Ronald Reagan did not play by the playbook described on the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post. The liberal voice of the nation’s capital headlined this thought:

Tricky pivot for Romney to the center.

Senior reporter Karen Tumulty led off the story with this:

“The playbook for Republican presidential contenders goes at least as far back as Richard Nixon: Run hard to the right in the primaries; steer back to the center for the general election.”

In other words, be as cynical as Nixon and take our advice: Sucker the voters of your own party into backing you. Then, once you’ve gulled enough of them to gain a first-ballot nomination at the convention, tack to the left to attract the broad middle of the electorate. 

Reporter Tumulty did not list Ronald Reagan in her widely-read story because he did no such thing and, gee, he only won two back-to-back landslides, carried only 44, then 49 states, and won only a total of 1,014 Electoral Votes. Of course, reporter Tumulty’s friendly advice on tricky pivoting is given to candidates she would never back in any event.

Why didn’t Reagan pivot? Why wasn’t he tricky? I remember a staff meeting at the U.S. Department of Education early in his second term. Five different proposals were on the table for discussion. “Well, we know we can’t do numbers 3 and 5,” said Patricia Hines, one of my favorite colleagues. “Why not?” I asked innocently. “Because,” she patiently explained to this slower student in the class, “the platform on which Ronald Reagan was twice elected specifically condemned those policies. President Reagan may not be able to achieve all he endorsed in that platform, but he would never, never go against his platform.”

I soon learned the high ideals and the deep commitments of the Reagan movement from Mrs. Hines and many other Reaganauts.  We never called ourselves “Reaganites.” (Leave “iting” for the Trostkyites and the Castroites).

President Reagan had a strong sense that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And it was not only dishonorable to “pivot,” or to engage in tricky maneuvers to gain that consent of the governed under false pretenses. Worse, it was corrosive of free government to do so.

Take Richard Nixon. Please. He came into office a staunch anti-Communist. He had waged political battles all his life against liberals and Democrats he accused of being “soft on Communism.” Then, in office, he abandoned Taiwan and flew to Red China. He toasted Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, wishing the bloody dictator a long life. Mao had shortened the lives of some 60 million Chinese.

Could there be a better example of bottomless cynicism? And how did that tricky pivot work out for Mr. Nixon? Did any of the liberals who applauded his unprincipled flight to Beijing vote for him or defend him against impeachment?

Or, take George H.W. Bush. As Reagan’s vice president, he had to convince some skeptical conservatives he had truly learned his lessons, and overcome his moderate background. “Read my lips, no new taxes,” Bush told cheering conservatives at his party’s 1988 convention. Elected not by tricky pivoting or tacking to the center, but by emphasizing his differences with the ultra-liberal Michael Dukakis, the senior Bush raised taxes and split the Reagan coalition. Columnist George Will said Bush had “turned a silk purse into a sow’s ear.” That coalition of social, defense, and economic conservatives has not been reassembled to this day.

Writer Andrew Busch notes that Ronald Reagan quoted the Founding Fathers more than any of his four predecessors (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter) combined. I would point out that Reagan also cited the Founders more than any of his four successors combined (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama).

Quoting George Will again, “Ronald Reagan spoke to the future in the accents of the past.” He was well-grounded. He didn’t need fancy footwork or clever “positioning.” He knew who he was and what he stood for. And so did we.

Faith in God, faith in the America as “A Shining City on a Hill,” a deep and abiding love for the American people, and a determination not to give in to threats or blandishments.  These were the sources of his strength. He called for a Banner of Bold Colors, not one of “pale pastels.”

“Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” said George Washington at the close of the Constitutional Convention. That, too was a Banner of Bold Colors.

It’s not surprising that so many candidates today want to emulate Reagan’s success. Then they should reject tricky pivoting and tacking toward the Washington Post. Instead, let them rally to Reagan’s Banner of Bold Colors.

Family Research Council Senior Fellow Bob Morrison served in the Reagan Administration and is the author of “Reagan’s Victory: How He Built His Winning Coalition.” This book will soon be available in pdf and audio formats on this website.

My mother told me how she’d walked across the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight during World War II. She crossed over walking arm-in-arm with her young sisters-in-law. The kicker: “I was carrying you then,” she said. We differed strongly on abortion, but I will always cherish those stories she gave me as her parting gifts.

