The latest Peggy Noonan column is terrific. Speaking of George H. W. Bush (41) and his propensity for choking up, Noonan reports and speculates on a recent episode in which he was unable to hold back his tears:

"Barely more than a day after he spoke, the Iraq Study Group's report would be issued. It was chaired by his old friend, the one with whom he'd discussed serious things years ago only after the kids, George and Jeb and the others, left the room.

"Surely Mr. Bush knew--surely he was first on James Baker's call list--that the report would not, could not, offer a way out of a national calamity, but only suggestions, hopes, on ways through it. To know his son George had (with the best of intentions!) been wrong in the great decision of his presidency--stop at Afghanistan or move on to Iraq?--and was now suffering a defeat made clear by the report; to love that son, and love your country, to hold these thoughts, to have them collide and come together--this would bring not only tears, but more than tears."


On the emotional differences between Ronald Reagan and his successor:

"Afterwards I thought about the two presidents I had known. Ronald Reagan was emotionally moved by American history and the Founders, by the long sweep of history. Personal issues and relations left him more dry-eyed. His successor was enormously moved by personal relations, by his love for his children and parents and friends. But to him the sweep of history was more abstract; it didn't capture his imagination in the same way. It left him dry-eyed.

"Different strokes, different folks."


Memory, emotion and growing old:

"Age exposes us, if we're lucky enough to be given it. Some say it makes you softer, some tougher, some a mix of both. Some say it just leaves you more so--whatever you were, you are, only more."

"[G]rowing older can leave you more exposed to the force of whatever it is you're feeling. Defenses erode like a fence worn by time. But what you feel can surprise you.

"You're thinking about what was, and suddenly apprehending for the first time how important it was. You think of your son, age 3, on the lawn when you drove up that time. Once that memory touched you in some way you don't fully understand, but now it makes your throat constrict because you realize that of all the things that ever happened to you, none was as important as how he looked on the lawn when you drove up that time.

"Age reorders. The order is expressed by the mysterious force of a fragment of a moment. And there you are at the podium, mugged by a memory."


An aside: the tag of the piece is much less charitable to the current President Bush. It pains me and alarms me that Peggy Noonan has given up on the President.

Read the piece in full (here).