The Time of Our Lives

by Peggy Noonan

  How to come back? “The basic old conservative principles haven’t changed. We got distracted by Washington, we got distracted from having good county organizations.”

  Should the party attempt to break with Mr. Bush? Mr. Reed said he supports the president. And then he said, simply, “We’re past that.”

  We’re past that time.

  Mr. Reed said he was “short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic.” He has seen a lot of history. “After Goldwater in ’64 we said, ‘Let’s get practical.’ So we got ol’ Dick. We got through Watergate. Been through a lot. We’ve had success a long time.”

  Throughout the interview this was a Reed refrain: “We got through that.” We got through Watergate and Vietnam and changes large and small.

  He was holding high the flag, but his refrain implicitly compared the current moment to disaster.

  What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn’t happen in 2005, and ’06 and ’07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration—over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government—has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They’re stuck.

  Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party’s fortunes from the president’s. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn’t be left with a ruined “brand,” as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

  This is and will be the great challenge for John McCain: the Democratic argument, now being market tested by Obama Inc., that a McCain victory will yield nothing more or less than George Bush’s third term.

  That is going to be powerful, and it is going to get out the vote. And not for Republicans.

  Sex and the Sissy

  The Wall Street Journal: May 23, 2008

  She was born in Russia, fled the pogroms with her family, was raised in Milwaukee and worked the counter at her father’s general store when she was 8. In early adulthood she made aliyah to Palestine, where she worked on a kibbutz, picking almonds and chasing chickens. She rose in politics, was the first woman in the first Israeli cabinet, soldiered on through war and rumors of war, became the first and so far only woman to be prime minister of Israel. And she knew what it is to be a woman in the world. “At work, you think of the children you’ve left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished… Your heart is rent.” This of course was Golda Meir.

  Another: She was born in a family at war with itself and the reigning power outside. As a child she carried word from her important father to his fellow revolutionaries, smuggling the papers in her school bag. War and rumors of war, arrests, eight months in jail. A rise in politics—administering refugee camps, government minister. When war came, she refused to flee an insecure border area; her stubbornness helped rally a nation. Her rivals sometimes called her “Dumb Doll,” and an American president is said to have referred to her in private as “the old witch.” But the prime minister of India preferred grinding her foes to dust to complaining about gender bias. In the end, and in the way of things, she was ground up, too. Proud woman, Indira Gandhi.

  And there is Margaret Hilda Roberts. A childhood in the besieged Britain of World War II—she told me once of listening to the wireless and being roused by Churchill. “Westward look, the land is bright,” she quoted him; she knew every stanza of the old poem. Her father, too, was a shopkeeper, and she grew up in the apartment above the store near the tracks. She went to Oxford on scholarship, worked as a chemist, entered politics, rose, became another first and only, succeeding not only in a man’s world but in a class system in which they knew how to take care of ambitious little grocer’s daughters from Grantham. She was to a degree an outsider within her own party, so she remade it. She lived for ideas as her colleagues lived for comfort and complaint. The Tories those days managed loss. She wanted to stop it; she wanted gain. Just before she became prime minister, the Soviets, thinking they were deftly stigmatizing an upstart, labeled her the “Iron Lady.” She seized the insult and wore it like a hat. This was Thatcher, stupendous Thatcher, now the baroness.

  Great women, all different, but great in terms of size, of impact on the world and of struggles overcome. Struggle was not something they read about in a book. They did not use guilt to win election—it comes up zero if you Google “Thatcher” and “You’re just picking on me because I’m a woman.” Instead they used the appeals men used: stronger leadership, better ideas, a superior philosophy.

  * * *

  You know where I’m going, for you know where she went. Hillary Clinton complained again this week that sexism has been a major dynamic in her unsuccessful bid for political dominance. She is quoted by the Washington Post’s Lois Romano decrying the “sexist” treatment she received during the campaign and the “incredible vitriol that has been engendered” by those who are “nothing but misogynists.” The New York Times reported she told sympathetic bloggers in a conference call that she is saddened by the “mean-spiritedness and terrible insults” that have been thrown “at you, for supporting me, and at women in general.”

  Where to begin? One wants to be sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton at this point, if for no other reason than to show one’s range. But her last weeks have been, and her next weeks will likely be, one long exercise in summoning further denunciations. It is something new in politics, the How Else Can I Offend You Tour. And I suppose it is aimed not at voters—you don’t persuade anyone by complaining in this way, you only reinforce what your supporters already think—but at history, at the way history will tell the story of the reasons for her loss.

  So, to address the charge that sexism did her in:

  It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.