Frieda was the mother of one of my best friends in high school. Often, I’d drop by their home, looking for my friend. I’d often linger talking politics with Frieda and her husband, Irv, even if my friend was not at home. Irv was a Democratic zone leader in our town. Frieda did not suffer from polio. She suffered from nothing. Her lively talk distracted me from the special shoes and hobbling gait that polio had inflicted on her. She was totally like her beloved FDR. He, too, used witty repartee to distract everyone from his polio. Frieda and Irv named their black Scottish terrier after FDR’s little dog, Fala, and they moved to his town of Hyde Park when they retired. Frieda and Irv instilled in me an indelible memory of the Holocaust and a deep concern for Israel.

In the midst of many a passionate debate on Fridays, all talk would come to a halt as the sun set. Frieda would be transformed from a strong advocate to a glowing follower of Judaism. “We’re political liberals,” she told me, “but we’re conservative Jews” She lived her faith. I envision Frieda putting on a veil-like head covering and ceremonially lighting the Shabbos candles. Frieda would say the prayers that welcomed the Sabbath “like a treasured guest.”

Last week, on January 22^nd, of all days, my wife, our daughter, and I helped celebrate Marie’s eightieth birthday. She has been like a cherished aunt to my daughter and son-in-law ever since they moved into her town several years back. Marie’s late husband, Joe, had been my seventh grade civics teacher. Joe later volunteered to be my campaign manager when I ran for the New York State Assembly. Joe drove me to Albany to meet the leaders of our party. Learning I had not previously visited our state capital, he said: “You must say a shehechayanu, a Hebrew prayer for the first time you do anything.” Joe’s father was a rabbi who made an aliya to Israel. His father had taught him: “Blessed art Thou, O L-rd, Master of the Universe, that Thou hast preserved us in life to savor this experience for the first time.” And Joe taught it to me. When I took a public stand against abortion, Joe was upset. He told me Marie disagreed strongly, too. But he and Marie never stopped working hard for my election. Frieda and Irv never slackened any effort for me, either.

As I think of these pro-choice women I have loved, I am most grateful for their being in my life. My wife and daughter are pro-life. So, I pray, will be our twin granddaughters. Each of these women, I believe, deserved a birth day.

William Allen White

Republican William Allen White, editor of Kansas’ Emporia Gazette, was often exasperated with President Franklin Roosevelt, but he recognized his great qualities of leadership. Recently, one of the callers to a popular conservative talk show was especially angry at Newt Gingrich: “Why, he said FDR was the greatest president of the twentieth century!”

A highly acclaimed recent book, The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes, argues that Roosevelt’s famous New Deal did not improve the stricken economy in the 1930s, and may even have slowed the recovery. It’s a commonplace among conservatives to argue—against the New Deal’s vast public works projects—that it was really the military buildup leading into the Second World War that got us out of the Great Depression. But that leads us inevitably to look at FDR’s wartime leadership. Columnist Pat Buchanan agrees with libertarian Ron Paul that we should never have entered the war against Hitler in 1941. Both of those gentlemen seem to have forgotten that it was Nazi Germany that declared war on the U.S.

As a conservative, I would not defend many of FDR’s New Deal policies, although we should note that his Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, the first woman of Cabinet rank, fought tirelessly to protect women from the hazards of coal mining, tunnel construction, and lumbering. Why? Because such jobs were hazardous to mothers. FDR’s backing of union demands was always linked to “a living wage” for the working man. It was assumed he was working to support a wife and children.

Who does not admire the courage of a man who overcame polio? FDR’s story of personal triumph over adversity inspired a nation whose economy was crippled. Times are bad now, to be sure, but we don’t have to post armed guards on U.S. Mail Trucks. We are not seeing a hundred banks fail a day. And thank God we do not have 25% unemployment.

In the days before the 22^nd Amendment, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president four times. Reagan thought the 22^nd Amendment was a mistake. So do I.

Ronald Reagan used to enjoy telling historians and visiting Democrats that he had voted for Roosevelt every chance he got. When Sam Donaldson bellowed a question in his foghorn voice, asking Reagan if any of the economic mess he inherited was his fault, President Reagan smiled sheepishly and answered: “Yes, for a long time, I was a Democrat.” The puckish aside, the irrepressible humor covered Reagan’s savvy political strategy: He never criticized FDR.

Reagan was hostile to Big Government. FDR was Big Government. Reagan refused to forget the 100 million people trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Many conservatives blamed FDR for the abandonment of Eastern Europe to the Soviets. (It’s an odd criticism coming from folks whose home team wanted to abandon Western Europe to the Nazis.)

