the blessings of proximity to power. It isn’t a party question or a White House question, it’s about America. Can America afford for another four years to have an obviously neurologically impaired president? No, it isn’t safe. It is on some level provocative. Weakness provokes. The president’s rationalizers point out that he’s fine from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. I am sure presidents Xi of China and Putin of Russia will only decide to take back Taiwan or move on Poland at lunch time EST, to keep things fair. Why wouldn’t they schedule their aggressions around the president’s needs?

The elected officeholders of the Democratic Party should take responsibility and press the president to leave. You can’t scream, “Democracy is on the line,” and put up a neurologically compromised candidate to fight for it. They haven’t moved for two reasons. One has to do with their own prospects: You don’t want to be the one who kills the king, you want to be the one who warmly mourns the king and takes his mantle after someone else kills him. The other is fear of who would replace him on the ticket, and how exactly that would happen.

These are understandable fears. But the answer isn’t to hide in a dumb fatalism, a listless acceptance of fate. It makes no sense to say, “Joe Biden is likely going to lose so we should do nothing because doing something is unpredictable.” Unpredictable is better than doomed.

This is a party afraid of itself, literally afraid of its own groups and component parts. They are afraid of their own delegates. Party professionals think letting the convention decide would reveal how fatally shattered and divided the party is—how wild it is. But that’s how the party looks now, with its leaders in Washington frozen and incapable and no one in charge.

What a tragedy this is. A president cratering his historical reputation, his wife and family ruining any affection history would have had for them when Donald Trump wins. They have no idea how they’re going to look.

In the weeks before CNN’s presidential debate I was skeptical of its significance. I didn’t see a dramatic, high-stakes, pivotal showdown coming, only a moderately sized, pro forma moment in a long, drawn-out campaign. The format had too many prohibitions—muted mics, no open discussion, no live audience, no opening statements, no talking to aides during the breaks, no notes on the lectern. This promised something airless, manufactured, hermetically sealed.

Beyond that I doubted we’d learn anything, because I doubted whether either candidate had the ability to expand on his known persona. Joe Biden has moments of blurted thought, but could he really sustain a thought or make an argument that coheres over two minutes? Could he suddenly show command, a true grasp of his own positions?

Could Donald Trump demonstrate that returning him to power wouldn’t be a wholly irresponsible act? Could he make any dent in the doubts, grounded in history, as to his nature and character? This wasn’t a question about whether he’s grown but about whether he can control himself.

Still, as a national event the early debate would function as the formal kickoff of the campaign, replacing Labor Day. And it would make clear how each candidate intends to present himself and his issues the next four months. So maybe it would be more consequential than I anticipated.

It was in fact as consequential as any presidential debate in history, and the worst night for an incumbent in history. It was a total and unmitigated disaster for Mr. Biden. It was a rout for Mr. Trump. It wasn’t the kind of rout that says: If the election were held tomorrow Donald Trump would win. It was the kind of rout that says: If the election were held tomorrow Donald Trump would win in a landslide.

It is impossible to believe that the Democrats will continue with Mr. Biden as their presidential standard-bearer. They are going to have to do what they fear to do: make themselves uncomfortable, reveal their internal splits and brokenness, and admit what the rest of the country can see and has long seen, that Mr. Biden can’t do the job. They have to stop being the victim of his vanity and poor judgment, and of his family’s need, and get themselves a new nominee.

From the moment he shuffled out with a soft and faltering gait, you could see how much he has declined. He was pale and waxy, and there was something almost furtive in his gaze. His voice was hoarse and feathery, with no projection. His answers were scrambled, halting. At some points he made no sense. At some points he seemed out of it.

Mr. Trump came across as calm, sure-voiced, focused. His demeanor wasn’t insane. He was low-key but high-energy. He obeyed the rules, amazingly, to his benefit. He showed respect for the moderators. If not quite genial he was collected, and he offered a new tack on why he’s running: He didn’t want to, but Mr. Biden, unfortunately, is such a disaster that Mr. Trump has to come back and save the country. “His policies are so bad . . . he will drive us into World War III.” World leaders neither respect nor fear him.

