The Romance of Empire

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The romance of empire and the politics of self-love.
Harper's Magazine, July, 2003, by Thomas de Zengotita

You ought to be beating your chest every morning. You ought to look in the mirror, suck in our bellies, and say, "Damn, we're Americans!"

--Lieutenant General Jay Garner (Rtd.)

Will we look back on these years and say, I remember when it all began? American Empire? Not the more covert beginnings during the reign of Bill the Benign, back when imperial force could masquerade as a natural process, an evolutionary stage called "globalization"--something that was just happening, you know, nobody actually responsible, myriad interests served and serving. No, I'm talking about Empire properly so called, intoxicated with images of its own might--unabashed, raw. I'm talking about the reign of Bush the Bold. Will we look back and say, That was when it all began?

SWEET REVENGE

You've noticed how, in those action-vengeance flicks, there has to be this moment near the beginning when some very bad guys, led by this incredibly bad guy, slaughter the partner or wife or even the kiddies, so that Seagal or Diesel can emerge fully justified, seared by a transcendent loss, by a grievance no judgment can encompass, and commit mayhem for the rest of the movie, that being what you came to see in the first place? You've noticed that? You pay for the thrill of relentless carnage by enduring a few moments of sickening bathos, a brazen sentimentality more repugnant than any violence: Seagal tossing a baseball with his soon to be rubbed out son, doom hanging over the scene, the lingering close-ups of that innocent face under Seagal's tender supervisory gaze, the awesome martial-arts prowess tucked away for now--Man at Home.

George W. Bush serves this emotional/ethical dynamic, and so do those who follow him. Their Grievance is 9/11.

When we do look back at the beginnings of Empire, 9/11 will loom over the horizon of the past, inaugurating an age, justifying all that followed. But so accelerated has the pace of events become that 9/11 already seems a long time ago. We can assess it from a distance that seems historical.

For some people, naturally inclined to reflection, 9/11 was not primarily a political/historical event at all, not immediately. They didn't get it. It was as if a meteor had struck, an occasion for meditation on a transformed landscape, a transformed psyche. "Surreal" was the word, especially in New York and Washington, where we had to integrate two channels of information simultaneously. We saw what was really going on, and, at the same time, we saw coverage of it. A flood of images from both sources, flowing and fusing and fragmenting, and all that mongrel input blending with memory and fantasy by way of the same associative processes that produce myths and dreams, and all of this happening automatically, randomly--just as the surrealists had prescribed. If you lived in New York, you saw the flesh and stone of events, and you recalled imagery from some movie, then you saw TV footage of the events, and then you heard someone describe the ash people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, which you also saw on CNN, by the way, and then you went to the bridge and saw the ghastly footprints, and then you woke up at 3:00 A.M., afterimaging it all. And so on, round and round, as those eerie, early days drifted by--and such beautiful days they were, as if to underscore nature's indifference to the fate of man.

But there were other Americans, less inclined to reflection, for whom those days had a different meaning. They were called, and they rose up, elevated out of anonymity into an historical significance that would redefine their lives. Cops and firefighters, and other useful men--they led that glorious rising. It was as if they had been waiting in the wings for decades. Nuances of their bearing denoted their importance and set off, by contrast, the irrelevance of mere contemplators. They were as rocks in the stream, stabilized by purpose. We were the water, aimless around them. The only group in America still subject to stereotype without apology--white working-class men--were moving to reclaim a central position in a culture that had come to disdain them.

And they knew it. You could see it in the way they pretended not to notice their grateful audience, but every iota of its attention was a vindication, long deserved, long denied. Their notion of manhood was redeemed. Physical courage, physical strength, physical skill--nothing else really mattered. The rest of us could only bear witness and bring doughnuts.