Reagan campaigned against wasteful government spending, red tape, and higher taxes. The New Deal was awash in all of that. And yet, Reagan never attacked the man who embodied liberalism in his era.

Why not? I suspect it was because Reagan knew that not only he, but millions of his own supporters, had backed Roosevelt with enthusiasm. If your grandparents were Evangelicals or Catholics in the 1930s and 40s, the odds were they voted for FDR.  If your family was Jewish or black, they almost certainly would have been Roosevelt loyalists.

Reagan wanted to keep the loyalty of these voters. His coalition contained major elements of the old Roosevelt coalition. Reagan even swiped some of FDR’s best lines:  “This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.” Many of those young Republicans who thrilled to those words were unaware Franklin Roosevelt had spoken them first.

If the greatest evil on the world stage in the first half of the twentieth century was Hitler and Nazism, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the leading opponent of that demonic regime. From the day that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany—on Roosevelt’s 51^st birthday in 1933—until their death twelve years later, the world was focused on a titanic struggle between freedom and tyranny. The outcome of that struggle was by no means assured.

Ronald Reagan gave his heart to FDR’s fight against Nazism. Reagan volunteered for the military at the outbreak of the war. When poor eyesight kept him out of combat, Reagan made training films for the Army and raised millions in war bond drives.

It was doubtless that uncompromising stance against Hitler tyranny that made Reagan such an outspoken foe of Communist tyranny, the focus of evil in the second half of the last century.

Both men shared more than an aversion to tyranny. They shared a strong Christian faith.

When FDR’s son Elliott boarded HMS Prince of Wales in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland in August, 1941, he informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill “my father is a very religious man.” Indeed, that Christmas, just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war, Churchill took up residence at the White House for three weeks.

FDR was worn out by Churchill’s late night sessions, fueled by tobacco smoke and whisky. But on Christmas morning, FDR insisted on prompt attendance at Foundry Methodist Church. “I like to sing hymns with the ‘Methodies,’” the President said, “and besides, it will do Winston good.” It did.

FDR’s D-Day Prayer was broadcast from the White House on June 6, 1944. (Atheizers, hold your ears!) His Inaugural Day activities for his unprecedented fourth swearing-in in 1945 began with services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, across the street from the White House.

Conservative hero Winston Churchill appreciated FDR’s leadership qualities. He would certainly find it strange to see us denigrating the man he called the “Champion of Freedom.” At the outset of the Second World War, Churchill said: “If we open up a quarrel between yesterday and today, we may lose tomorrow.” Good advice.

I take no issue with the Times on slavery or on segregation. The liberal conscience of America—for so the editors see themselves—had an honorable record on those twin evils. In the American Civil War, the Times staunchly defended Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. Similarly, during the modern Civil Rights era, the Gray Lady thundered daily against Jim Crow. It was for many of us the great moral issue of the twentieth century.

In the 1960s and 70s, I was a daily reader of the Times. But recently? Not so much.

And the reason is simply that I cannot abide the Times regularly railing against the defenders of human life. The Times routinely excoriates the Roman Catholic Church. Don’t even ask them about Evangelicals and Lutherans who speak up for the unborn.

Since that grim gray day in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was handed down, the Times has not found a single abortion it could not defend. Of 53,000,000 innocent lives lost, there is not one that should have been welcomed in life and protected by law. At least according to the Gray Lady.

Now, the Times is again putting Thomas Jefferson under its moral microscope. The Gray Lady is perplexed by the paradox of this “Apostle of Liberty” keeping hundreds of black Americans in bondage. Jefferson himself was perplexed. So were virtually all those members of the Founding generation who found themselves “entangled” with the serpent, human bondage. Patrick Henry anguished in a letter to a friend: “Would any one believe that I am Master of Slaves of my own purchase!”

So if they were so anguished about it, why did so many of the Founders own slaves? Henry candidly confessed: “I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. . . “ Well, how hypocritical of Henry. He can’t put up with the inconvenience of not owning slaves.

Isn’t it ironic, therefore, that the Times has nothing but praise for Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of abortion? Consider Justice O’Connor’s opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992):

To eliminate the issue of reliance that easily, however, one would need to limit cognizable reliance to specific instances of sexual activity. But to do this would be simply to refuse to face the fact that for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives

In short, men and women have a “reliance” interest in abortion-on-demand. O’Connor thinks it’s necessary to keep legal lethal violence against the unborn so that people can order their lives as they wish.

