Peggy Noonan

What brilliant good it can do a country when the world respects, and will not forget, one of its leaders. What was vividly true 30 years ago is true today: The world looks to America. It doesn’t want to be patronized or dominated by America, it wants to see America as a beacon, an example, a dream of what could be. And the world wants something else: American goodness. It wants to have faith in the knowledge that America is the great nation that tries to think about and act upon right and wrong, and that it is a beacon also of things practical—how to have a sturdy, good, unsoiled economy, how to create jobs that provide livelihoods that allow families to be formed, how to maintain a system in which inventors and innovators can flourish. A world without America in this sense—the beacon, the inspiration, the speaker of truth—would be a world deprived of hopefulness. And so we must be our best selves again not only for us but for the world.

These are the thoughts that follow eight days of celebration, in Eastern Europe and London, of the leadership of Ronald Reagan. History is rarely sweet, but it was last week when they raised statues of him in his centenary year. People old and young stopped for a moment to think and speak of him, and to define what his leadership meant to them and their countries. The celebrations in Krakow, Budapest, Prague and London were a reminder that we are all traveling through history together, that you are living not only your own life but the life of your times, as Laurens van der Post once said. And your era can actually be affected, made better, by what you do.

The subject matter was the fall of the wall, the end of communism, the reunification of Europe—those epochal events the world is still absorbing and that in retrospect seem even more amazing. Good people picked good leaders—the Big Three of the Cold War, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Reagan—and together they pushed until walls fell. Man is not used to such kind outcomes. A feeling of awe and gratitude colored the ceremonies: “My God, look what was done, I still can’t believe it. Let’s talk about how it happened and take those lessons into the future.” Now of all times we could use the inspiration.

In Krakow, the city from which Karol Wojtyla was called to Rome to become John Paul II, there was a thanksgiving mass celebrated by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who said in his homily: “President Reagan . . . took great pains to bring about the demise of that which he so aptly named ‘the evil empire.’ This empire of evil denied many people and nations their freedom. It did so by way of a pernicious ideology . . . the result of this experiment was the death and sufferings of millions.” “There can be no doubt,” he said, that Reagan and John Paul brought about “the collapse of communism.”

In Budapest, in a special session of the Hungarian Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen spoke of the end of Hungary as a captive nation and its beginnings as a democracy. Reagan, he said, “helped Hungary find itself.” Member of Parliament Janos Horvath spoke of Reagan’s style of peaceful liberation. What America did by being strong, by being serious in its focus, by speaking plain and true, not only inspired the victims of communism but weakened their oppressors. Reagan had “the imagination” to understand that the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a historic event: “He kept quoting Harry Truman’s commitment to the liberation of the captive nations. That, for Reagan, was a more important thing than for other presidents.” Hungary knew Truman had been “infuriated” by what the Soviets did, “arresting people, including myself.” Reagan made clear he “felt the indignation.” And so, “Hungary took seriously what America meant—human rights, democracy.” It left Horvath an optimist. “I have faith that the right thing prevails. This is the Ronald Reagan mentality.”

I asked a member of Parliament whether the people of Hungary had felt any bitterness over the fact that President Eisenhower did not commit U.S. military forces to help the Hungarians in 1956. At first he was puzzled. Bitterness? Any residual disappointment, I said. No, he said. “We understood your position.” Meaning, he explained, our position as a superpower in the nuclear age, and our position on freedom. They knew whose side we were on.

A veteran diplomat in the area, an American, said later that everything he’d heard in the speeches left him thinking how the great progress of the past quarter-century had been made not through warfare but through diplomacy, tough decisions, aid, encouragement and rhetorical clarity and candor.

At the unveiling of the Reagan statue in Freedom Square, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Reagan “managed change wisely and preserved peace. This is why he needs to have a statue in Budapest.” In tearing down “the distorted and sick ideologies of the 20th century,” Reagan “remade the world for us.”

Rather stunningly, the leader of Hungary’s government bluntly ended his speech with a sentiment often heard in Omaha, Tucson, Morristown and Tallahassee: “We need a Ronald Reagan. Is he there, somewhere, already?” The world misses him as much as we do. It misses grand leadership as much as we do.

*   *   *

In Prague they named a street for him. In London, on the Fourth of July, 235th birthday of the United States, they unveiled a statue in front of the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Two other presidents grace that square: a heroic FDR in flowing cape, and a steely-eyed Eisenhower in army uniform. The day was nonpartisan, non-narrow. A great American was being justly honored by his British friends who, as Foreign Secretary William Hague said, “will never forget” him. A statue, he said, is not just a remembrance. With statues we come “face to face” with the great men and women of the past, and ponder their greatness.

That night, members of Parliament gathered for a formal dinner in London’s magnificent Guildhall. There were speeches, some beautiful. Among the packed tables there was a former member of Mrs. Thatcher’s cabinet, who in his day had taken heavy blows for his unrepentant conservatism. Now, white-haired, he listened to the speeches, as across the room a woman watching him remembered the greatest speech in English history: “Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot/ But he’ll remember with advantages/ What feats he did that day.”

And so Mr. Reagan’s centennial nears its close. We remember him—and Thatcher, and John Paul—for many reasons. To reinforce and reinspire. To keep fresh our knowledge that history can be made better. To be loyal to the truth.

And another reason. That night in conversation, former Prime Minister John Major asked how our teaching of history was in America. Not good, I said. He said in Britain it was the same, and it concerned him. We were across from a huge, heroic sculpture of the Duke of Wellington. If we don’t teach who he was and what he did, we will not make any more Wellingtons. Glory lives only when you pass it on.

The GOP field is sorting itself out, which is to be expected. What’s surprising is that so are Republican voters. The early rise of Mitt Romney, the second-place showing of Jon Huntsman (behind Ron Paul) at the recent Republican Leadership Conference, and a Gallup poll last week saying 50% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican favor the candidate with the best chance of beating President Obama, suggests GOP voters on the ground don’t want to pick anyone the moderate Democrat down the block wouldn’t support.

It’s still early, but that makes it even more interesting. It’s at this point in a presidential race that obstreperous and passionate movements and candidacies would normally be rising. It’s later and with time that a certain soberness, a certain inherent moderation normally take hold. But Republicans at the moment seem prematurely settled, even as they watch, judge and figure out whom to support.

A quick read on a few in the field:

Mitt Romney really is the kind of candidate Republicans imagine centrists would like. He looks the part, sounds the part, has experience in the world and government. Four years ago he was new and controversial. Now he’s next in line and kind of old shoe. But the question that dogged him in 2008 hasn’t gone away: Does he have philosophical fire inside him, or only personal destiny fire? If the latter, would he do what needs doing as president? Ronald Reagan was mild and attractive as a person and candidate and never claimed to be a radical, but when he got into office at a crucial moment, he did some radical things that turned out to be the right things. He had philosophical fire, which is important.

