By Carl M. Cannon, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Oct. 5, 2001

As her father prepared to take a business trip this week, an Arlington, Va., first-grader instructed Dad to pack a parachute, in case "the bad guys crash another plane into a building." At Ryan's Family Steakhouse in Americus, Ga., the sign in front of the restaurant doesn't list the house specials anymore. It simply reads, "Pray for the families." Ten miles down the road, in Plains, former President Jimmy Carter taught his regular Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church after the Secret Service persuaded him it would be unsafe to travel to Bangladesh, the troubled Muslim nation where he had planned to monitor elections. Meanwhile, at the Aqua World resort in Cancun, the gringos snapped up T-shirts reading "God Bless America" on the front and "I won't let terrorists ruin my vacation" on the back.

Beneath the surface of unity runs a more complicated story about the state of the nation, at a time when everyone is waiting for something to happen.

And so did a jittery nation weather its third week since the catastrophe: in fear, in prayer, and in a uniquely American brand of defiance.

In the days after September 11, much was made, and continues to be made, of the unparalleled unity in the United States. The unity was mostly real, if temporary, but underneath it the national mood was more complicated than might be deduced from the flood of charitable giving, the flag-waving and hymn-singing, and the polls showing stratospheric support for President Bush and a near-consensus on the need for military action.

First of all, Americans resumed both their play and workaday activities -- but with the spirit, inculcated by none other than George W. Bush, that this was their patriotic duty.

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Americans in World War II may have had to ration everything from nylon stockings to gasoline. But this is the 21st century, and the service-industry economy must keep rolling in order for the government to fight this war at full strength. And so Reagan National Airport was re-opened while the traveling public gingerly resumed air travel; Bush even suggested Americans take their kids to Walt Disney World. To bolster the spirits, and perhaps assuage the guilty feelings, of those who went to work, school, movies, and sporting events, the President kept repeating his mantra: Americans will never give in to terrorists. "When people go to ballgames, they're sending a signal," Bush said when he went to Reagan National on Tuesday. "I mean, we got struck hard on September 11th. All of us know that. But you can't strike the American spirit. It's strong, it's vibrant, it's united. And by opening this airport, we're making yet another statement to the terrorists: You can't win."

On the most visceral level, Americans appreciated the President's steady display of cheerful strength because it helped them keep their own fears at bay. But on another level, Bush was articulating something much more profound than the need to stand strong. He was explaining nothing less than what it means to be American -- and why those ideals are worth standing strong for. In one of his more evocative expressions, Bush told the American people, "The commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time."

But the person who must set that tone is the commander in chief. Previous generations who answered the call to defend freedom -- those of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and World War II -- had great national leaders to guide them. Few historians consider this a coincidence. A month ago, it would have seemed absurd to ask how George W. Bush measures up to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But after Bush's September 20 address to a joint session of Congress, even some Democrats invoked the image of FDR when characterizing Bush's words. As far as Abraham Lincoln goes, until September 11, anyone likening Bush to Lincoln would have been referring to Lincoln's penchant early in his career for down-home language. "Even in the courtroom, attorney Lincoln had a disarming, humble, countrified manner, speaking in simple phrases, never putting on airs, and using homely stories, rather than legal verbiage to make his points," writes historian Harry J. Maihafer in an upcoming book on Lincoln's words. "This often caused people to underrate him."

The often-underrated Bush has continued to employ, even in these times, his own versions of certain English words. At the CIA, he spoke of how the terrorists "misunderestimated" American resolve; at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Bush asserted that Republicans and Democrats who'd been working together in Congress were "Patriot-Americans," as though it were a new ethnic group. This is hardly the kind of language that modern scholars associate with Lincoln. But in his recent book, Making Patriots, American Enterprise Institute scholar and Georgetown University professor emeritus Walter Berns makes the case that Lincoln's genius wasn't only his adroit phrasemaking, it was his ability to use his prose to instill in Americans a fealty to a cause larger than themselves. That cause was freedom. In an August 22, 1864, address from the White House balcony to the 166th Ohio Regiment, Lincoln called freedom Americans' "birthright," adding, "The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel."