The contrast was lodged most of all in equipment. The useful men were laden with tools, racked or slung with casual pride about their persons and their vehicles, powerful and pointed implements, caked with dirt, paint-chipped, scarred, dented--they weren't quite weapons, but they came close, and so they were both a measure of current importance and a harbinger of vengeance. Those who lacked equipment stood around as if stripped, their dependence exposed. Health-club fit they might be, but for what? New York professionals, heroes of the Clinton economy, might make momentous portfolio decisions, but could they fix a leaky faucet? The passing awkwardness a lawyer might feel talking to a mechanic about the car he drove but could not maintain was becoming less ephemeral.

This shift in valuation would deepen and merge over subsequent months into renewed respect for military men, military equipment, military skills. Soldiers in Afghanistan bore banners emblazoned with FDNY and NYPD, and GIs in Iraq knew they were there to avenge 9/11, whatever the policymakers said. Martial virtues, reborn at Ground Zero, took root--as they had to if a domestic republic were to found an empire.

THE GLAMOUR OF GEAR

What about those graphics in the papers--the beige-and-gray foldout maps of Iraq, crisscrossed with thrusting arrows showing the progress of columns and with cool symbols for various deployments and engagements? A powerful aura emanated from those pages; it was as if the field commanders were consulting maps just like this one. It was horrifying, if you thought about what was represented--a crushing application of tremendous force against a virtually helpless enemy--but weirdly innocent too, evocative somehow of hobbies. And similarly for the detailed specs of hardware, vehicles and vessels, munitions and ordnance, all the implements of war. Devices of death. Part of my cousin's collection.

I remember, as a boy--before computers and fantasy games--there was nothing quite like the intensity of our identification with the toys of war. Deploying them on the floor, on the furniture, in elaborate formations and scenarios, all the little tanks and planes, sometimes accurately modeled, maybe the turrets rotated and the guns (oh, the guns: how they aimed), and we made all the noises with our eager mouths, the roaring of engines, the rattle of automatic weapons, the explosion of shells and bombs. The scattering of whatever was "struck," undertaken as it had to be by an intruding finger or hand, which one tried to ignore because it violated the scene as the imagination projected it--that was always a bit anticlimactic. One turned quickly to preparations for the next engagement. There was a rhythm to it all. Tension and release. Erotic, no question.

That was back when boys were expected to dote on weapons and play at war--not Dungeons & Dragons, not Doom, but real war. No doubt that expectation will flourish anew. The ground has been lovingly prepared, that's for sure, and not only by people consciously opposing the influence of the sixties. We ended up with Jerry Bruckheimer's shameless jingoism, but it didn't start that way. Remember me first Star Wars movie--sometime in the middle seventies, was it? Vietnam was fresh in memory, and I recoiled at first, resisting the resurrection of "fun warfare." But it was so skillfully done. Reassurances of distance were so persuasive. We were in "a galaxy far, far away," after all, and Darth Vader was so preposterous an evil, and the blending of genres was so transparently phantastic--the faux medieval atmospherics, Jedi Knights (Zen + kung fu + Camelot), Han Solo (a reprise of every rogue hero in American cinema) and his artfully refurbished comic sidekicks, forbidden ethnic profiles transformed into robot character traits. It was a comprehensive upgrade of a no longer viable pop iconography, projected into settings so obviously imaginary that I was helped to an actual moment of decision, sitting in the theater, a moment when I shrugged, let go of my reservations, and settled back to enjoy the ride.

And a ride it was. We were entering the digital age, the age of interactivity, synergy, branding, and spin-offs, multiplying gizmos, soft and hard--total immersion in a virtual world sustained by and containing a manifold of gadgets. The glamour of gear has deep historical and psychological roots, but it entered a whole new dimension when gear went high tech.

The archetypal scene? The A team prepares to take on the baddies. Like, say, a very butch Sigourney Weaver is to lead some Starship Troopers (behold their racial and sexual diversity!) in a last-ditch stand against the Mother of all Aliens--poor ET, that couldn't last; we were headed inexorably toward Independence Day. Sigourney is up against an alien so hateable you don't have to feel at all ambivalent, as this is clearly not relevant to any politics. You can just let yourself go while they take this loathsome, drooling, gooey, insectoid, pterodactyl thing down.