Michele Bachmann’s got fire, a libertarian conservative who means it. She broke through in New Hampshire because she wasn’t Cable Bachmann—skittery, combative—but Candidate Bachmann, sincere and accomplished. Does she have the weight and ballast to see it all the way through? Is she a serious person or just a dramatic one who rouses a portion of the base? Will America be drawn to her brand of conservatism?

Tim Pawlenty is earnest, nice, Midwestern. Interestingly, no one doubts his grounding in political thought, or his accomplishments, and yet he’s coming across as weak. Does he want this thing? Is he the right size?

Newt Gingrich? That didn’t work. Good thing voters found out early, not late.

Herman Cain always gets applause in GOP debates because everyone likes him. The media suspect the reason is that he’s handy evidence Republicans aren’t racist. But Republicans like him because they like him.

A number of prominent conservatives are black, and they are admired because they all swam upstream, with no establishment to help them. They weren’t born into it, they had to struggle through to it. And when they arrived they were often greeted awkwardly. They were like the old working-class ethnic Democrats who joined the Republican Party in the 1970s and ‘80s and were greeted by Mrs. Waffington Wafferthird IV: “Your name is Kowalski? We had a plumber named Kowalski at Little Compton, he did wonderful work!” Yeah. Well, glad the pipes work.

It’s been a generation or two since the party was like that, and now old Mrs. Wafferthird is likely to introduce herself with theatricality and flair. “Darling, I’m the antique old stereotype we all spoof. I even spoof myself. Have a Ritz cracker.” And we all feel protective of her because she’s part of a dying wave, a great, three-centuries-long wave.

Anyway Republicans like Mr. Cain because he’s plain-spoken and humorous, and he made some money in America. He’s the American dream. But is he a president? No, he’s a businessman. It’s 2011 and he doesn’t know his own opinion on Afghanistan.

*   *   *

And now Jon Huntsman. The former Utah governor and ambassador to China announced in New Jersey’s Liberty State Park on Tuesday. I went to see a Huntsman crowd, to find out who they are and why they support him. But there was no Huntsman crowd, only a hunk of milling media. Interspersed among them were perhaps a hundred individuals who got themselves there to watch and show support. When asked why they were for him, they said words like “balance,” “principles” and “expanding the umbrella.”

Two weeks ago at a Reuters lunch in Manhattan, Mr. Huntsman appeared with Henry Kissinger to talk about the latter’s new book, “On China.” As Mr. Huntsman talked—when Mr. Kissinger couldn’t remember a particular word in Chinese, Mr. Huntsman smoothly supplied it—two journalists at a table to the side came to the same conclusion at almost the same moment: This isn’t a president, this is a secretary of state. Huntsman—well-tailored, willowy, gray-haired, cerebral-looking—comes alive when talking about Asia. You imagine him in striped pants and morning coat, like Cordell Hull. Yet he’s from Utah, has seven kids, is Mormon, has lowered taxes and balanced budgets. His work in the Obama administration is supposed to be a negative with Republican voters, but it won’t be: It’s China, the big country now always in the back of the American mind. He speaks two Chinese dialects. That sounds useful.

What part of the GOP base would be Mr. Huntsman’s natural constituency? Here political professionals scratch their heads.

Maybe he’s going for moderate conservatives and Republicans who have Romney Reluctance, who just can’t get to Mitt-land, or not yet. Maybe he’s trying to take the vote of conservatives who think deep down Romney doesn’t have a deep down. He’s saying, “I’m like Romney but I have deep beliefs and a particular expertise: I won two terms as a governor, not one, and was a major ambassador. I’m cool, and my hair is just as presidential.”

Mr. Huntsman’s call, in his announcement speech, for more civility, was both appropriate and shrewd. Appropriate because there’s nothing wrong with adding a bit of grace to the political moment. There’s too much hate out there and too many people making a living peddling resentment. Shrewd because it pre-emptively forgives, or retroactively explains, his past friendliness to and support of Mr. Obama. He can flick off criticisms with a sad shake of the head: “That’s the kind of thing I was talking about when I asked for a higher tone.”

His support for gay civil unions is supposedly controversial, but is it? It is a compromise position, and the tea party won’t be made unhappy by it: Social issues are not their focus. Mitch Daniels was knocked for calling for a social issues truce some months ago, but only because he put a name on what is happening anyway. There is an informal truce on social issues in the GOP, but no one likes hearing potential leaders mention it, because then the other leaders have to take a side. But almost everyone in the party is focused now on economic issues, in part because a strong economy fosters everything else, including American compassion. Six months ago a profoundly pro-life U.S. senator who now speaks more on economic issues was asked how he explains the shift in emphasis to his pro-life allies. “I tell them unless we turn things around, no one’s going to be able to have babies.”

First impressions from a presidential debate are always about how things look, how people come across. Tim Pawlenty doesn’t really assert, he natters. Rick Santorum is earnest, Michelle Bachmann serious. Mitt Romney knows how he looks in every camera shot from every angle: He is a master of the cutaway shot, when the camera isn’t on him. He keeps his posture and maintains a kindly smile, as if he’s pleased the other candidates are sharing their nice little thoughts.

But the GOP debate in New Hampshire was a big success in two ways. First, there was no obvious candidate from Crazytown, which was a boon to the party’s reputation and brand, and which may help it more easily shake itself out and pick an electable candidate. In a functionally 50-50 nation and in a campaign in which Democrats hope to spend a billion dollars, this could turn into a significant benefit. Second, and more important, the foreign-policy discussion, though limited, was marked by a new sobriety. There was no spirit of adventurism, there were no burly promises of victories around the corner and lights at the ends of tunnels. It was more muted than that, more realistic, different in tone and tenor from four and eight years ago. This signaled a real shift, and a heartening one.

No one was dreamy. Those on the stage staked a claim in the reality-based community. Mitt Romney, asked if it’s time to bring our combat troops home from Afghanistan, said yes, “as soon as we possibly can.” Then, more interestingly, he offered, “I think we’ve learned some important lessons in our experience in Afghanistan. . . . We’ve learned that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghanis can win Afghanistan’s independence from the Taliban.”

The last sentence is so thumpingly obvious that Mr. Romney was soon under pressure to recant, or rather clarify.

Every candidate who was asked took issue with U.S. involvement in Libya. Michele Bachmann asserted no “American interests” were at stake: “We were not attacked. We were not threatened with attack.” Newt Gingrich spoke of “fundamentally . . . reassessing our entire strategy in the region.” Ron Paul said we should get our troops home. Tim Pawlenty nattered on about something, but even he didn’t take an opportunity to ask for patience on Afghanistan. John Huntsman, who was not announced and not present at the debate, told CNN he has doubts about the cost of Afghanistan and the likelihood of U.S. success there.

All of this had the sound of the Republican Party inching its way back from 10 years of un-Republican behavior, from a kind of bullying dreaminess about the world: “Everyone wants to be like us.” Actually, everyone doesn’t. There are days when even we, with our political paralysis, financial collapse and coarse culture, don’t want to be like us.