Berns concedes it's a stretch to compare Bush, or any modern American politician, to Lincoln. But he has watched approvingly as the current occupant of the White House has tried to rally Americans to the idea that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon really were an attack on freedom, not just on people and buildings. "I don't expect George Bush to equal Lincoln, but he's done rather well so far," Berns said.

When Philander D. Chase, editor in chief of The Papers of George Washington, saw how Americans united behind Bush, it reminded him of "the great unifier," the first President. "He would be very proud" of Bush, Chase said. "I think you could really call Washington the apostle of unity in America. It was at the heart of what he was all about. He would have been the first person to organize relief efforts. He would be very proud of the recent national unity, with political parties laying down their differences."

'It's Quite a Difference This Time'
But just as the present reminds us of lessons learned in the past, American history also has been an inexorable march forward, toward a future that in most respects includes more freedom. Even after the deadliest-ever attack on American soil, for example, not one prominent politician is calling for martial law or an Alien and Sedition Act, or for internment of an ethnic minority group -- reactions in past wars.

Bush's claim -- "hope" might be a better word -- is that the September 11 attacks have made America a stronger nation and perhaps a better people. This is a nuanced formulation, because "stronger" and "better" are not necessarily the same thing. And as Americans warily went back to doing what they were doing before, there were signs that the United States was a more wary and mature nation, and one with an altered -- and, perhaps, improved -- set of priorities.

At Victory Auto Parts outside Fort Benning, Ga., store manager Mike Gittow, a 55-year-old Army veteran, spoke about a rally he'd attended at the VFW hall in Columbus, Ga. "The sentiment here is very, very, strong for military action," he said. "Everybody in this whole town -- in this whole area -- wants something done." Gittow said he couldn't help but contrast the attitude toward those in uniform now with the way it was 30 years ago when he returned from Vietnam. "It's quite a difference this time around."

Bradley Wilson, a 22-year-old private in the 4th Army Rangers Training Brigade, can attest to that. Wilson was walking into Ranger Joe's, a local Army surplus store, when a young woman spontaneously kissed him on the cheek. "It's happened several times since the attacks," he said with a nervous laugh.

But if civilian attitudes hark back to a more supportive World War II era, the soldiers themselves sound more enlightened than previous generations of warriors. The Army is thoroughly integrated now, and in D.J.'s Grill and the other sports bars and hangouts along Victory Drive, one doesn't hear much loose talk about turning Afghanistan into a parking lot -- or ethnic slurs against the enemy.

"The people who did this should pay, and if someone is harboring them, they're guilty as well," said Wilson. "But it's important to kill the right people -- not innocent people -- and it's important to remember that it's their land." Wilson's commander in chief apparently agrees. On Thursday at the State Department, Bush announced $320 million in aid to "help the poor souls in Afghanistan."

Another change in attitudes became apparent in football and baseball stadiums. The nation's notoriously overpaid and egocentric athletes awoke to the notion that jocks are rarely "heroes," and they did so without much prompting.

In the first Major League Baseball game at Shea Stadium after the attacks, New York Mets star Mike Piazza hit a dramatic game-winning home run. Firefighters and police officers who'd been honored before the game whooped it up as Piazza rounded the bases. But the slugger was thinking of them. Piazza crossed home plate and approached the firefighters and cops. "God bless you," he said. "And God bless your family." Nine-year-old Jayson Stolz showed up at that game with an American flag painted on his face. His father said he got his wish to shake the hand of one of his heroes: a New York City police officer.

Many of the players seemed to feel the same way. One of them, all-star Arizona Diamondback pitcher Curt Schilling, e-mailed families of police officers and firefighters who died at the World Trade Center: "Please know that the athletes in this country look to your husbands and wives as they may have looked at the men of our profession when they were young, as heroes, as idols, for they are everything any man should strive to be."

In New York Wednesday for his second visit since September 11, Bush himself made a point of putting America's teachers in that company. In room 204 of DeSoto Elementary School, the President proclaimed that the performances of New York City's teachers in the aftermath of the attack had been nothing short of "heroic." On a large poster hung on the blackboard were the words, "Why We Love America." Bush turned to it and wrote, "I love America because I love freedom." Bush also met with some 30 top business executives and proposed a $75 billion economic stimulus plan.