But first they have to gear up.

Ah, the gearing-up scene. Suspense heaven, foreplay supreme, leather fetish for the multiplex. Boots. Belts. Buckles. Bandannas and studded cuffs. Gloves that tighten up the fist but leave the fingers free. Holsters and scabbards strapped to the thigh, but in neato odd places too, across the back, along the calf--you can practically feel those fabulous accessories on your own body. And the weapons. The ammo. Cartridges and canisters. Laser beam-aiming scopes. A huge multiround clip attached to a mammoth Gatling bazooka, handheld by a professional wrestler doing his first movie gig. The pace quickens. Expert hands smack down on levers and bolts. Transitional cuts coincide with the percussive accompaniment of impossibly resonant Dolby-enhanced clacks, shot after shot, lock and load, lock and load. The pace slows. Glimpses of grim faces looking up from weapons prep, eyes steady, a trace of sweat, a glance exchanged between erstwhile rivals--you know one is going to take the fall for the other.

Another archetypal scene, more contemporary but importantly compatible: Again it's gear clacking that sets the pace for the editor's cuts. Only now it's more a clicking than a clacking, because now (did you guess?) the gear is digital and the tempo depends on the computer keyboard, at a workstation just like yours, only, instead of you, it's Keanu Sutherland, with Jennifer Jason Peet at his side, in a tank top just like yours (except that, well, you know), and he has to break into the network and download the file containing a code that will prevent--oh, something really terrible, even more terrible than last time. You know how annoying it is at work when the system is sluggish and that thermometer bar thing that tracks download time jerks forward in tiny increments instead of whisking across the bottom of the pop-up box? Well, it's like that, only now, instead of your boilerplate prose, it's a matter of the vital code that will disable the horrendous device that is, even now, approaching critical mass. But Keanu has the knack. He bypasses the security filter, he logs on through a parallel platform, he--well, he does a lot of mysterious techie things involving so many fabulously precise microstructures that it must all reduce to intuition after a while, for someone like him, I mean.

What is it about gear?

Wielding things in general, wielding things in competition, wielding things in an emergency, in conflict. Primordial stuff. But intricate and artificial as well. The skill and discipline required, all the more so under pressure, never more so than in combat. The most violent ecstasis given form by technique. Exquisite balance at the outer limit. Is the urge for that balance irrepressible in us?

Skill with implements, hard or soft, is tantamount to fusion. One literally derives purpose from the tool. And the purposes inherent in tools fuse with those of other tools and, through them, with objectives--with the mission. This is the essence of the glamour of gear, and the Romance of Empire depends upon it. It always did, historically, in the coordinations of legions and fleets, but now we can take part not just derivatively--hearing the news, cheering the parade--but vicariously, through our gear, the TV, the computer.

To attend an implement with skill in the service of a mission is to belong, to be part of a greater whole, the aim of Romanticism fulfilled. There are other forms of such participation--anthems, ceremonies. But they are explicit. Gear works more subtly. In skilled wielding you merge through other implements with the mission, with something like an embodied spirit. And that is the foundation for more explicit participations, for a certain kind of patriotic identification, for that most gratifying of experiences--self-love disguised as selflessness.

Prior to missions, tools are inert, their users at a loss in the realm of decision. People don't like that. They like decisions to have been made. They yearn for missions.

That is why, once war starts, everyone is relieved. In turning to tools, you renounce the burden of considering what to do in favor of deciding how best to do it. This was the genius of the embedded reporter idea. The press, through its gear, fused inevitably with the military and its gear. The military was out to conquer Baghdad, and the journalists were out to tell the story of that conquest. So journalists, like soldiers, welcomed war when it started; they couldn't feel otherwise. And they were pumped up, too, like the soldiers, by the risk, the sheer excitement of participation--given form by their skill with their own not inconsiderable gear.