Does this suggest a return of isolationism, as some critics have said? No, and not necessarily by any means. Isolationists think they can be isolated, which is just another form of romanticism and unreality. We live in the world. We will never again be apart from it; trade and technology wouldn’t allow us to if we wanted to. We have real alliances and real foes. But there is little taste now for what is fast becoming an old vision that progress can be made and U.S. security enhanced through invasion, pacification and occupation. There is little taste for the idea that we can easily, or even arduously, force the complete cultural change of other hearts and other minds. Terrorism is a threat. There are many ways to fight it.

But the larger point is that sometimes parties step away from themselves, stop being what they are. The Democrats are doing it now, in their soggy interventionism in Libya. So it’s especially good to see the Republicans start to return to themselves, to their essential nature as a party, which was invented to be genially sober, like Lincoln, optimistic but not unrealistic, like Reagan, and accepting that life has limits and it’s not unpatriotic to say so.

A flurry of polls this week show the public is on the side of the new sobriety. CNN had 62% now opposing the war in Afghanistan, just 36% in favor. CBS News found 64% want the number of U.S. troops decreased, and 51% said the U.S. shouldn’t be in Afghanistan at all. A Washington Post/ABC News poll said 54% of respondents feel the war has not been worth fighting, and 73% said the U.S. should withdraw combat forces this summer. A Rasmussen survey found a combined 56% who said the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan immediately or on a firm timetable, up four points since March.

What has been behind decline in support for the war? The obvious. It has gone on almost 10 years. It is America’s longest war. We have been there longer than the Soviets were. No one in a position of authority credibly or coherently explains the path to victory, or even what victory would look like. Are we losing young men so that a year from now we can commence 10 years of peace talks with the Taliban? Toward what end? What will we be asking for, that they be nice?

America is now full of veterans of Afghanistan, and while many will agree with the original mission, or the current mission as they understand it, it is certain that at the American dinner table the cost, complexity and confusion of the effort are being discussed. And the killing of Osama bin Laden provided a psychic endpoint to the drama. The day we went into Afghanistan, we were trying to find him and kill him. Six weeks ago, we found him and killed him. All wars run on a great rush of feeling, of fervor. That feeling and fervor have on an essential level been satisfied.

But there’s something else, probably the most important fact of all.

We are as a nation, on paper, almost bankrupt. Or bankrupt, depending on how you judge. Among the Republican candidates for president, there is a growing awareness that America does not have a foreign policy unless we have the money to pay for it. We do not have an army unless we can fund it. We do not have diplomacy and a diplomatic structure without money. We do not have alliances and friendships sealed by aid without money. We do not go forward and impress the nations with our values, might and leadership without money.

We cannot lead, or even be an example, without money. And we are out of it. Therefore, reordering our financial life and seeing to our financial strength is the single most constructive thing we can do to create and maintain a sound U.S. foreign policy. If we want to be safe in the world, we must be sturdy at home.

That is why those inclined to take an unfriendly or competitive view toward us increasingly see us as a paper tiger. Because they hold our paper.

The problem with Afghanistan, and Iraq for that matter, is not only that after 10 years our efforts have turned out to be—polite word—inconclusive. We are spending money we don’t have for aims we cannot even articulate.

Of course he [ed – Anthony Weiner] should resign—or, better, and as a statement, the House should remove him. I speak as a conservative who wishes to conserve. If I were speaking as a Republican I’d say, “By all means keep him, let him taint all your efforts.”

But sometimes all of Washington has to put up its hand up like a traffic cop and say no. It has to say: That doesn’t go here, it’s not acceptable, it’s not among the normal human transgressions of back stairs, love affairs and the congressman on the take. This is decadence. It is pornography. We can’t let the world, and the young, know it’s “politically survivable.” Because that will hurt us, not him, and define us, not him. So: enough.

*   *   *

In other news, Mitt Romney had his first good week. It was startling. He stepped out from the blur. The other candidates now call him “the front runner.” By most standards he was the front runner months ago, but nobody talked about him. He didn’t live in the Republican imagination. It was “Will Mitch run?” and “You like Pawlenty?” Only seven minutes into the conversation would you get, “How will Romney do?” He was so ‘08, that disastrous year.

But this week he got three big boosts. He had a reasonable announcement speech followed by a lot of national interviews. Then the Washington Post poll: Mr. Romney leads President Obama. On top of that, the two most visible Republicans the past 10 days were Sarah Palin, on her magical mystery tour, and him. They got all the coverage, and for a moment it seemed like a two-person race. Meaning a lot of Republicans got to think, “Hmm, Palin or Romney—a trip to Crazytown or the man of sober mien.” That did not hurt him.

The financial reporting period ends June 30. Mr. Romney’s focused like a laser on getting the kind of numbers that will demoralize rivals and impress the media. Money leads to money. At a Manhattan fund raiser this week, an organizer said they raised about $200,000, not bad for an hour at the end of a long day of fund raising. The roughly 70 attendees were mostly men in suits. There was no vibration of “I’d walk on burning coals for this guy.” More an air of “This is a sound choice.” On the other hand, no one was distractedly checking his BlackBerry in the back of the room, as I saw once at a Giuliani event in 2008. He was talking, they were scrolling. That’s what we call “a sign.”

Mr. Romney’s emergence means a new phase in the primary contest begins. So some quick observations on the front runner. We’ll begin with shallowness and try to work our way up.

All candidates for president are network or local. Romney is a network anchorman—sleek, put together, the right hair, a look of dignity. He’s like Brian Williams. Some candidates are local anchormen—they’re working hard, they’re pros, but they lack the patina, the national sense. Reagan, Clinton, Obama—they were network. This has to do not only with persona, but with a perceived broadness of issues and competencies. It’s not decisive, and it can change—Harry Truman was local, and became network. But it probably helps Mr. Romney that he’s network.

His seamless happiness can be grating. People like to root for the little guy, and he’s never been the little guy. His family has never in his lifetime known financial ill fortune, and his personal wealth is of the self-made kind, the most grating because it means you can’t even patronize him. He has in him that way of people who are chipper about each day in large part because each day has been very nice to them. This makes some people want to punch him in the nose. I said once he’s like an account executive on “Mad Men,” stepping from the shower and asking George the valet to bring him the blue shirt with the white collar. But this year he looks slightly older, maybe wiser, maybe a little more frayed than in 2008. Which is good. Since 2008 everyone else is more frayed, too.

In ‘08, Romney’s brand was at odds with his stand. He looked and had the feel of a well-born Eastern moderate Republican. But he positioned and portrayed himself as grass-roots tea party. It was jarring, didn’t seem to fit, and contributed to the impression that he was an attractive lump of poll-tested packaging. He’s trying to get around this in two ways. First, he’s attempting to focus on economic issues, on which he has personal and professional credibility. Second, he’s trying to demonstrate authenticity by sticking to some stands unpopular with the base—global warming, health care.