In the split screen, when not talking, Mr. Biden’s face seemed to freeze, sometimes in unfortunate loose-jawed expressions.

Mr. Trump was self-disciplined and knew his arguments. Won’t his proposed tariffs be inflationary? No, they’ll just spur dynamism and growth. He scored Mr. Biden on inflation, and the disastrously executed withdrawal from Afghanistan. He had the president on the defensive on abortion.

After Mr. Biden mumbled “We beat Medicare,” Mr. Trump said, “He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”

Just before the half-hour mark, Mr. Trump unleashed an onslaught on illegal immigration and the border. It was pointed, tough and merciless. Mr. Biden had no answer. Or no answer you could follow. Instead he focused on a Trump aside. “Veterans are a hell of a lot better off” under him. “My son spent a year in Iraq.” His greatest hits. It seemed old and sad. Mr. Trump had just handed him his head on the border, and Mr. Biden had nothing to say.

“The whole world is blowing up because of him,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Biden’s mumbled reply was neither memorable nor coherent.

The moderators turned to Jan. 6. What do you say to voters who say you violated your constitutional oath on that day, and will do it again? Mr. Trump used his reply to tee off a long attack on Mr. Biden and how the world had deteriorated under him. He claimed that he only asked people to move forward “peacefully and patriotically” on that day, and then scored Nancy Pelosi for not accepting his help. “And she now admits she turned it down.”

Mr. Biden said Mr. Trump “encouraged those folks who went to Capitol Hill.” During the riot he sat back and watched it on television. Then Mr. Biden seemed to lose his focus—on what should have been his most powerful case against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump accused Democrats of allowing endless riots after George Floyd’s death and said the “unselect committee” on Jan. 6 operated dishonorably.

Mr. Biden often looked at Mr. Trump and seemed to think his facial expression at those moments was powerful. I don’t think Mr. Trump ever looked at Mr. Biden, only at the moderators. He did his own greatest hits: “My retribution is going to be success.” “His son is a felon.” “I did nothing wrong.”

Mr. Biden attempted to bait him with little effect. “Having sex with a porn star while your wife was pregnant.” “You have the morals of an alley cat.” Mr. Trump didn’t get rattled or angry but defended himself: “The public knows it’s a scam.”

He calmly claimed that he has always opposed political violence. A moderator asked if Mr. Trump accept the results of the election. Mr. Trump responded with his usual caveat: “If it’s fair and legal and a good election—absolutely.” “There’s nothing I’d rather do.”

Here, toward the end, Mr. Biden finally had a strong moment. “I doubt if you’ll accept [the November outcome] because you’re such a whiner.” “Something snapped in you” after losing in 2020.

All the fact-checkers will be out this weekend. Good, fine. Mr. Trump played fast and loose—we know this. But he’s the one who’ll have made sense to people. You could hear him and understand what he was saying. He seemed focused. He didn’t seem unstable. Again, he didn’t seem insane.

In pushing and agreeing to an early debate, Mr. Biden’s White House and campaign advisers took a big swing. They missed. Mr. Biden couldn’t execute their plan. The Democratic Party doesn’t know it, but it got a gift. The dam broke. There is still time, and Mr. Trump is still takable.

This can’t continue. I am sorry to say this harsh thing, but allowing him to go forward at this point looks like elder abuse.

At the very least you can be sure that Donald Trump will never bother to debate Joe Biden again. He doesn’t have to. He’ll be only too happy to leave it exactly where it is.

We are talking about journalism this week, about newspapers and warring newsrooms and lost readership and what to do. At bottom, though this gets lost, all the arguments are really about what journalism is.

Here is what it is.

It is a dark night on a vast plain. There are wild sounds—the hiss of prehistoric cicadas, the scream of a hyena. A tribe of cavemen sit grunting around a fire. An antelope turns on a spit. Suddenly another caveman runs in, breathlessly, from the bush. “Something happened,” he says. They all turn. “The tribe two hills over was killed by a pack of dire wolves. Everyone torn to pieces.”