Swept up in the mission, braving danger, entranced by weaponry, doting on military personalities. No wonder they were inclined to lionize every grunt, to make a hero out of every POW. They felt not a little heroic themselves. Above all, they were busy, absorbed in their technical capabilities, whipping around the globe to get this or that from Ankara or London or Kuwait. Whipping around--the sheer activity--became the enterprise. After a while, it didn't matter if there was nothing new or substantive to show or say. Their mission was to whip around. That's what they were equipped to do.

What was it Robert E. Lee said, surveying some killing field? Something like "It's a good thing they made war so terrible, otherwise we would love it too much." Everyone says, "No one wants war." Soldiers say it. Statesmen say it. But it's not true. Obviously. Time and again we say it, and always war comes, and people rise to the occasion, taking up the gear they have prepared, just in case, rise from the doldrums of the everyday, defiant, elated. And then, when it's over, people count the awful cost, and swear never again, never again. But we never learn. Time passes. Circumstances arise. A new generation seeks definition. And the equipment is waiting, unrelentingly purposeful. Is it bound eventually to override the wavering of human inclinations, human considerations, bound to outlast them just by being there, mute but unambiguously determined?

THE PRESIDENT'S HEART

When the president performs his public duties, how obvious it is that he is doing exactly that--performing. His awkwardness makes it all the more apparent, but that works to his advantage with a constituency that resents sophistication. Bush on the rubble at Ground Zero with his arm around a fireman. Bush on the aircraft carrier decked out in pilot's gear--oh, he understands the significance of gear, all right, he learned that much around the oil rigs of Midland, and he affiliates himself quite consciously with the kind of men who rose up on 9/11, the kind of men who "get the job done." And Bush understands how the glamour of gear fuels the Romance of Empire too. That is why he couches his decisions in terms of objectives, of missions. He keeps it simple because he is, he knows, a simple man. He thinks of it as his great virtue.

So when Bush mounts the podium to issue his lists of pithy truisms, he performs the simplicity upon which he prides himself as he recites lines like (rush of words, pause and stare; rush of words, pause and stare): "We are a good people," "We must keep our focus," "There is no doubt about the outcome," and so forth. And his eyes light up after each nugget is delivered, as if he is proud that he got it out without stumbling, as if hoping to ingratiate himself with parents he has disappointed, parents he hopes will dote on him again.

Bush is still a boy. He is still convincing himself that the attitudes and mannerisms he once decided were ideal are actually his own. You can feel him monitoring himself, practicing, just as he did all those years ago when he first assumed the postures of Texas manliness--arms held out from his body, fist-side forward, swinging as he strides. That was how he distinguished himself from patrician Easterners back home, among whom he failed to be otherwise distinguished, coasting through those intimidating schools, clowning for the hackers at the club. His adoption of those postures allowed real Texans to exploit him and his connections through the simple flattery of including him in their doings, just as it now allows older, deep-down confident men like Cheney and Rumsfeld to guide their prince's policy by deferring to him personally. All his life Bush has been protected by his birthright from the consequences of pretensions he might not have been able to live up to on his own. He became tough and confrontational--but without risk. So he could never more than half believe that it was really him.

That accounts for the spoiled-bully quality. Bush is driven to assert himself constantly, looking for resistance that would test his mettle if it were ever there. The compulsive teasing, nicknaming--the symbolic subordination of people with no choice but to submit to his humor--these forms of dominance can never be entirely convincing. Hence an aura of puppetry, which arises from a deployment of mannerisms that never quite settled in.