The common wisdom has been that health care is the huge weak spot in his candidacy. Maybe, but maybe not. The base hates ObamaCare, as we know, and Mr. Romney devised a similar plan as governor of Massachusetts. But he can talk earnestly about it on the hustings until voters’ eyes glaze over and they plead to change the subject, which he will. And there are a lot of other subjects. If he gets through the primaries, his position on health care will become a plus: The Democrats this year will try to paint the Republican candidate as radical on health spending. It would be harder to do that to Mr. Romney.

Has enough time passed since his famous flip-flops on issues like abortion to make them old news? Four years ago it colored his candidacy. We’ll find out if people decide it’s yesterday’s story, and give him a second look.

The real problem for Romney is: Does he mean it? Is he serious when he takes a stand? Has he thought it through or merely adopted it? And there is of course religion. In a silly and baiting interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, Mr. Romney swatted away an insistence that he delve into Mormonism and, by implication, defend it. It was like seeing some Brit in 1960 trying to make John F. Kennedy explain and defend Catholicism. It’s not something we do in America. Because we still have a little class.

When Mr. Romney’s father, George, ran for the GOP nomination in 1968, his religion was not an issue. Forty years later, when his son first ran, it was. Has America grown more illiberal? Maybe not. In 1968, evangelical Christians voted in Democratic primaries, because they tended to be Democrats. By 1980, all that was changing: evangelicals went Republican with Reagan and never came back.

Catholics do not tend to take a harsh view of Mormonism, nor do mainstream Protestants. It is evangelical Christians who are most inclined not to approve. In a general election this would not make much difference: Evangelicals will not vote for Obama. But in the GOP primaries it could still hurt Mr. Romney. No one knows, because no one knows what kind of year this is. Maybe evangelicals will have seen enough of him not to mind; maybe the Obama presidency convinced them it’s not so important.

My own read is standard Catholic. Mormons have been, on balance, a deeply constructive force in American life, and it is absurd and ignorant not to support a political figure only because you do not prefer or identify with the theology of his church.

Really, grow up. Enough.

The debate in Washington is serious as a heart attack: whether the United States should raise its debt ceiling so it can borrow more money to stay afloat. The statutory ceiling on our national debt—our legal borrowing limit—is $14.3 trillion. That limit was reached, according to the Treasury Department, on May 16. Treasury says it can make do until early August, when the ceiling must be raised by $2.4 trillion.

Congressional Republicans have made their stand clear: They will agree to raise the limit only if it is accompanied by spending cuts or reforms.

The Democrats want to raise the ceiling, period.

The Republicans are being hard-line because of the base, and the base is hard-line for two reasons. First, we are in an unprecedented debt crisis. Second, the past 40 years have taught them that if dramatic action is not taken to stanch spending, Congress will spend more. Something is needed to shock the system.

If Republicans can get the White House to cut where the money is—Medicare—then Medicare, and all controversy over the Ryan plan, will be taken off the table as an issue in the 2012 election. This would not be good for Democrats. Democrats in turn would likely make some cuts in spending if Republicans agree to some tax increases. But that would take a great Republican issue off the table.

This week the House voted 318-97 against raising the ceiling without cutting. The president and a group of House Republicans met this week to talk about the apparent impasse. There is a chance they won’t come to any agreement by August.

If no agreement is reached, what happens? Nobody knows, because it’s never happened before. But economists warn: The dollar could crash, interest rates spike, equity markets melt. Foreign investors would lose confidence that America is worth risking their money and that Washington is able to face and handle a crisis.

Princeton economist Alan Blinder has noted in these pages that the bills for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense and interest on the national debt amount to about two-thirds of all federal outlays. “At some point [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner could wind up brooding over horrible questions like these: Do we stop issuing checks for Social Security benefits, or for soldiers’ pay, or for interest payments to the Chinese government?”

All of this sounds fairly catastrophic, especially considering this week’s evidence that America’s economic recovery is stalled. Housing prices are down, job creation weak, manufacturing growth slowed, factory activity down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 280 points on Wednesday.

So this would seem to be a bad time to be playing chicken.

Democrats think if push comes to shove and an agreement is not reached, public opinion will go against the Republicans. This may be true. Republicans think if agreement is not reached, responsibility will redound on the president. They may be true too.

But again, this isn’t a good time to play Let’s Find Out.

Democrats are right that the debt ceiling must be raised. Republicans are right that the decision to raise the debt ceiling must be accompanied by reforms or cuts to spending that equal or exceed the amount of the raise, $2.4 trillion. Here’s why.

Default is unthinkable. We are the United States of America, and we pay our bills.

Raising the ceiling without attempting to control spending is a depressing and wearying thought. It will avert crisis, yes, but there would be no gain in it beyond that. It would demonstrate to the world that we are not capable of taking necessary steps to dig our way out of the spending mess. It would mean things just continue as they are.

But cutting and reforming—showing we can make tough decisions in a crisis—will reassure the world, and our creditors. It will increase faith in the United States, and increase an American sense of well being: “We can do this, we can make it better.” It would be very good to leave the world saying, “My God, the Americans are still competent.”

Washington should forget taxes for now—fight that out later. The polls are all over the place, and no feasible amount of new revenue is going to make a difference. Cutting is what matters. And the president could play it so that he doesn’t lose. A crisis would have been averted—on his watch. He could claim to have been conciliatory, looking out for the national interest. The left won’t like it, but the center will. And he will have shown he can work closely and in good faith with Republicans, who control the House.

On that, a word. Talks on the debt ceiling will no doubt continue, but there is an Obama problem there, and it’s always gotten in the way. He really dislikes the other side, and can’t fake it. This is peculiar in a politician, the not faking it. But he doesn’t bother to show warmth and high regard. And so appeals to patriotism—“Come on guys, we have to save this thing”—ring hollow from him. In this he is the un-Clinton. Bill Clinton understood why conservatives think what they think because he was raised in the South. He was surrounded by them, and he wasn’t by nature an ideologue.

He absorbed not the biases of his region but of his generation and his education (Ivy League). He had ambition: Liberalism was rising and he’d rise with it. And on the signal issues of his youth, Vietnam and race, he thought the Democrats of the 1970s were right. But that didn’t mean he didn’t understand and feel some sympathy for conservatives, and as a political practitioner he had a certain sympathy for the predicaments of his fellow pols. That’s why he could play ball with Newt Gingrich and the class of 1994: because he didn’t quite hate everything they stood for. He had a saving ambivalence.

Barack Obama is different, not a political practitioner, really, but something else, and not a warm-blooded animal but a cool, chill character, a fish who sits deep in the tank and stares, stilly, at the other fish.

He doesn’t know how to confuse his foes with “outreach,” with phone calls, jokes, affection. He doesn’t leave them saying, as Reagan did, “I just can’t help it, I like the guy.” And because he can’t confuse them or reach them they more readily coalesce around their own explanation of him: socialist, destroyer.