Clamor, questions. How do you know? Did you see it? (He did, from a tree.) Are you sure they were wolves? “Yes, with huge heads and muscled torsos.” What did it look like? “Bloody.”

As he reports he is given water and a favored slice of meat. Because he has run far and is hungry, but mostly because he has told them the news, and they are grateful.

Humans like news, need it, want it, will usually (not always) reward those who bring it. We need it to survive, to make decisions, to understand the world. We need it to live.

The purpose of journalism is to get the story and tell the story.

Now the cavemen turn to the tribal elder. “What should we do?”

“Short term, climb a tree if you see a wolf,” she says. “They don’t like fire and noise, so we should keep lit torches and scream. In the longer term, wolf packs are seen in the west, so we should go east to high ground.” That is the authentic sound of commentary, of editorials and columns. Advice, exhortation—they’re part of the news too. People will always want it, question it, disagree. “To the editor: You have it all wrong. We should go north, toward the water.” “To the editor: Has it occurred to your columnist the dead tribe may have provoked the wolves through farming practices that encroached on their habitats?”

But even cavemen who eat bugs and wear hides are not always grim. Man wants not only to be informed but to be amused, entertained. He wants humor, wit, mischief, a visual tour of the latest cave paintings. Cave man want cooking app. And word games and reporting on the richest tribes: “Most Expensive Cave Dwelling Sells in Malibu.” And he wants the story, the yarn, the tale that takes people into a reality unfamiliar to them and makes them want to share it, and in the sharing be less alone. “Martha, listen to this!” means you know Martha. What a serious purpose that is, to leave people less encased in themselves.

All that is the purpose of journalism, forever and now. It is what a newspaper is for, to serve the public by finding out what’s really going on in all sectors and telling them, clearly.

The great news for journalism is there will always be a huge market for this. The need for news is built into human nature. Tech platforms change, portals change, but the need is forever.

So what is the problem?

The past two decades, accelerating over the past four years, newsrooms have increasingly become distracted from their main mission, confused about their purpose. Really, they’ve grown detached from their mission. This has happened in other professions and is always hard to capture. But the journalistic product now being offered has become something vaguer than it was, more boring, less swashbuckling, more labored, as if it’s written by frightened people. There’s an emphasis on giving the story “context,” but the story doesn’t feel alive and the context seems skewed. Twee headlines: “What You Need to Know About Dire Wolf Intersectionality With Humans.”

I’ll decide what I need to know, bub.

It is as if journalism is no longer about Get the Story but about Meeting People Where They Are and helping them navigate through a confusing world. But do you really think current editors know where people are? Do you think they know how to navigate? It all feels presumptuous.

More disturbing, major stories go unreported because, the reader senses, they don’t relate to the personal obsessions of the editors and reporters, or to their political priors. Didn’t I say that politely? There’s a sense newsrooms are distracted by HR issues and how people treat each other. But the news doesn’t care if it is delivered by an especially collegial person, it just wants to be delivered. My FedEx package doesn’t care if it’s delivered by a nice person, and neither really do I. I just want it on time and in one piece.

More and more as I observe American journalism I miss the guys who were big TV news producers in the 1980s and ’90s. They were animals—real cavemen. They’d do anything to get the news. They yelled at people and pushed them around. But the people around them, they sure got the story.

Facebook and social media can’t get the story. They can amplify it, give an opinion, comment. But they don’t have the resources and expertise; they don’t have trained investigative journalists and first-class experienced editors and a publisher willing to take a chance and spend the money. Social media has opinions, emotions, propaganda.

And the great thing for newspapers is if you get the story—if you are known to get the story, like the Washington Post in the Watergate years—you will be read.

Because you will be needed. And if you are needed people will pay for you.

If you are just following along with some agenda, you will be read by those who share that agenda, but no one else. And readership will plummet.