Bush has been adopting tropes of world-historical leadership since 9/11 in much the same way. He practices them as diligently as he follows his workout schedule, one day at a time, never deviating, Laura presiding, you may be sure, for it was she who set him on the straight and narrow. And he is sustained in this discipline by his cast of courtiers, all of whom understand their role. If you are in the Bush White House, you are, above all, thrilled with your proximity to power in a truly historic moment. When you go home for Thanksgiving, the hush around the table when you tell your stories is almost reverent. You have a big investment in the credibility of it all. You have to believe in the Boss's act. You have to, for example, be inspired by his bizarre "serenity," even though you know he is congenitally hyper.

The investment of the courtiers in the script deepens as a function of the coverage they get. They compare what they see with coverage of the Cuban missile crisis, say. They find themselves playing to the coverage they hope to get when history tells the tale. This may be the most self-conscious crew of historical actors that ever lived, but, unlike Clintonian hipsters, who would have enjoyed speculating about their reflexivity, the Bushites are willfully clueless. No irony allowed. From the Boss on down, they are really acting.

But above all--beyond the cast of courtiers, beyond the daily schedule, beyond even Laura's loving, chiding eyes--Bush is sustained in his performance by the kind of sentimentality that motivates revenge movies. That current of feeling is shockingly shallow but, unlike his various poses, utterly sincere. Hence the baffling references to his "heart," the maudlin bottomline intensity with which he insists that he has one, that he feels with it or in it, that his identity depends upon it.

Bush's heart was elevated on 9/11 from a personal to an historic plane. He understood his role after that day in terms of divine election--don't doubt that. He experienced himself being chosen by God to lead a War on Terror in exactly the way he once experienced his personal salvation: in his heart, where floods of feeling admit no doubt. So conceptualized, this sentimentality appears to Bush as his own essential goodness, a goodness that merges with the greater goodness of the American People, binding them together. Patriotic participation in a mission, embodied in gear, is extended through this gesture to the romanticized polity, embracing millions of Americans who identify their highest selves with this same sentimentality.

From this vantage point, then, uplifted by this sense of collective virtue, Bush contemplates the enemy. Osama and Saddam, two manifestations of a single malignancy, aliens as loathsome as any that might burrow into Sigourney's bowels. Moral clarity? Not a problem. With attention to gory detail, the kind of attention reality cop shows lavish on descriptions of crimes, he considers the barbarities of Baathists, the villainy of fedayeen guerrilla tactics, the whining ingratitude of hysterical Shiite mobs. Then he thinks about how much time and money his military spent on target selection to minimize, to the degree possible--for war is cruel and accidents happen--civilian casualties on the other side, and when he thinks about that, well, what further manifestation of national goodness, of his personal goodness, could anyone possibly ask for? Imagine that, he thinks, choking up at the very idea of the care his military took in selecting targets, imagine that magnanimity and compare it with Saddam, and, really, if you aren't on America's side after that comparison then you are beyond the pale, wallowing in some decadent territory of the spirit where envy and guilt, cultivated by America-haters--many of them Americans themselves, which is just plain perverted when you consider how lucky they are to be Americans--in some decadent territory, then, where envy and guilt and a lot of academic verbiage combine to blind you to the simple truth. Because, for Bush, this is an obviously valid comparison, in just these terms. He has no notion of historical context at all. None. The world is as flat as a set to a man who equates learning with affectation, which Bush has done all his life. So the comparison between his goodness, which is the goodness of his people, and Saddam's evil is all he needs. It is that simple, and Bush prides himself on simplicity. Simplicity is what allows him to follow his heart.