This isn’t good, and has had an impact on the president’s contacts with Republicans. And it’s added an edge to an emerging campaign theme among them. Two years ago I wrote of Clare Booth Luce’s observation that all presidents have a sentence: “He fought to hold the union together and end slavery.” “He brought America through economic collapse and a world war.” You didn’t have to be told it was Lincoln, or FDR. I said that Mr. Obama didn’t understand his sentence. But Republicans now think they know it.

Four words: He made it worse.

Obama inherited financial collapse, deficits and debt. He inherited a broken political culture. These things weren’t his fault. But through his decisions, he made them all worse.

We’re at a funny place. The American establishment has finally come around, in unison, to admitting that America is in crisis, that our debt actually threatens our ability to endure, that if we don’t make progress on this, we are going to near our endpoint as a nation. I am struck very recently by the number of leaders in American business, politics and journalism who now get a certain faraway look at the end of an evening or a meal and say, “It’s worse than people think, you know.” The debt crisis in Europe is not easing but worsening, the U.S. bond markets could bail tomorrow, the culture of Washington will kill any serious attempts at reform . . .

The American establishment, on both sides of the political divide, is admitting as never before that we are in an existential challenge. And this is progress. It was not always so! It wasn’t so two years ago.

That’s one takeaway from this week’s Peterson Foundation fiscal summit in Washington. Bill Clinton spoke of “permanent structural deficits” and warned that “arithmetic still matters.” We must focus on entitlement spending, he said, “for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: That’s where the money is.” Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Mark Warner: “Congress is Thelma and Louise in that car headed for the cliff.” Obama administration economic adviser Gene Sperling—more on him in a minute—called for “serious discussion” of the specifics of a debt-reducing plan.

Republicans were on the same page. No one said, “We can grow our way out of this thing,” or “The negative effects of chronic debt are exaggerated, let’s look at the positive side.” They would have been laughed out of the room.

The people, of course, saw the crisis coming before most politicians did, and every elected official in Washington is now quick to preface interviews with, “The people were ahead of us on this.” They say this with an air of discovery, the little Sherlocks. The people were ahead of them. Public concern began to deepen in the polls after the introduction of the new spending bills that followed the crash of 2008. Voter concern was made vivid in the 2009 and 2010 elections, when centrists voted like old-style Republicans who worried about red ink.

Elected officials began to get the message. Now they’ve got it. Our spending and debt are—and it is interesting that this is the first great buzzword of the new decade—“unsustainable.”

But here’s how we’re in a funny place. The great question now is whether the people who alerted the establishment to the crisis will trust that establishment to deal with it. The people have been like Paul Revere riding through the night warning, “The bankruptcy is coming!” It’s unclear whether they’ll now trust the politicians to take the right action.

There are many reasons the public might resist Washington’s prescriptions, and we know what they are. There are data demonstrating that people like government programs but not government costs. Many people feel they’ve personally played by all the rules and will reject any specific cuts or taxes that will put new burdens on them.

There’s also this. The very politicians who are trying to get us out of the mess are the politicians who got us into the mess. Why would anyone trust them? As Alan Simpson admitted, for generations politicians “were told to go to Washington and bring home the bacon. Go get the money!” Now they must change: “You can’t bring home the bacon anymore, because the pig is dead.”

Some of the politicians talking about how to stop the spending crisis are the same politicians who, for many years, said there was no crisis. They’re like forest creatures who denied there was a fire when everyone else could smell the smoke and hear the crackle. Then the flames roar in, and the politicians say, “Follow me, I know the path out of the blaze!” It will be hard for them to win the trust that will get the American people to back a path out and through.

Rep. Paul Ryan was at the summit, soldiering on. His main problem on Medicare is that people fear the complexities and demands of a new delivery system.

People who draw up legislation, people capable of mastering the facts of the huge and complicated federal budget, often think other people are just like them. It’s almost sweet. But normal people don’t wear green eyeshades. Republicans think people will say, when presented with new options for coverage, “Oh good, another way to express my freedom! I can study health insurance now and get a policy that will benefit not only me but our long-term solvency!” But normal people are more likely to sit slouched at the kitchen table with their head in their hands. “Oh no, another big decision, another headache, 50 calls to an insurance company, another go-round with the passive-aggressive phone answerer who, even though she’s never met me, calls me Freddy as she puts me on hold.”

Republicans believe government gives insufficient respect to the ability of people to decide things for themselves, and that’s true. But it’s also true that normal humans don’t relish making informed decisions about things they’re not sure of, and that carry big personal implications.

Here’s the great thing about Medicare: You turn 65 and it’s there. They give you a card and the nurse takes it.

Supporters of Mr. Ryan’s Medicare plan must talk very specifically about how this would all work, and why it would make your life better, not worse. They also have to make two things clearer. One is that if nothing is done to change Medicare, the system will collapse. You’ll give the card to the nurse and she’ll laugh: “We don’t take that anymore.” This already happens in doctors offices. Without reform it will happen more often.

Democrats, on the other hand, should be forced to answer a question. If you oppose the highly specific Ryan plan, fine, but tell us your specific proposal. How will you save Medicare? Will you let it die?

If Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling’s presentation at the summit was indicative of White House strategy, then we’re in trouble. Because that strategy comes down to windy and manipulative statements about how “we’re all in this together” but GOP proposals “will lead to millions of children . . . losing their coverage.” He added: “We are not criticizing their plan, we are explaining it.”

It is a long time since I’ve seen such transparent demagoguery, such determined dodging. It’s obvious the White House political plan for 2012 is this: The Democrats will call for fiscal discipline and offer no specifics or good-faith starting points. They will leave the Republicans to be specific, and then let them be hanged with their candor. Democrats will speak not of what they’ll do but only of what they would never do, such as throw grandma out in the snow. In honeyed tones, Mr. Sperling said both parties should “hold hands and jump together,” like Butch and Sundance. But it was clear Sundance was going to stop at the edge of the cliff and hope Butch gets broken on the rocks.

Let’s take a look at three Republicans, one of whom says he won’t run for president, one of whom says he may, and one who will.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, on a radio call-in show in Philadelphia, was asked again this week if he’s tired of being asked if he’ll run for president. No, he said, “I’m a kid from Jersey who has people asking him to run for president. I’m thrilled by it, I just don’t want it.”

It was vintage Christie. He loves the kid-from-Jersey stuff, and he’s good at it. He has, and one suspects cultivates, a kind of working-class patina (blunt, disheveled, overweight, no-nonsense, satirical) that Republicans of a certain sort used to sniff at and now adore. Their ideal candidate would be a guy who looks and talks like a union boss but quotes Hayek. Anyway, Mr. Christie’s Philadelphia comments were almost as good as what he told Matt Bai of the New York Times in February. When Bai asked him if the presidential talk was getting tiresome, Mr. Christie broke into an imitation of a politician taking himself too seriously: “Oh, Matt, please, stop asking me about whether I should be president of the United States! The leader of the free world! Please stop! I’m exhausted by the question! I mean, come on. If I get to that point, just slap me around, because that’s really presumptuous. What it is to me is astonishing, not exhausting.”

