A couple of final points about the speech, the first of which is, Not so fast, Jonah.

You paraphrase me as citing Washington and the second President Adams, which of course I did. But you neglect altogether to point out that I also cite the foreign policy stances of modern presidents. In other words, reminding me that Washington and Adams lived at a time when the oceans protected us, nukes hadn’t been invented, terrorists didn’t exist—the whole list of usual points—is to remind me of something that I of course already knew.

My point is that there’s a continuity from Washington and Adams to modern presidents, despite the dramatic change in circumstances, and that it consists of a certain reluctance—a certain reserve and realism—about the American mission in the rest of the world. The formula was that we’d defend ourselves and our allies—but evangelize only by example. Take another look at JFK’s inaugural. Yes, he announces “that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” But he also said, ” Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us,” then suggested several specific ways in which the United States and the Soviet Union might cooperate. In other words, JFK offered the time-tested formula: We’ll defend ourselves but work on—and, where necessary, with—our world opponents.

But Bush?

There are only two ways in which to read the foreign policy section of his speech yesterday. Either he really meant the our liberty is threatened wherever people live under bad governments, and in that case he overturned the fundamental American tradition in foreign policy, just as I argued, while at the same time engaging in a breathtaking overreach. Or he didn’t mean it, not really, which is the line of argument of everybody who keeps pointing to the passage in which Bush said, “This [the effort to democratize the world] is not primarily the task of arms….” And if that’s the case, then the dramatic portions of Bush’s speech was just words in the air—nothing, that is, but a reassertion of the old position that we’ll defend ourselves but lead by example.

Your pick of the two, Jonah?

The final point about yesterday’s speech: Political speeches are practical documents. Either they work or they don’t. And if William F. Buckley, Jr., Peggy Noonan, and I—conservatives and Bush supporters, every one of us—found the speech grating, then something about it just didn’t work.