So minimally developed are Bush's habits of reflection that he could get misty-eyed contemplating the decencies of American restraint even as he calculated that minimizing Iraqi civilian casualties was a strategic necessity--what with all those Al Jazeera cameras around and a country to rule after the war. But knowing that he was making such calculations, and even knowing that priorities might change with circumstances, in no way diluted the tide of sentiment that sustained him. Bush can go all warm and fuzzy about freedom for Iraqis even as his policies ensure that whatever this "freedom" yields will work to our advantage. One is good, but one is not weak. As every action hero knows, to defeat Evil-doers you do what is necessary. And so, as we slide over to the other side of this emotional seesaw, we meet the other Bush, the one who refers with evident relish to death and destruction, to the fate of enemies, who sneers and gloats and drops Eastwood understatements into his addresses, who cannot resist moments like, after a slight pause, during which we are to imagine that he was considering more graphic language, he decides on: let's just say those folks are "no longer a problem to the United States of America," another pause, a get it? glance around the room, the bloodlust visible yet contained, as is only proper in mixed company, but the signals are there for the guys to read--in the mocking little downturned grin, in that classic rhetorical gesture of the American West, the slightly overemphasized underemphasis.

The gloating and the bloodlust are justified, you see, by the sentimentality, just like in the revenge movie. More than justified. A practical requirement, the kind gear-wielding Americans trust most. You can't kick ass if you don't want to kick ass, whole-hog want it, and so, by this alchemy, what sentiment originally justified we are enabled to indulge.

The Grievance, instantly iconic, also gave Americans permission to ignore the history of our involvement in the Arab and Islamic worlds. "Nothing could justify what they did on 9/11 ..." functioned as a blanket pardon for continued indifference to context. Conditioned by media to avoid anything they can't understand in a minute, our citizens have learned to think of ignorance as sturdy common sense. They have internalized the flattery heaped upon them by generations of political shysters, serving various agendas, all of which have this in common: they rely upon the nation's civic laziness. The vaunted "wisdom of the American people"--even more vaunted than Iraq's Republican Guard--is the more to be cherished for being theirs by definition, effortlessly acquired, no tedious study, no ethical reflection demanded, yet another convenience among so many. It is sufficient to declare that "you have to take a stand at some point!" in tones that thrill with conviction, because such bromides seem adequate to the tiny sphere of one's own experience. Projecting such maxims onto the complexities of world affairs follows automatically, because representations of that world have been reduced to terms that invite just those projections. Performing those reductions is the whole business of journalism, and the whole business of politicians is to align their personalities and policies with them.

In the case of Bush, no particular exertions were required. Indifference and ignorance were long entrenched, already cast as virtues. And people in his constituency are drawn to him for just that reason. Jokes about Dubya's mangled vocabulary, revelations of his inability to identify foreign leaders and historical events--the educated classes in the blue states might have been gleefully appalled, but folks in the heartland, folks who take pride in describing themselves as "ordinary Americans," they were neither gleeful nor appalled. On the contrary. They resented the snobs who jeered at his natural awkwardness and innocent errors in an ill-disguised attempt to draw attention to their own suave ways, their own erudition. Bush's hold on his constituency depends not only on the rhythms of sentiment they share but on their common antipathy to all things intellectual and refined, an antipathy deriving from devotion to practical enterprises. Bush's people know the difference between being smart--as in quick, cunning, focused--and being educated, overeducated, psuedo, verbose, affecting an interest in the useless, the unintelligible, the foreign. Unlike so many who mocked him for stupidity, they knew that Bush was smart; it showed in the way he looked people in the eye, always gauging, a gifted salesman scoping out the client. So when Bush triumphs, his people triumph. When Bush confounds the highbrow critics--the tenured radicals, the effete Frenchmen, the African diplomats with thousand-dollar suits and Oxbridge accents--all those masters of gray nuance, weaving their paralyzing webs out of distant causes and obscure consequences--when Bush the Bold confounds them all with simple words and simpler deeds, well, his people are themselves vindicated. They were right all along, right to be ignorant, right to be parochial--right, by God, just to be American.

THE LEADERS WE DESERVE

But it's not just Bush leading this national orgy of self-esteem, an indulgence so boundless that it makes Bobo narcissism look puritanical. It's the others, too, all those leaders who did practically nothing to prepare us for the inevitability of mass terrorism--in the same way they are doing practically nothing now to prepare us for the inevitable end of fossil fuel. It wasn't "on the front burner"; maybe it wasn't even "on the radar screen." Mind you, these are people who preen themselves on being responsible, who maneuver all their lives to get these positions, so that they can "implement their agendas" on our behalf. Unlike carping critics (meaning me, and possibly you, dear reader), they are in the arena, taking the heat. Not for them the luxury of Monday-morning 20/20 yadda yadda.