Hollywood and the rest of the creative community have also shown a deeper understanding. Singer Sheryl Crow reported that she had just finished an album, not yet released, on which she decries in one song the lack of heroes in the world today. She said she has no shortage of them now, and is re-recording that particular track. Moreover, Crow joined Bruce Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks, U2, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Eddie Vedder, and Sting in a commercial-free music telethon called America: A Tribute to Heroes, which raised more than $150 million for a relief fund.

Meanwhile, producers of everything from talk shows to feature-length movies openly said they were searching for a new ethic to replace a sense of irony and cynicism that is now two generations old. Late-night TV hosts Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O'Brien broke with type to express old-fashioned patriotic sentiments. Politically Incorrect host Bill Maher did not -- or, rather, did so a couple of days too late -- and found himself at the center of a debate about censorship. The more basic question was whether Maher and his too-hip style were still marketable in America.

The New York Times likely wishes it could take back its much-criticized favorable profile of former 1970s' radical and Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers, which ran in the paper on September 11 to mark the publication of his memoirs. And many readers assailed the Chicago Tribune for a similar article. The two newspapers were caught in a time warp. So was Ayers himself, whose book tour was canceled (the publicity photo showed him standing on a wrinkled American flag). Ayers, who has never expressed remorse for his actions, wrote a contrite letter to the editor, saying he was horrified at the terrorist attacks.

On the other side of the political divide, the online version of the conservative National Review magazine summarily canned columnist Ann Coulter for suggesting in one column that airline security personnel should be on the lookout for "swarthy males" and, in another, that "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." In other words, the political middle, which has often seemed shrunken and insignificant in recent years, has suddenly reasserted itself.

To be sure, some have protested against a U.S. military response. One such voice belonged to a C-SPAN caller, an African-American woman who said, "America is a racist country. It will always be a racist country." But more prevalent were voices such as the one belonging to T.D. Jakes, an African-American television evangelist, who preached to the racially mixed but predominantly black crowd in his cavernous Dallas church last Sunday. Jakes told his congregation that this was a struggle between good and evil, between Satan and God, and that they should pray for George Bush to be granted the cunning to defeat this wily enemy. "It is not revenge or retaliation," he said, "It is self-defense!"

Jakes also addressed the issue of race in the coming conflict. With sweat pouring from his shaved head, he said: "This wasn't my country when I got here. But it is now. Too much blood was spilt. If slavery didn't run us out, if Jim Crow didn't run us out, if the Depression didn't run us out, if war didn't run us out... no terrorist group is going to run us out! Somewhere in the red, white, and blue," he thundered, as the cheers and "amens" began to drown him out, "is you!"

Learning How To Respond
There is a poignant paradox in the fact that after being attacked by religious fanatics, so many Americans have sought solace in their own houses of worship, where attendance has risen noticeably.

The tension is particularly acute in the nation's mosques, where Muslims know that these atrocities were committed in the name of their religion -- actions they consider blasphemous -- and that they could be targeted for retaliation. After a September 26 meeting at the White House, the leadership of the Islamic Institute and representatives of Arab and Muslim communities in the United States issued a statement thanking Bush for helping to make them feel part of the American family. "We once again condemn these horrific acts," the statement said. "[We] express our sincerest condolences to the victims' families, and join with all Americans in pledging our full support for the President at this critical time in his efforts to establish peace and justice in the world."

In Christian churches, there was another kind of tension, one inherent in a religion that instructs its adherents to love their enemies. Christopher Burcham, a 34-year-old teacher at Florida Bible Christian School in Miramar, Fla., has found himself tugged between counseling one of his 17-year-old students about the wisdom of joining the Marines, while simultaneously teaching the young man that he must pray for the terrorists' souls, as well as those of their victims. "It's a hard lesson," Burcham says. "My students are frightened, and they are angry. We all watched with tears in our eyes when those buildings came down. I've discussed little else since then."

In Plains, Ga., the Rev. Daniel G. Ariail, the pastor at Jimmy Carter's church, has been wrestling with the fear expressed among some Baptists and evangelicals that the events of September 11 are so cataclysmic that they signal the Second Coming of Christ -- also known as the end of the world -- as predicted in the New Testament. Last Sunday, Ariail devoted his sermon to this idea. "The Bible makes it clear that this is unknowable," he told his small congregation. "This is something we are never going to know, so this whole question comes down to two words: Be prepared." He was telling the congregants to love one another, and live their lives according to their Christian beliefs, and to live as though the world as they know it will end in five minutes or in a thousand years.