What an insult to professional women like my wife, a high ranking military officer, and the millions of other professional women, including, presumably, Sandra Day O’Connor herself to say that without legal abortion they could not have achieved their honors and status.

We can point to many, many moves the Founders made in an attempt to arrest the expansion of slavery. Jefferson, in particular, sought as a Congressman to ban slavery west of the Appalachian Mountains. He lost in the Confederation Congress by one vote.

“Heaven itself was silent in that awful moment,” he mourned. But Jefferson applauded a partial victory when Congress approved the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery north of the Ohio River.

The First Congress under the Constitution affirmed the Northwest Ordinance and President Washington willingly signed it. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass would point again and again to Jefferson’s approval and Washington’s signature as indisputable proof that Congress could prevent slavery in the territories.

The Founders called slavery wrong and treated as a wrong. They tried in many ways to work for its elimination.

As President, Thomas Jefferson prodded the Congress to take action, early action, to stop the “execrable commerce” [his words] of the Atlantic Slave Trade. He asked Congress in 1806 to act, even though the Constitution prevented the bill from taking effect until January 1, 1808. Jefferson pleaded against this violation of the “human rights of unoffending Africans.” [Again, his stirring words.]

The Times rightly criticizes the author of the Declaration of Independence for failing to follow George Washington’s splendid example of freeing his own slaves. Fair enough.

But the Gray Lady makes no mention of his oceanic achievement in banning the Slave Trade. President Jefferson had no constitutional obligation to act as he did. He didn’t even want the slave ships to depart from Africa’s shores if they would arrive here after January 1, 1808.

Hillary Clinton has said “abortion is wrong” (Newsweek, 31 October 1994), and her husband said it should be “rare.” But their public lives have been dedicated to expanding abortion at home and abroad. The Times has applauded every pro-abortion move by Hillary Clinton, and by Presidents Clinton and Obama.

Never has the Times asked why it is wrong, if it is wrong, or why it should be rare. And the Gray Lady is even less curious about what Mr. Obama or the Clintons have ever done actually to make abortion rare. In fact, the only place President Obama has made abortion rare is on the Moon. He achieved that only by grounding NASA.

The Gray Lady has a positive genius for seeing motes in her neighbor’s eye. She is utterly blind to the beam in her own. And, frankly dear lady, your slip is showing.

I was researching an American history book several years ago when the subject of the Titanic came up in the text. Although some 1,500 lives were lost, she was not the greatest maritime disaster in history. So, what was the greatest? In those pre-Google days, I had to go hunting.

I learned that the greatest maritime disaster was the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on January 11, 1945. That German vessel was evacuating terrified refugees from East Prussia. The Soviet Red Army was overrunning this Nazi territory, raping and murdering.

A Soviet submarine torpedoed the German ship and she went down with loss of 9,000 lives, mostly civilians, mostly women and children. The original name for the ship was to have been Adolf Hitler. Hitler, however, fearing the symbolism of any vessel bearing his name being sunk, had forbidden any such naming. So the vessel was named for the Nazi leader of Switzerland.

Ask any journalist what was the greatest maritime disaster and he or she would doubtless say Titanic. That’s understandable. Most Americans think the same thing. There will probably never be a movie made about the Gustloff sinking. Nine thousand lives lost in the midst of a horrific war are not as compelling a story as rich and famous people going down to their deaths on a clear night, with the sea like glass, near the end of a century of peace.

With compelling stories of the Costa Concordia shipwreck and gripping images of the great liner split open on the rocks, it’s not surprising that the news media focuses on a villain. It surely seems the captain of that stricken vessel is a villain. I’d like to see more attention paid to the courageous divers who are searching the treacherous interior of the sunken ship. And I’d like to see an interview with the Italian Coast Guardsman who ordered that ship captain to leave the safety of his lifeboat and get back on board his sinking ship to aid his passengers.

The day after Titanic went down in 1912, President Taft ordered the U.S. Coast Guard to take part in what became the International Ice Patrol. It continued for seventy years. In 1982, this boring but dangerous task was given over to satellite surveillance. When I spied a ball cap bearing the legend International Ice Patrol on its peak, I wasn’t sure what it was. Then, it dawned on me: I had taken part in that iceberg patrol as a young enlisted man on board the Coast Guard Cutter Unimak.