  It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support Mrs. Clinton.

  It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they’d give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they’d call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they’d realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks.

  It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

  It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say “Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other’s bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it’s like that for the boys and for the girls.”

  And because the charge of sexism is all of the above, it is, ultimately, undermining of the position of women. Or rather it would be if its source were not someone broadly understood by friend and foe alike to be willing to say anything to gain advantage.

  * * *

  It is probably truer that being a woman helped Mrs. Clinton. She was the front-runner anyway and had all the money, power, Beltway backers. But the fact that she was a woman helped give her supporters the special oomph to be gotten from making history. They were by definition
involved in something historic. And they were on the right side, connected to the one making the breakthrough, shattering the glass. They were going to be part of breaking it into a million little pieces that could rain down softly during the balloon drop at the historic convention, each of them catching the glow of the lights. Some network reporter was going to say “They look like pieces of the glass ceiling that has finally been shattered.”

  I know: Barf. But also: Fine. Politics should be fun.

  Meir and Gandhi and Mrs. Thatcher suffered through the political downside of their sex and made the most of the upside. Fair enough. As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse. Mrs. Gandhi would say “That is no way to play it.” Mrs. Meir? “They said I was the only woman in the cabinet and the only one with—well, you know. I loved it.”

  McCain Represents the Way We Were, Obama What We Are Becoming

  The Wall Street Journal: June 14, 2008

  And so it begins, the campaign proper. You probably guessed that there would be no letup in this relentless year, no break between the primaries and the general election, that both candidates would stay on the screen. You were right. They will not leave, and go, and rest. They feel they can’t, it’s inch by inch, slow and steady wins the race. This robs them of the power of disappearance. You disappear and then come back and people say, “Hey, look at that guy.” They listen anew after a break in the drone.

  Not this time. And maybe never again.

  For Barack Obama this week, a Beltway setback. He chose for a key position a D.C. insider who got fat working the system. This was a poor decision by the candidate of change. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” But Jim Johnson was removed with dispatch, and the country didn’t notice. Beltway bottom line: Mr. Obama the cool customer had a problem, removed the problem, has no problem.

  John McCain had a worse time, with the famously awkward speech in front of the background whose color was variously compared to snot, puke and lime Jell-O. He was scored for not being adept with a teleprompter. The press knocked him, essentially, for not being smooth and manipulative enough. But if he were good at the teleprompter, they’d complain that he’s too smooth and scripted.

  The press will be nice to him again. When he’s 17 points down.

  It should not count against a man that he has not fully mastered the artifice of his profession. Then again, he should have nailed the prompter by now. Such things show a certain competence. Voters are slower to trust you with big things if they see a lack of skill in small things. In this vein, a suggestion. Podiums always seem to swallow Mr. McCain. He has limited mobility with his arms because of his torture in Vietnam. It restricts his ability to gesture. And he is not a big man. He often looks like he’s flailing up there: I’m not waving, I’m drowning! His staff should build a podium for him, one that fits, and take it wherever he goes. For a seal, the great state of Arizona, which he has represented in the U.S. Senate for 22 years. Let him master the podium five months out. Other masteries will follow.

  The lay of the land? Mr. Obama is ahead 47% to 41% in this week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, and no one is surprised. Everyone knows he’s ahead. Everyone knows this is a Democratic year. But I think there are two particular subtexts this year, or perhaps I should say texts. One, obviously, is youth versus age. This theme is the clearest it’s been since 1960, when the old general who’d planned the Normandy invasion found himself replaced by a young man who had commanded a rickety patrol torpedo boat in World War II. You know that on some level, at some moment, Dwight D. Eisenhower looked at John F. Kennedy and thought: Punk.

  But 2008 will also prove in part to be a decisive political contest between the Old America and the New America. Between the thing we were, and the thing we have been becoming for 40 years or so. (I’m not referring here to age. Some young Americans have Old America heads and souls; some old people are all for the New.)

  Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New.

  * * *

  Roughly, broadly:

  In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.

  In the New America, love of country is a decision. It’s one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.

  Old America: Tradition is a guide in human affairs. New America: Tradition is a challenge, a barrier, a lovely antique.

  The Old America had big families. You married and had children. Life happened to you. You didn’t decide, it decided. Now it’s all on you.

  Old America, when life didn’t work out: “Luck of the draw!” New America when life doesn’t work: “I made bad choices!” Old America: “I had faith, and trust.” New America: “You had limited autonomy!”

  Old America: “We’ve been here three generations.” New America: “You’re still here?”

