Homeland Truths
Tom Ridge’s new job.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
September 21, 2001 3:45 p.m.

hat's the purpose of the new Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security that President Bush proposed last night? Isn't the Department of Defense supposed to be concerned with the security of our homeland? If not, what exactly is it defending?

The decision to pick Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge to lead the office is not a surprise: Ridge is a war veteran, a popular governor, and one of President Bush's pals. Yet one might hope for a homeland-security czar who has a better record on homeland security. When Ridge was a member of Congress, he voted to support the nuclear freeze, abolish the MX missile, deny funding to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, and adopt Pat Schroeder's plan to bar nuclear tests above one kiloton. Most troubling, though, are his views on missile defense: He was a leader of the campaign against it. These issues may not be relevant to Ridge's new job, of course, and he might acquit himself very well. But given the amorphous nature of the post, it's worth keeping an eye on him.

For a review of Ridge's record on defense, see John J. Miller's profile. Frank Gaffney also criticized that record. Ridge responded to NR on Hardball.

Familiar Quotations
Did Bush have a Bartlett's moment last night? Did he utter a phrase that will stand beside FDR's "date which will live in infamy" line, spoken right after Pearl Harbor? It's too soon to tell, if only because which quote makes the cut depends less on the inherent quality of the rhetoric than on the importance people attach to certain words over time.

Bush gave a magnificent speech, and several passages might qualify. (Here was a fine illustration of Peggy Noonan's dictum that the power of a speech is the force of its logic.) Here's our vote for Bush's finest moment last night — a well-written line delivered with unusual resolve: "We have seen their kind before. They're the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."

The only way the quote could be improved is by replacing "totalitarianism" with "Communism" — but that's the price we pay for keeping China in our "coalition."

Recommended Reading
Washington Post television critic Tom Shales is often entertaining, but he's no ally of conservatism — which makes his review of Peter Jennings's weird bias following Bush's speech last night a pleasant surprise.