Happily, dramatic stories of ships colliding with icebergs and sinking have been few since the Ice Patrol began. The Ice Patrol and later satellite surveillance have largely eliminated this seaborne terror. Eliminated as well has been most media attention.  The amazing thing is not that a single great ship struck an iceberg and went down.  The true miracle is that it hasn’t happened again.

I’m compelled to think of shipwrecks as I survey the current political stage. The news media are the last people who can give us a clear picture of reality. They are the last ones we should allow to “vet” candidates for the highest office in the land. Reporters set the parameters. They frame the questions. Like “Uncle Walter” Cronkite, they tell us “that’s the way it is.”

Well, it ain’t. For example, Cuba is just 90 miles from our shores. The Islamist terror group Hezbollah is said have training camps there. Has there been a single question about Cuba in the dozens of presidential debates this year? Has there been a single question about Cuba in the fifty years of presidential debates?

Or, consider Quemoy and Matsu. These tiny fishing islands are a few miles away from the mainland of Communist China. They were the subject of fierce debate between Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. Nixon alleged that Kennedy was “soft of communism” because he was unwilling to commit U.S. troops to defend Quemoy and Matsu. Nixon pounded Kennedy on the campaign trail for weeks after they debated Quemoy and Matsu on television. Kennedy won that election, very narrowly.

Nixon was elected eight years later. And four years after that, Nixon essentially abandoned not only Quemoy and Matsu, but Taiwan itself. Nixon’s famous “overture” to Red China was hailed as a master stroke of diplomacy.

Nothing on Cuba. First Quemoy and Matsu loom large, then they disappear down the memory hole. That’s how unreal, how farcical, how unpresidential these debates are.

Sean Hannity says he looks to see “blood all over the stage” in these debates. And he thinks this is a good thing. I can tell Sean that blood on the floor or on deck is very slippery, very dangerous.

If we doubt the danger of these debates, we have only to consult the unfavorable ratings of some of the leading candidates. For the media, these debates are an ocean of good ink.  When conservatives fight, the media will gladly hold their coats. But for many of us, these debates look increasingly like a shipwreck.

Now, our Daily News is still plugging away. They conceive it as their duty to inform New York’s “working stiffs”–the subway straphangers–what they should think about the world. Don’t bother going inside to find the editorials. They’re all right there–on the front page. And so is the bias of the Daily News. I wouldn’t say the paper leans to the left, ideologically. The Leaning Tower of Pisa leans. This newspaper’s bias is flat-out, prone, supine.

Sometimes, the bias is so pronounced as to be hilarious. Did you know that John 3:16 is “Tim Tebow’s Verse?” The Daily News thinks it is. It’s almost as if the young quarterback spent his early years in the Philippines as a Wycliffe Bible Translator. If you consider this story, you are warned that–whoa! watch out here–Tim Tebow did a Super Bowl ad for the “anti-abortion” group, Focus on the Family. Focus on the Family is probably anti-Mafia, too. And anti-rubbing out dons in barbershops.

But the fact that they are anti-abortion is information you gotta know. It needs to be front-and-center for discerning readers of the Daily News. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

John 3:16 has been translated into hundreds of languages. You can even find it in New York City. Now, it seems, Focus on the Family is capitalizing on the name recognition they got with that Super Bowl ad several years back. They’ve put out an ad based on the single most famous verse in the Bible.

The reaction of the journos to John 3:16 is too funny. Focus on the Family becomes “controversial” for saying that the dear children in this ad had a right to life. Focus on the Family doubtless would affirm the sentiment we at Family Research Council have often expressed: “Doesn’t Everyone Deserve a Birth Day?”

Several years ago, a candidate, a businessman, was seeking the support of Christians in Iowa. He wanted to run for Governor. He was getting along fine with his new-found friends. He even called the group leader from the road. “Say, I want you to know, I just passed a billboard with John 3:16 on it. I called my secretary and had her look that one up for me.”

There are, it seems, more conversions on the road toDes Moines even than on the Road to Damascus.

Michael Cromartie with the Ethics and Public Policy Center holds yearly conferences in Florida with mainstream journalists. God bless him. He tells the story of the shocked reaction of a reporter for one of the “prestige press” journals. The young woman had heard some candidate respond to a question on marriage by talking about “headship” in the family. Mr. Cromartie politely responded that, yes, there really are people in America who have read Paul’s thoughts on this in Ephesians.

“Who is this Paul? And what book is this Ephesians?” came the reporter’s stunned response.

