DECLARATIONS

[Road Dawg]

Source: Declarations - WSJ.com

DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN

The View From Gate 14
April 25, 2008

America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is
carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is
worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet
have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty
until
proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left

its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine,
and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce
moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that
the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and
smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes?
America thinks.

And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist,
and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and
harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all
this harassment is the government's way of showing "fairness," of
showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its
high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate
themselves on this as we stand in line.

All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our
society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are
not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It
reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the

middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone,
without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the
phone.
The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the
delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body
goes beep and makes people look.

America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV
monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of
urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a
nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport,

going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home
after a long day of meetings, of moving product.

No one in crowded gate 14 looks up to see what happened in
Pennsylvania.
No one. Wolf talks to the air. Gate 14 is small-town America, a mix, a
group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in

close proximity until the plane is called, and America knows what
Samuel
Johnson knew. "How small of all that human hearts endure / That part
which laws or kings can cause or cure."

Gate 14 doesn't think any one of the candidates is going to make their
lives better. Gate 14 will vote anyway, because they know they are the
grownups of America and must play the role and do the job.

* * *

So: Pennsylvania. As seen from the distance of West Texas, central
California and Oklahoma, which is where I've been.

Main thought. Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is

Mr. Obama's problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the
glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men's Vogue, the candidate who
loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of
racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . .

. the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off
on
their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington,

or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill,

who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills?
There's gold in that history.

John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school,
in
the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa's knee. Mrs. Clinton
learned at least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas,
circa
1977-92.

Mr. Obama? What does he think about all that history? Which is another
way of saying: What does he think of America? That's why people talk
about the flag pin absent from the lapel. They wonder if it means
something. Not that the presence of the pin proves love of country –
any
cynic can wear a pin, and many cynics do. But what about Obama and
America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn
was
loveable, and what does he think about it all?

Another challenge. Snooty lefties get angry when you ask them to talk
about these things. They get resentful. Who are you to question my
patriotism? But no one is questioning his patriotism, they're
questioning its content, its fullness. Gate 14 has a right to hear
this.
They'd lean forward to hear.

This is an opportunity, for Mr. Obama needs an Act II. Act II is hard.
Act II is where the promise of Act I is deepened, the plot thickens,
and
all is teed up for resolution and meaning. Mr. Obama's Act I was: I'm
Obama. He enters the scene. Act III will be the convention and
acceptance speech. After that a whole new drama begins. But for now he
needs Act II. He should make his subject America.

* * *

Here's some comfort for him, for all Democrats. In Lubbock, Texas –
Lubbock Comma Texas, the heart of Texas conservatism – they dislike
President Bush. He has lost them. I was there and saw it. Confusion has

been followed by frustration has turned into resentment, and this is
huge. Everyone knows the president's poll numbers are at historic lows,

but if he is over in Lubbock, there is no place in this country that
likes him. I made a speech and moved around and I was tough on him and
no one – not one – defended or disagreed. I did the same in North
Carolina recently, and again no defenders. I did the same in Fresno,
Calif., and no defenders, not one.

He has left on-the-ground conservatives – the local right-winger, the

town intellectual reading Burke and Kirk, the old Reagan committeewoman

– feeling undefended, unrepresented and alone.

This will have impact down the road.

I finally understand the party nostalgia for Reagan. Everyone speaks of

him now, but it wasn't that way in 2000, or 1992, or 1996, or even '04.

I think it is a manifestation of dislike for and disappointment in Mr.
Bush. It is a turning away that is a turning back. It is a looking back

to conservatism when conservatism was clear, knew what it was, was
grounded in the facts of the world.

The reasons for the quiet break with Mr. Bush: spending, they say
first,
growth in the power and size of government, Iraq. I imagine some of
this: a fine and bitter conservative sense that he has never had to
stand in his stockinged feet at the airport holding the bin, being
harassed. He has never had to live in the world he helped make, the one

where grandma's hip replacement is setting off the beeper here and the
child is crying there. And of course as a former president, with the
entourage and the private jets, he never will. I bet conservatives
don't
like it. I'm certain Gate 14 doesn't.