The Big Score

I watched the holy war winding down. The week before the fateful Tuesday, Pat Robertson was in Miami; the moon waxed; the bugs chirped; and the crusaders made their way through the mild, moist night air to the Dade County auditorium to hear their man.

It was a heavily Cuban crowd. One of the notables on the stage was Ernesto de la Fe, recently sprung after 25 years in Castro’s jails (the reporter NR sent to cover his arrest was John Leonard). The only prominent Anglo in the group was former New Hampshire governor Meldrim Thomson—old, small, upright, and the only one in the house who put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem. After the ceremonies and the introductions, Robertson rolled out his stump speech, which I had heard in New Hampshire a month earlier. The gaps and pauses that had hobbled it there were now filled with wild, roaring applause.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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I watched the holy war winding down. The week before the fateful Tuesday, Pat Robertson was in Miami; the moon waxed; the bugs chirped; and the crusaders made their way through the mild, moist night air to the Dade County auditorium to hear their man.

It was a heavily Cuban crowd. One of the notables on the stage was Ernesto de la Fe, recently sprung after 25 years in Castro’s jails (the reporter NR sent to cover his arrest was John Leonard). The only prominent Anglo in the group was former New Hampshire governor Meldrim Thomson—old, small, upright, and the only one in the house who put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem. After the ceremonies and the introductions, Robertson rolled out his stump speech, which I had heard in New Hampshire a month earlier. The gaps and pauses that had hobbled it there were now filled with wild, roaring applause.