My favorite story of media cluelessness goes back to 1985. NBC News Anchorman John Chancellor was so dignified, so august that you might say: There but for the Grace of God, goes God. Chancellor was reporting President Reagan’s Second Inaugural. “The president is moving to the podium. His hand is now on the open Bible. It rests on the president’s favorite verse: Eleven Chronicles, 7:14.

New York’s Daily News might want, just once, to reflect on the current state of the Empire State. From 1810 to 1970, the Empire State, my home state, was the biggest, strongest state in the nation. We had 45 Electoral Votes. Every candidate for president wanted to carry New York State. We were not only the media capital of the nation, we were the business, advertising, industrial, and even agricultural super power of America. If you can make it there, sang Frank Sinatra, you can make it anywhere.

But then New York embraced lifestyle liberalism. And abortion. In the biggest way. Now, New York’s prestige, power, and influence have declined. In Harlem, 60 percent of all pregnancies, mostly of black and Hispanic moms, end in abortion. Not content with destroying the child in the womb, New York now advances to overturn marriage itself. And brags about it.

On my last visit to my mother, she told me about living in Brooklyn during the Second World War. I told her I’d been reading Daniel Patrick Moynihan and was amazed to learn that in 1944, there had been only eight homicides recorded in New York City. “I know all about that,” my mother responded to my lecturing tone. “You forget, I came to Brooklyn in 1944 to marry your father. My sisters-in-law and I used to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge–at midnight.” Then, to underscore New York in its heyday, she said: “And I was carrying you then.”

I was safe in my mother’s womb crossing the Brooklyn Bridge then. How many children never have that chance today? So, yes, I thank God for Focus on the Family’s new ad.

John 3:16 is Tim Tebow’s verse. It’s also the verse for all the world. No one needs it more than New York.

I had not seen Tom in ten years and had spoken to him only a few times since he returned to the sunny South. Tom joined our staff at the U.S. Department of Education in 1986. That’s when reporters, not so kindly, referred to that agency as “Fort Reagan.” I would joke we were all committed to disestablishing that department, as our brave president was. But if liberals in Congress would not let us do that, we should conduct ourselves so that they will wish they had never created it.

Shortly after meeting Tom, I started laughing. And never stopped. Like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Tom was not only witty himself, but “the occasion of wit in others.” If you wanted to find him on the fourth floor of that dreary government building, you could just go down the hall, turn right, and follow the peals of laughter.

Very soon I learned that Tom was an American by birth and a Southerner by choice. He exemplified the best in the South. He told us endless stories of the Agrarians, an important literary school of the 1930s and 40s. But he sure could puncture the pieties. He’d tell you the whole story of Allan Tate’s writing of “Stonewall Jackson,” relating the almost worshipful feeling that Southerners have for that intrepid Presbyterian warrior. Then, he’d catch you up by saying: “It’s not a very good book.”

When Tom defended the flying of the rebel flag on the State House in South Carolina, I took issue with him. Tom argued passionately that it was Southern heritage that was being honored, not racism. I think Tom was entirely sincere. I remarked to Tom on the arrangement of flags atop the capitol in Columbia: U.S national ensign, then, bright blue and white flag of the Palmetto state, and, beneath them, the Confederate flag. “Reminds me,” I told Tom, “of what Jefferson Davis said about his frustration in dealing with fractious state leaders. Davis said if the South lost the Civil War, its epitaph would read: ‘Died of a theory.’”

With Tom you learned not to judge Southerners by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. He was the one who brought an aged Rev. Ralph David Abernathy around to meet all of us. Dr. Abernathy was Martin Luther King’s right-hand man in the civil rights movement. He was King’s successor in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Tom worked with Abernathy on his autobiography. Dr. Abernathy had been deeply wounded by all the vicious liberal attacks on him when he endorsed Ronald Reagan for president.

I will always remember Tom looking over my shoulder when the first word processors arrived in our offices. He watched disapprovingly as I labored to transfer my writing from the yellow legal pads I then used for drafting.

“Don’t do that,” he said sternly. “Write directly on the screen.” I can’t do that, I replied.

I think by writing, and I have to write it out longhand first.

“You must train yourself to think as you write on the word processor. The device lets you revise and change at will. Think as you write!” He said it with the air of command of a Stonewall Jackson. I was reminded that Jackson would shoot a shirker at the drop of a hat. And drop the hat himself.

