October 1, 2001
Patriotism Calls Out the Censor
By RICHARD REEVES
Washington, D.C.: In the first Gallup poll published after the disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, President John F. Kennedy's approval rating jumped 10 points to 83 percent. The commander in chief looked at the numbers ó the disapproval was only 5 percent ó and said, "The worse I do, the more popular I get."
Not exactly. But as President Bush learned when his approval rating touched 90 percent last week, Americans rally round the flag when it begins to dip. We may think of ourselves as being fiercely independent as individuals, but history comes down on the side of team spirit when the U.S.A. takes the field in crisis.
In other places, when things go wrong, ministers resign and directors are fired. In Washington, after what has to be considered a colossal intelligence failure, the president went over to the Central Intelligence Agency to tell the folks there that he appreciates the great job they're doing. Kennedy did, too, in public, but then moved people around a few months after the Cuban fiasco, which was a C.I.A. operation from beginning to end.
It has always been that way. After watching the Independence Day parade in Albany on July 4, 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, taking notes for "Democracy in America," wrote: "Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something, and that he is absolutely refused."
Actually the rule does not apply only to foreigners. One of the most popular men in the country's history, William Jennings Bryan, paid the price. The Great Commoner, three times the Democratic candidate for president, resigned as President Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state in June 1915 because he believed the president was secretly planning to take us into the Great War raging in Europe. He began a speaking tour around the country to promote peace and neutralism. But he didn't finish it ó jeers, curses and tomatoes drove him from the national stage.
You also don't have to be that big a man to lose your job ó or be threatened by the White House if you don't shut up. Early casualties this time include Dan Guthrie, a columnist for The Daily Courier of Grants Pass, Ore., who accused President Bush and some of his advisers of "hiding in a Nebraska hole" immediately after the World Trade Center toppled and the Pentagon was bombed on Sept. 11. The Texas City Sun, in the president's home state, ran a front-page apology for an opinion by an employee. The offending opinion was that of the city editor, Tom Gutting, who wrote a column under the headline "Bush Has Failed to Lead U.S."
Even comedians are not exempt from the patriotism monitors. Bill Maher, the host of "Politically Incorrect," lived up to his late-night talk show's title two weeks ago by saying, "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away." Last Wednesday, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, attacked Mr. Maher and warned others, saying, "Americans . . . need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and . . . this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
None of this is really new. We are a self-created nation driven to defend our own masterwork. Being an American is not a matter of geography or bloodlines. America is a matter of ideas, the rejection of an Old World of standards we thought corrupt. De Tocqueville, a visitor from that Old World, spotted that, too, writing in his diary: "For fifty years the inhabitants of the United States have been repeatedly and constantly told that they are the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They . . . have an immensely high opinion of themselves and are not far from believing that they form a species apart from the rest of the human race."
Richard Reeves is author, most recently, of "President Nixon: Alone in the White House."