In early 2023, Len Downie and Andrew Heyward, formerly executive editor of the Washington Post and president of CBS News, respectively, wrote a paper about how modern journalists see standards within their professions, and it seemed to me not only confused but a kind of capitulation. There had been a “generational shift” in journalism, and the many editors and reporters they interviewed think objectivity is more or less “outmoded,” a false standard created by the white male patriarchy. What was really striking was there was no mention, not one, of the thrill of the chase, of getting the story—of journalism itself. It was all about the guck and mess, not the mission, and made them look like news bureaucrats, joyless grinds, self-infatuated bores.

If that is who they are, who needs them? Who would pay hundred of dollars a year to read them?

They were obsessed with who’s in the newsroom when their readers are obsessed with what comes out of the newsroom. It is good and worthy and necessary to have reporters and editors who come from different experiences, different classes, different cultural assumptions. But current ways of encouraging diversity seem to yield a great sameness in terms of class and viewpoint, and in any case diversity is a mission within a mission, it isn’t the mission itself, which is: Get the story, tell the story.

“Something happened. The tribe two hills over . . .”

I suppose this is about being an honorable combatant in the middle of a culture war, which entails seeing the humanity of your perceived foe and, in the seeing of it, preserving your own.

The story, which you’ve already heard, is that a left-wing activist who calls herself an “advocacy journalist” went to the June 3 dinner of the Supreme Court Historical Society, a 50-year-old organization whose declared mission is to unearth and preserve the court’s history. During what appears to have been the drinks portion of the evening the activist, called Lauren Windsor, secretly taped private conversations with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann. Ms. Windsor dishonestly presented herself as a conservative Christian. She goaded and baited the Alitos, hoping to get them to say extreme and stupid things, which she would later disseminate on social media.

Mrs. Alito, as appears to be her way—she is commonly described by friends as “a pistol”—said some spirited things. She has been under siege. Her husband wrote the Dobbs decision; she is by extension a target of hatred; she has been verbally confronted in her neighborhood and accused of inappropriate flag flying. Half the accusation—that after words with a neighbor she flew the American flag upside-down—was legitimate. It was a weird choice for the spouse of a justice in a time of tension. The other half—that the old Appeal to Heaven flag was flown at her vacation home, secretly signaling allegiance with the rioters on Jan. 6—was absurd. People on 1/6 carried Bibles and Bic pens too. Should we ban them? Slime those who use them?

The tone of the edited six-minute tape of the conversation with Mrs. Alito is at variance with news reports. Ms. Windsor comes across as a pushy and vaguely hysterical fangirl meeting an idol. Clearly she was acting out her idea of a Christian and conservative, which is a revved-up nut. Mrs. Alito’s mistake was responding in an egalitarian manner and not breezing past the nut with a quick, false smile.

Ms. Windsor introduces herself: “I’m a huge fan of your husband, and everything you’re going through, I just wanna tell you—”

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” Mrs. Alito says.

Ms. Windsor: “It’s not OK, though! It’s not OK!” Mrs. Alito offers a vow: “If they come back to me, I’ll get them. I’m gonna be liberated and I’m gonna get them.”

Ms. Windsor perks up. A threat! “What do you mean by ‘they’?”

Mrs. Alito answers: “The media.” The press made fun of her from the day she arrived in Washington, at the sparky confirmation hearings for her husband. She implies that when all this is over she’ll be giving them a piece of her mind. Everyone in Washington has this fantasy.

Ms. Windsor says the Appeal to Heaven flag flap was nonsense, and begins to swear excitedly. “Right,” says Mrs. Alito. “But, like, I have the same flag!” Ms. Windsor says. “Yes, I know,” says Mrs. Alito.

“But a lot of people fly that f—flag!” Ms. Windsor says. Mrs. Alito, in what sounds to my ears like a comforting tone: “Don’t worry about it, baby.”

Ms. Windsor says Mrs. Alito is being persecuted as “a convenient stand-in for anybody who’s religious.” Again Mrs. Alito says it will be OK—she’s German and tough. “You come after, me I’m gonna give it back to you.” This part had a “Real Housewives” flavor. “Don’t worry about it.” Mrs. Alito says, read Psalm 27.