  Old America: We have to have a government, but that doesn’t mean I have to love it. New America: We have to have a government and I am desperate to love it.

  Old America: Politics is a duty. New America: Politics is life.

  The Old America: Religion is good. The New America: Religion is problematic. The Old: Smoke ’em if you got ’em. The New: I’ll sue.

  Mr. McCain is the old world of concepts like “personal honor,” of a manliness that was a style of being, of an attachment to the fact of higher principles.

  Mr. Obama is the new world, which is marked in part by doubt as to the excellence of the old. It prizes ambivalence as proof of thoughtfulness, as evidence of a textured seriousness.

  Both Old and New America honor sacrifice, but in the Old America it was more essential, more needed for survival both personally (don’t buy today, save for tomorrow) and in larger ways.

  The Old and New define sacrifice differently. An Old America opinion: Abjuring a life as a corporate lawyer and choosing instead community organizing, a job that does not pay you in money but will, if you have political ambitions, provide a base and help you win office, is not precisely a sacrifice. Political office will pay you in power and fame, which will be followed in time by money (see Clinton, Bill). This has more to do with timing than sacrifice. In fact, it’s less a sacrifice than a strategy.

  A New America answer: He didn’t become a rich lawyer like everyone else—and that was a sacrifice! Old America: Five years in a cage—that’s a sacrifice!

  In the Old America, high value was put on education, but character trumped it. That’s how Lincoln got elected: Honest Abe had no formal schooling. In Mr. McCain’s world, a Harvard Ph.D. is a very good thing, but it won’t help you endure five years in Vietnam. It may be a comfort or an inspiration, but it won’t see you through. Only character, and faith, can do that. And they are very Old America.

  Old America: Candidates for office wear ties. New America: Not if they’re women. Old America: There’s a place for formality, even the Beatles wore jackets!

  * * *

  I weigh this in favor of the Old America. Hard not to, for I remember it, and its sterling virtues. Maybe if you are 25 years old, your sense of the Old and New is different. In the Old America, they were not enlightened about race and sex; they accepted grim factory lines and couldn’t even begin to imagine the Internet. Fair enough. But I suspect the political playing out of a long-ongoing cultural and societal shift is part of the dynamic this year.

  As to its implications for the race, we’ll see. America is always looking forward, not back, it is always in search of the fresh and leaving the tried. That’s how we started: We left tired old Europe and came to the new place, we settled the East and pushed west to the new place. We like new. It’s in our genes. Hope we know where we’re going, though.

  The End of Placeness

  The Washington Post: August 15, 2008

  The end of placeness is one of the features of the campaign. I do not like it.

  Pretend you
are not a political sophisticate and regular watcher of the presidential race as it unfolds on all media platforms. Pretend, that is, that you are normal.

  OK, quick, close your eyes. Where is Barack Obama from?

  He’s from Young. He’s from the town of Smooth in the state of Well Educated. He’s from TV.

  John McCain? He’s from Military. He’s from Vietnam Township in the Sunbelt state.

  Chicago? That’s where Mr. Obama wound up. Modern but Midwestern: a perfect place to begin what might become a national career. Arizona? That’s where Mr. McCain settled, a perfect place from which to launch a more or less conservative career in the 1980s.

  Neither man has or gives a strong sense of place in the sense that American politicians almost always have, since Mr. Jefferson of Virginia, and Abe Lincoln of Illinois, and FDR of New York, and JFK of Massachusetts. Even Bill Clinton was from a town called Hope, in Arkansas, even if Hope was really Hot Springs. And in spite of his New England pedigree, George W. Bush was a Texan, as was, vividly, LBJ.

  Messrs. Obama and McCain are not from a place, but from an experience. Mr. McCain of course was a Navy brat. He bounced around, as members of the families of our military must, and wound up for a time in the suburbs of Washington. Mr. Obama’s mother was somewhat itinerant, in search of different climes. He was born in Hawaii, which Americans on the continent don’t experience so much as a state as a destination, a place of physical beauty and singular culture. You go there to escape and enjoy. Then his great circling commenced: Indonesia, back to Hawaii, on to the western coast of America, then to the eastern coast, New York and Cambridge. He circled the continent, entering it, if you will, in Chicago, where he settled in his 30s.

  The lack of placeness with both candidates contributes to a sense of their disjointedness, their floatingness. I was talking recently with a journalist who’s a podcaster. I often watch him in conversation on the Internet. I told him I’m always struck that he seems to be speaking from No Place, with some background of beige wall that could exist anywhere. He leans in and out of focus. It gives a sense of weightlessness. He’s like an astronaut floating without a helmet.