What’s interesting about the Christie-for-president thing is it doesn’t go away, even after months of Shermanesque announcements that he isn’t ready and doesn’t want it. Why would that be? In part it’s that he says “no” with charm and deep cleverness. He could say, “I’ve only been governor for 16 months, I don’t have anything remotely like the level of experience needed at a time like this.” But he doesn’t, quite. And it’s possible he just thinks President Obama’s going to win and doesn’t want to be the guy who loses to him.

What I suspect people like most about him, apart from policy, is what they liked about Tim Russert: He was normal. A lot of people at this point in history think only the abnormal run for president. Only the abnormal want their finger on the button or want responsibility for epic economic decisions. Or maybe people think only weirdos and dullards want it—weirdos because they like the heightened nature of everything about the presidency, dullards because they don’t fully understand what they’re getting into. The fact that Mr. Christie says he doesn’t want it marks him as normal, which makes people want him more. He can give as many Shermanesque statements as he likes, but if the field continues to look thin he’s going to face a draft-Christie movement.

Actually there was a report this week that big Iowa donors are coming to meet with him late in the month, so maybe it’s already begun.

*   *   *

Newt Gingrich announced he is in this week. The news hit some in the media with a certain electric jolt, but not Republicans, most of whom assumed he was running and seem not that interested. Mr. Gingrich is a vigorous and compelling explainer of generally conservative positions and beliefs, and he will be interesting in debate. But . . . well, I have yet to meet a Gingrich 2012 supporter. He is a vivid figure who drew a vivid response during the Clinton years. He turned off people then whom he will never win to his side. He is politically and personally controversial; those who worked with him longest in the House liked him least. After 30 years on the national scene, he will find his candidacy affected by the old maxim that friends come and go but enemies accumulate.

On the hustings, he’ll always draw appreciative crowds, and they’ll stand in line for his autographed books. But they will not choose him for president. They will say, “He should be in the next cabinet, an idea man who runs—or, better, creatively shuts down—some big agency.”

*   *   *

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told reporters at a lunch in New York 10 days ago that he has set a deadline on his deliberations. He’ll decide if he will run for president “by the end of the month.” I asked if he’d announce his decision soon after. Yes, he said, he didn’t want to play it “cute.” If he decides to get, in he’ll get in. This month ends the day after Memorial Day. Daniels has a book due out in the fall. It would be odd to announce a few months before its release that you weren’t running, for that would undercut the ostensible purpose of a book—to disseminate your views—and undercut sales.

My biggest takeaway from the lunch is what a great actor he is. I couldn’t tell from his demeanor, comments, language or expression which way he’s leaning, and at this point he at least knows that. His office says his schedule is free Memorial Day weekend, except for the Indy 500, which he plans to attend, subject to change.

Vroom vroom. Maybe more will start there than cars.

*   *   *

If we’re coming up on an election year, we’re about to enter Full Oppo Shakedown. Republican operatives and hirelings are doing opposition research—digging deep, following personal and financial leads—on the guys who are running against their candidates. Obama operatives also be on the case, or already are. And so a thought on personal lives and the current election year.

I think it’s possible that this year, because of the special nature of the times—we live through unprecedented and ongoing crises in the economy and foreign policy—the American people may be less interested in the personal stories, foibles and family situations of those running for president than in the past. They’ll still be interested, but these things won’t seem as serious or even decisive as they have sometimes been. The current air of crisis may make such things look like a luxury the country can ill afford.

The reigning assumption, or cliché, is that the American people have a censorious side and are puritanical about their politicians, demanding a lifetime of personal rectitude. I don’t think that’s been true in the modern era. When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, he won in spite of being famously surrounded by rumors about his personal life. Gennifer Flowers held news conferences, the National Enquirer was in on the act. People elected Mr. Clinton anyway. They didn’t judge him harshly. They knew that on becoming president he wouldn’t do anything embarrassing. Then came Monica Lewinsky, which was his mistake: The past is the past, but that was the present—and in the Oval Office! For that they punished him, with the strictest punishment there was: impeachment.

I think Americans right now, but particularly with the current crises, will be generally inclined to give pretty much everyone a break. As long as all mischief is confined to the past. They won’t accept it in the present. That’s what did in John Edwards. It wasn’t rumors of past girls, it was a girl on the plane during the campaign. Americans will come down on you hard for that.

If it weren’t Osama bin Laden we just killed, he’d be giving interviews in the hills right now taunting the great Satan that once again lied. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Let’s start with credit where it’s due. The U.S. Navy SEALs did it and deserve our profound thanks and deep admiration.

It was President Obama who told CIA chief Leon Panetta: Get this guy. When presidents insist, the guy tends to get got. It was Mr. Obama who made the decision not to bomb the house with predators or B2s, because that way we wouldn’t have known if we’d got Osama. It was Mr. Obama who decided to do it the hard way, the way that would allow us to know we’d succeeded. It was Mr. Obama who’d have taken the blame if the operation had gone wrong, and things like this are tricky and often go wrong because they have a thousand moving parts and almost every part has to move right. And it’s not as if the president was operating from a position of political strength. It was Mr. Obama who, having made the decision, apparently didn’t micromanage. He did his job and let the military do theirs.

It was Mr. Obama who decided—rightly—to stiff Pakistan, not to tell them of the operation but to allow them to be exposed and humiliated in front of the world. Which they richly deserve. They accept our aid and hide our enemies. Every day they frighten the world with their chronic instability, their Wild West ways, their infiltrated military, their nuclear weapons. At a certain point you have to say “Enough.” Mr. Obama said it very nicely. And by the way, that silence you hear from the U.N. on charges of violating Pakistan’s sovereignty? That’s the silence of the civilized world thinking, “Good. They had it coming.”

It was well and brilliantly done. It reminded the world that American might can be wielded with American competence. It highlighted the brilliance of the U.S. military when it is given clear goals and full resources.

And it had to be done, for us and the world.

Osama’s importance is that he was the leader of al Qaeda, but his mystique resided in the fact that he attacked America and got away with it. He killed nearly 3,000 people in a brutal assault and lived to tell the tale. He launched a war and taunted us from the hills. He was invincible, the “strong horse.” This gave him charisma, which he used to rouse and recruit the young, the ignorant and the unstable.

That’s over now. He has been answered. The U.S. action said, “You didn’t get away with it. You are not invincible. You are dead. Followers, please note.”

Is the world safer with bin Laden dead? Who knows. But it is better.

*   *   *

However, and with our president there is always a however, he has spent almost every moment since his Sunday night speech displaying both a tin ear and a chronic tendency to misunderstand his own country. His refusal to release more evidence that Osama is dead is allowing a great story to dissolve into a mystery. He is letting a triumph turn into a conspiracy theory.

Here is the fact of the age: People believe nothing. They think everything is spin and lies. The minute a government says A is true, half the people on Earth know A is a lie. And when people believe nothing, as we know, they will believe anything. We faked the moon landing, there was a second gunman in Dallas, the World Trade Center was blown up in a U.S.-Zionist conspiracy, Hitler grew old in Argentina.