What a load of crap.

Because, when the inevitable disaster happened, and their bogus security apparatus was exposed for all to see, what did they do? Why, they did the one thing they really are good at, the thing that got them where they were in the first place--they proceeded to bullshit their brains out. Forget about the memoranda from field offices alerting higher-ups to the danger signs. Forget about the terrorism experts who had repeatedly warned about the potential use of aircraft in suicide missions. Forget all that. No, suddenly these events were "incredible," "unthinkable," we were at "the end of innocence," there were "no precedents" in these "uncharted waters." Suddenly it turned out that the FBI and the CDC had "different cultures" that made for "communication problems," and it turned out that we didn't actually have any records on what institutions work with anthrax and that "we didn't think the spores could get out of a sealed envelope."

Didn't think spores could get out of a sealed envelope? How hard was that to test? How obvious an issue was that? Teenagers playing war games in a chat room could have come up with that one.

But not to worry. Some future commission will look into it later. Much later. This was not the time for finger-pointing and partisan bickering. Perish the thought. What rascal would be so mean-spirited as to do such a thing at such a time, a time for us to pull together, as Americans always do in a crisis. You didn't know we always do that in a crisis? Well, it's a fact. Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw reported that we always do that in a crisis, and a gospel rendering of the national anthem, signifying racial inclusiveness, played as they delivered their indistinguishable tag lines (they, too, were pulling together), with yet another fireman pictured--plus we also know from Tom (Brokaw, I mean, not Hanks, but from him, too) that the greatest generation pulled together in a crisis, and, yay, verily, this was a crisis, and so it was time to put aside our differences and unite to face a now uncertain future.

But not to worry. In the face of the new uncertainty, we were able to rely on the firm yet sensitive leadership of--guess who? Why, them again! They regrouped before our very eyes, as if these unimaginable emergency circumstances had summoned them, like Cincinnatus from his farm, to take up the burden after long retirement, to preside over the scene of a disaster for which they bore no responsibility at all. How slick was that! And we saw how dramatically transformed, how irresistibly deepened and ennobled they were. All the commentators said so. Those gravitas tutorials were paying off. Tempered by tragedy, yes, touched by danger even in their own offices--talk about outrage!--but, in spite of that, they took on the responsibility. You could see that those anchorpeople were going without sleep, and so were the generals and cabinet secretaries. Gosh, talk about sacrifice.

But the truth is they love it, they love every self-important minute of it. Suddenly they are at the forefront of what could be another greatest generation, not some blurry interregnum. Kearns Goodwin is already brainstorming the storyboards for the history CD-ROMs, and our leaders wonder how their speeches will be featured even as they edit them. They taste the immortality, they are pumped, the air is electric with their own significance--it shimmers around their every gesture like St. Elmo's fire. We see it when they emerge from counsels of state in the wee hours, caressing their shirt fronts, smoothing down those yellow dotted ties. But it's after that, in the limo, gliding through the night, the crucial meeting over, the hard choices made--it's the glimpse through the tinted windows of us little people in the street that yields the truly meaningful moment for our leaders. Because it's all about service, really, all about giving back, isn't it? All about us regular folks out there in the vague night. Especially the children.

And so to bed. The end of another long day at the top. A frisson of virtue to set off the bite of a well-deserved nightcap.

Oh, how they love it. But, more than anything, how they love themselves.

Thomas de Zengotita teaches at the Draper Master's Program at New York University and at the Dalton School. His essay "Common Ground" appeared in the January issue of Harper's Magazine. His book Mediated will be published by Bloomsbury.