I obeyed. And never went back. I will treasure the memory of this true Son of the South teaching a stubborn Yankee to use a devilish new machine in order to be more efficient. Jack Kennedy was right: Washington is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm.

My favorite Tom Landess story is of his Episcopal priest, Father Rogers. The preacher was talking about giving to the poor. It was a good sermon for his well-to-do parish. Afterward, over coffee, folks talked about how they would surely give to the deserving poor. “That’s fine,” said Father Rogers, “but I’ve found that the deserving poor don’t stay poor. So I always give to the undeserving poor.” Stunned, his parishioners asked the good father why. “I give to the undeserving poor because I am undeserving poor.”

Tom understood our need for grace and why it continues to amaze. I thank God for making Tom Landess my friend.

Congress was eager then, as now, to get out of town. Christmas was fast approaching.

But this was important business. George Washington would appear before the civil authorities that had given him his power and voluntarily lay it down before the representatives of a free people. Eight long years of war had brought them to this point.

Few Americans dreamed of such a long war when Massachusetts Minutemen stood up to their red-coated British masters and fought for their liberty. That was in 1775.

Poets would later memorialize that day in stirring lines. School children in America used to memorize Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn.” 

“By the rude bridge that arch’d the flood/Their flag to April’s breeze unfurl’d/Here once the embattled farmers stood/And fired the shot heard ‘round the world. 

Washington had assumed command of the grandly named Continental Army in that year.

Chosen unanimously by the Continental Congress, this wealthy Virginia landholder was called His Excellency throughout the war. And, though he bombarded Congress with pleading, sometimes petulant letters, he never once hesitated to obey its orders or showed contempt for its endless dithering. Washington wrote of his men leaving bloody footprints in the snow, starving, and ill-clothed. He wanted Congress to meet its responsibilities to his brave men.

At Newburgh, New York, earlier in that year of 1783, His Excellency strode onto the stage in front of a hastily called grievance meeting of army officers. This was a point of maximum peril. Many a revolution had dissolved into mutiny and sedition at such a point. Grumbling against Congress had reached a high pitch. Uninvited, Washington nonetheless appeared, unarmed, before this embittered gathering. How easy it would have been for some young revolutionary to assassinate Washington on the spot and seize power at the head of an armed force. Knowing all this, Washington dramatically took his eyeglasses from his pocket to read a Congressman’s letter to them. The letter would provide answers to their demands. Most of them had never seen the general wearing glasses before. Long a student of the theater, Washington paused, dramatically, then said quietly above the hush: “You will pardon me, gentlemen, for I have grown not only gray but nearly blind in the service of my country.”

Hardened veterans of many battles wept openly. The incipient mutiny collapsed and America was spared a bloody civil war—right at the start.

Now, Washington was to appear before that very Congress. His appearance was no casual thing. He did not tell Congress he would address them. He asked to be permitted to speak. A committee that included Thomas Jefferson carefully prepared Congress’ response. Members would be seated, wearing their hats. The General would stand before “The United States in Congress Assembled.” In doing this, Mr. Jefferson thought it important to reverse the practices of the British House of Commons. Washington was no king. There would be no more kings in America.

Maryland’s Old State House was packed with congressmen, guests, young Army officers,

and ladies and gentlemen of Annapolis. Washington had not flinched when he faced British cannon at Princeton, but now his hands shook as he read his prepared text.

Happy in the confirmation of our Independence and Sovereignty…I resign with satisfaction the Appointment I accepted with diffidence. A diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which however was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our Cause, the support of the Supreme Power of the Union, and the patronage of Heaven.

Again, he emphasized, his gratitude for “the interposition of Providence.” When you have been shot at, had bullets pierce your hat and coat, had horses shot out from underneath, you have an appreciation of God’s Providence that perhaps exceeds that of ordinary men. In the presence of such a Power, it’s not surprising that Washington’s hands shook.

Everyone on the floor of Congress, it is recorded, wept. So, too, did all the visitors, including fine ladies, in the gallery. The President of Congress, Thomas Mifflin, delivered the response, drafted for him by Jefferson.

And then the General was off. He was in a hurry to get home to Mount Vernon for Christmas. It would be his first Christmas with his family in eight years. We can think this Christmas of all our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who are standing duty defending us. They march along the General’s Highway, too.

When King George III, Washington’s enemy, heard that he planned to resign his commission to Congress, the king exclaimed: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man on earth.” He did and he was.

Sitting in the audience, I remembered my first encounter with this subject. I was a graduate student reading the biography of Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle had then only recently retired as President of the Fifth Republic of France.