There will always be people who believe conspiracy theories, and with the Internet there will be more. They are impervious to evidence. But people who care about the truth need to be armed with evidence to refute them.

Mr. Obama misunderstands all this. He tells Steve Croft Sunday on Sixty Minutes that showing photos of the dead Osama would be to “spike the football.” “We don’t trot this stuff out as trophies.” Trophies? Who does he think we are?

It’s not about pride, it’s about proof. “We got him, shot him and immediately threw him in the sea” is not enough. The U.S. government should release all the evidence it has that does not compromise security. Pictures of Osama are said to be gruesome. Then get the least gruesome one and put it out. Release the DNA evidence, incriminating information found in the house, and pictures of the raid. If there was a passport under the mattress, make it public. And let the SEALs tell their story. Allow them, if they are willing and eager, to go on “Nightline,” “Frontline” and “60 Minutes.” If they cannot be identified or don’t wish to be, put a blue dot over their faces, filter their voices, and don’t use their names.

All of this should be put in one big package and released to the world. In this way you give the nation and the world data, and a lot to talk about. That talk will crowd out and diminish conspiracy theories and deather denialism.

Americans don’t want to spike the ball. They just want to show they crossed the goal line.

Two closing thoughts. One has to do with the reaction of young men to the news of Osama’s death. I saw it last Sunday night with a wordless but emotional high-five from a boy with whom I’d lived through 9/11. After midnight his friend, with whom we’d shared those days, came over for hugs all around. On the TV there were the celebrations that broke out in New York and Washington, and the young Marine smoking a stogie in front of the White House. There were the cheering young men of West Point, and the young people of many universities, including Yale, among whom was a veteran of the Australian forces in Afghanistan. The next night he looked like one happy, hung-over soldier.

Young men, mostly, fought the wars and are fighting them. Young men took to the streets Sunday night. It was their night. They’d seen their country do something brilliant and brave and right, and it was as if they were visiting for a moment the America their parents had told them about. They were 10 or 15 when it all began, on 9/11. Now the guy who did it sleeps with the fishes.

And so they cheered: “USA! USA!” It was good to hear that again. It was especially good to hear it from them.

Finally, people talk about “closure,” but there’s no such thing as closure. You absorb life, including its blows, and move on. If you’re lucky or work hard, adversity makes you better, stronger, deeper. You’ll never not mourn, because you’re human and that’s the way we’re built. But there are moments when something happens—you take a turn, or a new understanding happens. There are times when you realize a certain point in the arc of mourning has been reached. There are times when justice happens.

Such a time was brought to us this week by U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6. They made a whole country feel young again.

Hooyah, baby. Hooyah.

One of the greatest moments in the history of faith was also one of the greatest moments in modern political history. It happened in June 1979.

Just eight months before, after dusk on Oct. 16, 1978, a cardinal had stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica to say those towering, august words, “Habemus papem”—”We have a pope.” The cardinal pronounced the new pontiff’s name in Latin. Not everyone understood or could hear him, and the name sounded odd. For 456 years the church had been electing Italian popes. This didn’t sound Italian. The crowd was perplexed.

Then the new pope came out—burly, light-haired, broad cheekbones. He looked Slavic. He looked like a Pole! It was Karol Wojtylwa, the cardinal from Krakow. It was a breakthrough choice—so unexpected and unprecedented—and you knew as you watched that a whole new world was beginning. This was a former manual laborer who wore brown scruffy shoes, who was young (58) and vibrant (a hiker and kayaker). He was a writer, an intellectual who’d come up during the heroic era of the European priesthood, when to be a priest in a communist-controlled nation was to put not only your freedom at risk but your life.

Poland went wild with joy; Krakow took to the streets. The reaction was world-wide. They had vigils in the Polish neighborhoods of Chicago, and block parties in Boston.

*   *   *

And here is the great moment of faith that became a great moment of history. John Paul II, naturally, wanted to return as pope to visit his homeland. This put the communist government in Warsaw in a bind. If they didn’t invite him, they’d look defensive and weak. If they did, he might spark an uprising that would trigger a Soviet invasion.

They invited John Paul to come on a “religious pilgrimage.” On June 2, 1979, he arrived at an airport outside Warsaw, walked down the steps of the plane, and kissed the tarmac. The government feared tens of thousands would line the streets for the motorcade into town.

More than a million came.

In a mass in the Old City, John Paul gave a great sermon. Why, he asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Why had Poland suffered for centuries under political oppression? Perhaps because Poland is “the land of a particularly responsible witness.” The Poles had been chosen to give witness, with humility, to the cross and the Resurrection. He asked the crowd if they accepted such an obligation.

“We want God,” they roared. “We want God!” This from a nation occupied by an atheist state.

John Paul said the great work of God is man, and the great redeemer of man is Christ. Therefore, “Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man!”

It was brilliant. He wasn’t asking for a revolution or an uprising, he wasn’t directly challenging the government. He just pointed out that God himself sees one unity in Europe, not an East and a West divided but one continent. And so must we all.

But it was what happened a week later, at the Blonie field outside Krakow, that led directly to 1989, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was the event that made political history.

It was June 10, near the end of the trip. Everyone was tired. There was to be a last outdoor mass. The government had not allowed it to be publicized. But words spread, and two million people came, maybe three million. It was the biggest gathering in Polish history. Here John Paul took on communism more directly. He exhorted the crowd to receive the Holy Spirit. “I speak . . . for St. Paul: Do not quench the Spirit. . . . I speak again for St. Paul: Do not grieve the Spirit of God!”

“You must be strong, my brothers and sisters. You must be strong with the strength that faith gives. . . . You need this strength today more than any other period in our history. . . . You must be strong with love, which is stronger than death. . . . Never lose your spiritual freedom.”

The mass was stirring, with crowds saying, again, “We want God!” But here is the thing. Everyone at that mass went home and put on state-controlled television to see the coverage of the great event. They knew millions had been there, they knew what was said, they knew everyone there was part of a spiritual uprising. But state-run TV had nothing. State-run TV had a few people in the mud and a picture of the pope.

Everyone looked at the propaganda of the state, at its lack of truthfulness and its disrespect for reality, and they thought: It’s all lies. Everything the government says is a lie. The government itself is a lie.

The Solidarity movement took on new power. The Communist Party lost authority; the Polish government in time tottered, and by 1989 the Soviet Union itself was tottering.

Twenty-three years later, in an interview, the Solidarity leader Lech Walessa told me of how John Paul galvanized the movement for freedom: “We knew . . . communism could not be reformed. But we knew the minute he touched the foundations of communism, it would collapse.”

*   *   *

John Paul went on to a fruitful papacy of historic length, 26 years. He travelled more than a million miles to 149 countries. He didn’t bring the world to the church, he brought the church to the world. He was shot and almost killed in 1981, survived and went to Rome’s Rebibbia Prison to make sure his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, understood he’d been forgiven. And at the end, sick with Parkinson’s, he did what statesmen don’t do: He made his suffering public, as if to say, “We who are imperfect, who are not beautiful, who are in pain—we too are part of the human race, and worthy of God’s love.” He insisted on the humanity of the weak, the wounded, the unborn.