Ms. Windsor changes tack, quoting something she had said to Justice Alito. “So I met him last year at this dinner. And I said to him, like, ‘This country is so polarized, how do we repair that rift?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, that’s not our role.’ And I told him this year, I’m like, ‘You know for the past year I remembered our conversation and I looked at what happened to you and your wife, and I’m like ‘How is there any negotiating with the radical left?’ ”

Mrs. Alito agrees there isn’t. “There’s not!,” says Mrs. Windsor. “You cannot negotiate with the radical left!” “You have to just win!”

It’s like Sean Hannity on meth.

Ms. Windsor: “No, but you have to win! And if we want to take this country back to, like, a godly place, to a moral place, that means that we actually have to just—”

By now Mrs. Alito is all in, blowing off steam. She’d like to put a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag up across from a pride flag. “Oh, please don’t put up a flag,” her husband says, and she won’t, but after he leaves the court, “I’m putting it up and I’m gonna send them a message every day. Maybe every week I’ll be changing the flags. They’ll be all kinds!”

One believes her.

The edited tapes made front-page news, which was odd in a mainstream media that regularly and rightly scorns the right-wing secret-sting-tape-maker James O’Keefe for deceptive reporting.

As to the contents of the Roberts and Justice Alito tapes, the chief justice didn’t take any bait or any nonsense. Of making America more godly, he said, “Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path? That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers. . . . It’s our job to decide the cases the best we can.”

Justice Alito gave Ms. Windsor more patience, but I agreed with the New York Post editorial that he seemed like someone gently trying to shake off a political obsessive. He agreed that polarization is real, and that for it to end, “one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working—a way of living together peacefully. But it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.” Still, the court can’t solve polarization. “We have a very defined role, and we need to do what we’re supposed to do.”

The Alitos and Chief Justice Roberts didn’t do or say anything wrong. But there was something quite inhuman in what the left-wing activist did. She treated human beings as if they were mere means to her end. She acted out admiration to perform reputational harm. She presented herself falsely to inflict damage. That the content she produced was disseminated by honest grown-up journalists is to their discredit.

She claims to oppose polarization but fans it, further alienating those who already lack trust in institutions like the court and professionals like journalists. She presents another warning to those who hold or are adjacent to high office: You can’t assume good faith on the part of fellow citizens who seek you out.

More than that, it is deeply Stalinist. In Stalin’s time private life was dead, and private comments too. Neighbor spied on neighbor and reported back subversive comments to the Central Committee. People became spies, rooting out ideological error.

And, if you’re serious, what does it even get you? You persuade nobody. Your ideological friends like it that you owned the cons. Your foes are hardened. You get attention for yourself. So what? You’ll always be the person who got attention that way.

Simi Valley, Calif.

I was to write on something else this week but an event in California sent me back in time. Friends of Ronald Reagan gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of his speeches at Normandy (June 6, 1984), and the 20th anniversary of his death (June 5, 2004). The dates remind me that Reagan first burst on the American political scene with his “A Time for Choosing” speech in 1964, and announced to the nation that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s in 1994. Somehow years ending in 4 marked significant occurrences in his life. Because I have been reading a biography of Carl Jung, I wonder if this might be an expression of synchronicity, in which circumstances that seem meaningfully related have no obvious causal connection.

Many of those who worked or got their start in Reagan’s White House came—Haley Barbour, Condoleezza Rice—and others traveled far to show respect, including Carol Thatcher, daughter of Margaret, and Ben Mulroney, son of Brian. Historians came.

Prime Ministers Thatcher of Britain and Mulroney of Canada, Reagan, Pope John Paul II—that quartet did great work together, for the benefit of humanity.

