Patriot Acts

In middle age, I fell in love with my country all over again during a tour of England's stately homes. The sight of all that grandeur reserved for a hereditary few to live in mansions at the expense of miserable lives for so many was a reminder of what Jefferson, Adams and the rest resisted translating to America in 1776.

Today, as we celebrate what they gave us--"a republic, if you can keep it" in Benjamin Franklin's words--with flags, parades, fireworks and speeches, it may help to remember he was answering an anxious question at the close of the Constitutional Convention, "What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"

America was not inevitable. As children, we drink in our freedoms like mother's milk and, except on the Fourth of July, may forget what it took, and still takes, to give us such nourishment.

At the age of 81, Franklin told the Convention that "when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views."

In this year of political turmoil, as men and women bring all that and more to the continuing American debate, it may help to remember how we got here and what we avoided along the way.

The Foundering Fathers

HBO has made John Adams a lot less lovable than Tony Soprano and, despite all the critical tiptoeing around it, picked a poor time to demythologize the making of the American miracle.

In this week's next-to-last installment, a sour, surly Adams slips out of a half-finished, half-furnished White House to board a crowded jitney and avoid attending the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, a former friend he has come to envy and despise.

This is a typical moment in seven hours of relentless "realism" to offset a century of Hollywood biopics that glorified the Founding Fathers beyond human recognition and now attempts to balance the books by presenting them warts and all but ends up with a visually spectacular exhibition of warts.

It was only in middle age that, as a child of immigrants, I fell deeply in love with the makers of the American Revolution while touring the stately homes of England to view huge tapestries celebrating ancestral slaughter that created a ruling aristocracy who passed along generations of splendor to a few who live at the expense of misery for the many.

Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin fought a war to escape all that and, by some miracle, found a way not to replicate it but create something magnificently new in history that endures to this day.

That they were vain, petty, self-seeking--in a word, human--is not surprising, but a televised tapestry of their faults is no more a cause for self-congratulation than the wall hangings in those palaces built on exploitation.

What the magnificent Laura Linney as Abigail Adams keeps warning about in pillow talk would have been helpful to the producers of the HBO epic. "Ambition," she keeps saying sadly. "Vanity."

Newt Is Not Running

The reason is simple: The job isn't big enough.

Newt Gingrich’s decision not to pursue the presidency was announced today by a spokesman who explained the former Speaker will deal with “the challenges America faces and finding solutions to those challenges” as chairman of his tax-exempt organization instead.

It’s not that the White House isn’t a pleasant place to live with good perks, but Gingrich would have to give up his tax-free empire, his think tank, his Fox News contract as a commentator, the $40,000 speaking gigs and so much more he now enjoys without all the headaches of actually doing something.

In addition, if Newt had decided to go for it, there would have been pesky reporters asking about his shutting down the government in 1995, impeaching Bill Clinton for office sex while carrying on his own affair and, later, having to pay a $300,000 fine by the House ethics committee.

All that plus the travel, the hand-shaking, the debating with the likes of Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo would have been degrading to a visionary.

Actually, "the presidency is a minor post on the scale of change I'm describing," Gingrich explained to the Washington Post in July.

Instead he will follow the example of Benjamin Franklin. “He didn't think he was less than Washington or Jefferson,” Gingrich the historian explains. “He was deliberately eclectic and deliberately complex, and happy to be so.

“He was pretty interesting. If you had told him, 'If you could have been simple, you could have been president,' he would have said, 'That's pretty stupid.'"

No one will ever accuse Newt Gingrich of being simple.

Non-Stop Newt Is Too Busy to Run

The Energizer Bunny of American politics has too much on his plate to campaign for the White House. "The presidency is a minor post on the scale of change I'm describing," he tells the Washington Post.

But a moment later, he sounds like Alfred P. Doolittle (in “My Fair Lady”): "I don't have to be president," he says. "I'd be willing to be president."

Gingrich is an assembly line thinker-—if you don’t like one theory, another will be right along. “He has a new idea every five seconds," says Tom DeLay, a former House colleague and no admirer. “He's trying to appeal to everyone and cover up who he really is--which is typical of Newt."

But then, DeLay is still facing money-laundering charges while the object of his scorn is, according to the Post, running “a multimillion-dollar enterprise that keeps three dozen camp followers gainfully employed and Gingrich earning what he terms ‘adequate’ income in the seven figures.”

If he gives in and decides to run, there will be some explaining to do, even to conservatives, about shutting down the government in 1995, impeaching Bill Clinton for office sex while carrying on an affair in his own and, later, having to pay a $300,000 fine by the House ethics committee. But if anyone can, the voluble former Speaker of the House is the man.

If not, Gingrich will settle for being Benjamin Franklin: “He didn't think he was less than Washington or Jefferson. He was deliberately eclectic and deliberately complex, and happy to be so. He was pretty interesting. If you had told him, 'If you could have been simple, you could have been president,' he would have said, 'That's pretty stupid.'"