A military hero during World War I, de Gaulle at 6’5″ towered over most of his countrymen, both figuratively and literally. In the interwar years, Col. de Gaulle taught at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy, and was an outspoken advocate for tank warfare. His theories were considered too radical, and he was shunted aside. Only in 1940, did de Gaulle see his ideas put to devastating use–by the Nazis panzers as they plowed through the Ardennes forest. While the divided French Cabinet argued about whether to surrender or keep fighting, the newly promoted Gen. de Gaulle escorted a British friend to the airport outside threatened Paris. Then, without so much as a toothbrush, he closed the door to the aircraft and flew to England. He watched from the air as the battered French towns below burst into flames. His own wife and daughter Anne were down there.

He rallied the French people with a speech delivered over the BBC. And he led the Free French throughout the war. Afterward, he briefly led the government before going into retirement. But in 1958, France was wracked with internal divisions over Algeria, communism, and much else. Called out of retirement, Charles de Gaulle became President of France. He re-wrote the constitution, creating the Fifth Republic that governs France to this day. In World War II, he restored French honor after the debacle of Hitler’s invasion and occupation. As President, he sought to make France respected again throughout the world.

Retiring for a second time in 1969, de Gaulle was asked by an interviewer what gave him the courage, the stamina, and the vision to fight so hard for his country. Unhesitatingly, he answered: “The love of Anne de Gaulle.”

As a student, I was puzzled. But I soon found out what he meant. Anne was born with Downs Syndrome. Charles and his wife Yvonne raised Anne at home. What’s so unusual about that? At that time, most of France’s upper classes, and certainly most ambitious military figures, would quietly place such a daughter in a convent school, where loving and devoted nuns would care for her. There would be visits several times a year, of course, but the child would effectively be banished from the family.

Not the de Gaulles. They rearranged their entire domestic life around the need to love and care for Anne. And Anne returned that love in abundance. One of the most moving scenes I ever read showed Charles and Yvonne standing at the gravesite in a small country churchyard in Colombey Les Deux Eglises. Embracing his grieving wife, the world leader said: “Now she is like all the others.”

As an historian, I’m often asked why it is we don’t seem to have leaders on the world stage who are like the giant figures of World War II. In France today, 96% of unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome are killed. In the U.S., it is 92%. These lethal rates are even higher among the elites from whose ranks we draw our leaders. Might it be that we no longer produce leaders who can love as unconditionally as the de Gaulles? Anne’s love inspired and motivated one of the greatest leaders of the Twentieth Century. Perhaps we need more such lovers. And more capacity to love.

Check it out. I have a terrible confession. I like it. The guy’s art is appealing. His murals of Mexican peasants and industrial workers touch me. I love his bold, bright colors. My hero Winston Churchill said he planned to spend his first thousand years in heaven assaulting canvasses with nothing but the loudest, brashest of colors. So what’s the row about good old Diego? Well, the big Mexican folk artist (big in reputation, and 300 pounds big) was a big Communist. The Rockefellers kind of balked at his May Day mural featuring good old Vladimir Lenin leading the happy peasants and workers through Red Square. Lenin, it should be remembered, whose Communist Party card was Number One, refused to let his mistress play Beethoven piano sonatas for him; he didn’t want them to soften him. Lenin enjoyed, really got a rush out of picking up a telephone in his Kremlin office and ordering a thousand people shot in Vladivostok, 9,000 miles away from Moscow. Okay, so I can’t help liking Rivera’s art, minus Lenin. But here’s a link I felt honor-bound to consult. I doubt you’re going to see Nikolai Getman on the “Don’t Be Evil” corporate logo anytime soon. He’s unknown outside conservative circles. But I hope we will all check out his Gulag Collection. He doesn’t have as many bright colors as Diego Rivera.

Slave labor camps tend to be a bit monochrome. Look at Getman’s haunting paintings of zeks being shot, or forced to work in uranium mines, or even being staked out, Christ-like, on a tree to be attacked by swarms of Siberian mosquitos. So, feeling guilty about Diego Rivera reminded me to check out Nikolai Getman once again. Our heroes will never be the most popular. Their work will never be seen in Rockefeller Center. They will not be offered in exhibits in the National Gallery of Art. Their birthdays will not be celebrated by Google. But here’s a consolation. If you study Nikolai Getman’s Gulag Collection, you’ll have a leg up on not being evil.