We at the Reagan Library felt there was a time when politics was sweeter, when big things got said in gentle ways, when geniality was a virtue and not a political faux pas. That time included the summer of ’84 and a day in Normandy. To have been able to work on the president’s remarks there was a privilege, and the past few days reminded me of a comment Reagan made in conversation. Now and then at night, relaxing in the White House, he’d channel-surf and come upon a movie he’d starred in 40 years before. He’d have the oddest sensation—he said it was like seeing a son you’d forgotten you had. I thought of it because in the library’s materials to mark the anniversaries I saw pictures of myself in meetings with him 40 years ago, and thought: the daughter I forgot I had.

We felt, and feel, that Ronald Reagan was the last unambiguously successful American president. He walked in, in January 1981, saying he would do two big and unlikely things, one domestic and one in foreign affairs, and walked out in January 1989 having done them. He revitalized the U.S. economy after decades of drift and demoralization, and he defeated the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall falling months after he left the presidency. He did a third thing he hadn’t promised. He changed the mood of the country. We’d been depressed since JFK’s assassination and Vietnam, since Nixon and Watergate. Reagan said no, we aren’t a spent force, we aren’t incapable, we’ve got all this energy and brains. We’ve got this, he said. We did.

When presidencies are huge they are clear and you don’t have to finagle around with vague or technical language to cite their achievements.

To the D-Day speech at Pointe du Hoc. There’s something I always want to say about it.

The speech was a plain-faced one. It was about what it was about, the valor shown 40 years before by the young men of Operation Overlord who, by taking the Normandy beaches, seized back the Continent of Europe.

But there was a speech within the speech, and that had to do with more-current struggles.

Reagan wished to laud the reunited U.S. Rangers before him, so he simply described what they’d done: “At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.” Their mission was one of the hardest of the invasion, to climb the cliffs to take out enemy guns.

“And the American Rangers began to climb.” They shot rope ladders, pulled themselves up. “When one Ranger fell, another would take his place.” Two hundred twenty five Rangers had come there. “After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.”

“Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs.”

The “boys,” in the front rows, began to weep. They had never in 40 years been spoken of in that way, their achievement described by an American president, who told all the world what they’d done. Nancy Reagan and others, as they looked at them, were moved, and their eyes filled. Reagan couldn’t show what he was feeling, he had to continue. But afterward, in the Oval Office, he told me of an old Ranger who, before the ceremony, saw some young U.S. Rangers re-enacting the climb, and the old vet joined in and made it to the top. Reagan’s eyes shined: “Boy, that was something.”

The speech within the speech was about the crisis going on as Reagan spoke. The Western alliance was falling apart. Its political leaders were under severe pressure at home. British, West German and Italian peace movements had risen and gained influence in 1982 and 1983, pushing to stop the U.S.-Soviet arms race. The Soviets had placed SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe. In response, in late 1983, the U.S. put Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe. Arms talks continued but went nowhere, and the Soviets often walked out. In New York, a million antinuclear protesters had marched from Central Park to the United Nations. In Bonn, hundreds of thousands protesters took to the streets in what police called the largest demonstration since the end of the war.

It was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War.

Reagan hated nuclear weapons but believed progress couldn’t be wrung from the Russians with words and pleas. More was needed, a show of determination.

He understood the pressure the political leaders of the West were under, and at Pointe du Hoc he was telling them, between the lines: Hold firm and we will succeed.

That’s why he spoke at such length of all the Allied armies at D-Day, not only the Americans. It’s why he paid tribute to those armies’ valor—to remind current leaders what their ancestors had done. It’s why he talked about “the unity of the Allies.” “They rebuilt a new Europe together.”

He was saying: I know the pressure you’re under for backing me, but hold on. They pretty much did. And in the end the decisions of 1983 and ’84 led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 by Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, a turning point in the Cold War.

If you hear that speech, be moved by the Rangers who climbed those cliffs and the country that sent them there. Care that Ronald Reagan became the first public person to capture and laud the greatest generation, but delicately, because it was his generation and he couldn’t self-valorize. (Yes, a sweeter time.) But he was telling the young: That guy you call grandpa, see him in a new way. See his whole generation for who they were.

And hear, too, a message that echoes down the generations: Good people with a great cause must stand together, grab that rope and climb, no matter what fire.