At St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Monsignor Ronald Jameson at Tuesday's lunch-hour Mass wrestled with the same issue and came out in about the same place. In a sermon about angels, he gently urged the worshipers not to wait around for somebody or something to descend and help them. Invoking Lincoln's dictum that Americans call on the better angels of our nature, the priest suggested that the way for Catholics and other Americans to get through these days is to do what so many Americans have already been doing: helping one another, particularly those most in need.

Americans have already been doing this, in an unprecedented outpouring of monetary and in-kind donations to those affected by the attacks. So far, more than $757 million -- an amount increasing each day -- has been collected from individuals, corporations, and foundations. In just the first two weeks, the donated funds represented a quarter of the money raised by relief charities and international groups in all of last year, according to a report in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. And within days of the attacks, the most prominent relief organizations were swimming in donated food, clothes, blankets, work boots, medical supplies, and other goods.

One of the largest relief organizations, the American Red Cross, had received commitments of $277 million by October 3, and distributed $112 million to 785 families. It had coordinated the efforts of more than 30,000 relief workers and had served more than 4 million snacks and meals at the World Trade Center site alone.

Big and little givers alike got into the act. On October 2, Kayla Fagien, a 4-year-old who attends Pine Crest School in Boca Raton, Fla., handed over a check for $11,482 to the chief administrative officer of the United Way. It was the amount her school had scraped up in one week of fundraising. On the Friday after the attack, six radio stations in the New York City area sponsored a 12-hour radio-thon. At one of the collection points off Interstate 95, people dropped off their IRS refunds as well as several $5,000 checks. One child carefully placed a tightly ziplocked bag in the hands of a collector. It was $2 in change.

That same day, members of the Soap and Detergent Association announced more than $13 million in financial and material-goods contributions to disaster relief efforts. Paul McCartney has announced that he will head another music telethon, with some of the same performers, on October 20. NBC anchor Tom Brokaw decided to donate all the royalties from his latest book, Album of Memories, to the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund, a new endowment established by former President Bill Clinton and former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., for children of attack victims.

This outpouring of generosity comes at a time when the American economy seems to be slipping into a recession, something about which Americans seem almost in denial. In fact, an ABC News/Money magazine poll released this week showed that consumer confidence is holding steady. In other words, the American people are doing their part. But there are still several ominous signs, including massive continuing layoffs in the telecommunications sector and trouble in the hotel, airline, and vacation sectors. Some of these problems were brewing before, but September 11 made them worse. Last year, the major U.S. airlines were flying their planes at around 70 percent capacity. A week after the attacks, those numbers plummeted to below 40 percent. "I think people were freaked out, absolutely," said Ed Stewart, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines Co. Passengers, however, are slowly beginning to return, with a little nudging. "We're seeing people back on our planes after we announced a cut in fares," Stewart said.

The paramount concern for travelers, however, is not cost but safety, and the government is speaking with two voices on this question. While Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and a host of other Bush Cabinet officials were flying on commercial flights this week as a way of underscoring improved airport security, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was bluntly warning Americans that additional terrorist attacks are likely. This mixed message underscored another truth about America in the third week after the attacks: Everyone is waiting for something -- military action, arrests, another attack. It's as though all 270 million of us are collectively waiting to exhale. A victory of some kind, on a battlefield or even in a courtroom, would probably bolster Americans' faith in themselves, their law enforcement agencies, their generals, their elected leaders -- and in their commander in chief.

History shows that this kind of confidence has a way of feeding on itself and making all things possible. George Bush should take heed. In August of 1814, as the British burned Washington, American civilians watched the English troops helplessly -- but with a cold anger and a sense of defiance that foreshadowed ultimate victory.

"If George Washington had been alive, you would not have gotten into this city so easily," one colonist shouted at British Adm. George Cockburn, who commanded the invading forces.

"No, sir," Cockburn conceded. "If General Washington had been President, we should never have thought of coming here."

Reporters Gia Fenoglio and Mark Murray contributed to this article.

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