And when he died, there was the miracle of the crowds. John Paul had been old and dying for a long time, and the Vatican knew he’d been forgotten. They didn’t plan for crowds.

But when he died, people came running. They dropped what they were doing and filled the streets of Rome, they got on trains and plans and Rome was engulfed.

Four million people came.

They travelled from every country in Europe and beyond, they had nowhere to sleep, they filled the streets carrying candles.

There had never been anything like it. Old Rome had seen its popes come and go, but the crowds came and wouldn’t leave until he was buried. And when his coffin was carried out and shown to them, they roared.

“Santo Subito!” they said. Make him a saint.

And now this weekend he will be beatified, a step toward sainthood. He will become Blessed John Paul the Second, and nobody will misunderstand his name.

Some will speak of mistakes and sins in his papacy, and they are right. But saints are first of all human, and their lives are always flawed, full of contradictions, and marked by stark failures. Yet they are individuals of heroic virtue. As he was.

Santo Subito. Make him a saint. And by the way, expect crowds.

I want to talk a little more this holiday week about what I suppose is a growing theme in this column, and that is an increased skepticism toward U.S. military intervention, including nation building. Our republic is not now in a historical adventure period—that is not what is needed. We are or should be in a self-strengthening one. Our focus should not be on outward involvement but inner repair. Bad people are gunning for us, it is true. We should find them, dispatch them, and harden the target. (That would be, still and first, New York, though Washington too.) We should not occupy their lands, run their governments, or try to bribe them into bonhomie. We think in Afghanistan we’re buying their love, but I have been there. We’re not even renting it.

Our long wars have cost much in blood and treasure, and our military is overstretched. We’re asking soldiers to be social workers, as Bing West notes in his book on Afghanistan, “The Wrong War.”

I saw it last month, when we met with a tough American general. How is the war going? we asked. “Great,” he said. “We just opened a new hospital!” This was perhaps different from what George Patton would have said. He was allowed to be a warrior in a warrior army. His answer would have been more like, “Great, we’re putting more of them in the hospital!”

But there are other reasons for a new skepticism about America’s just role and responsibilities in the world in 2011. One has to do with the burly, muscular, traditional but at this point not fully thought-through American assumption that our culture not only is superior to most, but is certainly better in all ways than the cultures of those we seek to conquer. We have always felt pride in our nation’s ways, and pride isn’t all bad. But conceit is, and it’s possible we’ve grown as conceited as we’ve become culturally careless.

We are modern, they are not. We allow women freedom, they do not. We have the rule of law, they do not. We are technologically sophisticated, they are the Flintstones. We have religious tolerance. All these are sources of legitimate satisfaction and pride, especially the last. Our religious pluralism is, still, amazing.

I lately think of Charleston, S.C., that beautiful old-fashioned, new- fashioned city. On a walk there in October I went by one of the oldest Catholic churches in the South, St. Mary’s, built in 1789. Across the street, equally distinguished and welcoming, was Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a Jewish congregation founded in 1749. They’ve been across from each other peacefully and happily for a long time. I walked down Meeting Street to see the Hibernian Society, founded in 1801. My people wanted their presence known. In a brochure I saw how the society dealt with Ireland’s old Catholic-Protestant split. They picked a Protestant president one year, a Catholic the next, and so on. In Ireland they were killing each other. In America they were trading gavels. What a country! What a place. What a new world.

We have much to be proud of. And we know it. But take a look around us. Don’t we have some reasons for pause, for self-questioning? Don’t we have a lot of cultural repair that needs doing?

*   *   *

Imagine for a moment that you are a foreign visitor to America. You are a 40-year-old businessman from Afghanistan. You teach a class at Kabul University. You are relatively sophisticated. You’re in pursuit of a business deal. It’s your first time here. There is an America in your mind; it was formed in your childhood by old John Ford movies and involves cowboy hats and gangsters in fedoras. You know this no longer applies—you’re not a fool—but you’re not sure what does. You land at JFK, walking past a TSA installation where they’re patting the genital areas of various travelers. Americans sure have a funny way of saying hello!

You get to town, settle into a modest room at the Hilton on Sixth Avenue. You’re jet-lagged. You put on the TV, not only because you’re tired but because some part of you knows TV is where America happens, where America is, and you want to see it. Headline news first. The world didn’t blow up today. Then:

Click. A person named Snooki totters down a boardwalk. She lives with young people who grunt and dance. They seem loud, profane, without values, without modesty, without kindness or sympathy. They seem proud to see each other as sexual objects.

Click. “Real Housewives.” Adult women are pulling each other’s hair. They are glamorous in a hard way, a plastic way. They insult each other.

Click. Local news has a riot in a McDonalds. People kick and punch each other. Click. A cable news story on a child left alone for a week. Click. A 5-year-old brings a gun to school, injures three. Click. A show called “Skins”—is this child pornography? Click. A Viagra commercial. Click. A man tried to blow up a mall. Click. Another Viagra commercial. Click. This appears to be set in ancient Sparta. It appears to involve an orgy.

You, the Kabul businessman, expected some raunch and strangeness but not this—this Victoria Falls of dirty water! You are not a philosopher of media, but you know that when a culture descends to the lowest common denominator, it does not reach the broad base at the bottom, it lowers the broad base at the bottom. This “Jersey Shore” doesn’t reach the Jersey Shore, it creates the Jersey Shore. It makes America the Jersey Shore.

You surf on, hoping for a cleansing wave of old gangster movies. Or cowboys. Anything old! But you don’t find TMC. You look at a local paper. Headline: New York has a 41% abortion rate. Forty-four percent of births are to unmarried women and girls.

You think: Something’s wrong in this place, something has become disordered.

The next morning you take Amtrak for your first meeting, in Washington. You pass through the utilitarian ugliness, the abjuration of all elegance that is Penn Station. On the trip south, past Philadelphia, you see the physical deterioration that echoes what you saw on the TV—broken neighborhoods, abandoned factories with shattered windows, graffiti-covered abutments. It looks like old films of the Depression!

By the time you reach Washington—at least Union Station is august and beautiful—you are amazed to find yourself thinking: “Good thing America is coming to save us. But it’s funny she doesn’t want to save herself!”

*   *   *

My small point: Remember during the riots of the 1960s when they said “the whole world is watching”? Well, now the whole world really is. Everyone is traveling everywhere. We’re all on the move. Cultures can’t keep their secrets.

The whole world is in the Hilton, channel-surfing. The whole world is on the train, in the airport, judging what it sees, and likely, in some serious ways, finding us wanting.

And, being human, they may be judging us with a small, extra edge of harshness for judging them and looking down on them.

We have work to do at home, on our culture and in our country. A beautiful Easter to St. Mary’s Church of Charleston, and happy Passover to Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim.