Presidential Honor
This week the news is again dominated by a former president. Bill Clinton is making the rounds promoting his newly published autobiography. In it, the former president shamelessly claims that his impeachment battle is "a badge of honor."
A twisted notion from a twisted mind.
Fortunately, Americans need only look to last week for many displays of true presidential honor. At the National Cathedral service for Ronald Reagan,
Peggy Noonan experienced a sublime moment which is just one example:
I was walking down the aisle when someone called to me and said, "Peggy, Natan Sharansky": a small balding man who looks like a shy accountant. He was in the gulag when Ronald Reagan was president. He was in solitary confinement, and when word would reach him of Reagan's latest anticommunist speech, he would tap out in Morse code a message to his fellow prisoners. And now he was here, a free man, at the funeral of Ronald Reagan, who got him out of the gulag, which was run by Mikhail Gorbachev, who was right over there. Oh life, what a kick in the pants it can be. All I could do as it all flashed through my mind was ask if I could put my arms around him, and all I could think of say was, "Oh, Natan Sharansky." A beautiful moment for me.
