Fear Itself
On Friday morning we are halfway to victory.

By Michael Graham, a radio talk-show host in Washington, D.C. and Charleston, S.C. His latest book is the The Dumbest Generation: Can American Democracy Survive the Era of Unabashed Stupidity from www.ipublish.com.
September 21, 2001 11:00 a.m.

n Thursday night the leader of the free world had a heart-to-heart talk with my wife.

He knew she was scared. He knew why. And he told her that she didn't have to be, that there was something he could do about it.

He knew more about my wife than I did.

An hour before President Bush's first official wartime address to the nation, my wife, Jennifer, suddenly showed me something that I couldn't see standing next to her over a sink of dishes, but that the president saw all the way in Washington.

After I suggested we think about making a quick trip to New York in the next month or so, "you know, to show our support for Rudy," tears suddenly pressed into her eyes.

"Michael, I am not getting on an airplane! Can't you see that I and every mother of young children in America is practically scared out of our wits?"

No, actually, I hadn't seen it at all. We husbands are notoriously thick, the last to know.

She told me about conversations she and her friends were having. Her friends are women, they are professionals, they are well educated and well informed.

And they are very, very frightened.

Some admit to waking up in the night, startled by the most familiar sounds. Some are planning to buy barrels of bottled water and canned foods for when the bio-chem warfare comes. One is mad at Gary Hart for telling The Today Show that the next target could be "somewhere like Nashville or Denver."

The fear in my wife's eyes was real, so real it nearly scared me. It scares me in part because I don't feel it myself. Perhaps it's a guy thing, but I fear for my nation, not for my family.

I don't worry about being the victim of terrorism anymore than I worry about winning the lottery. It could happen in theory, but I just can't imagine it will happen to me.

My wife has imagined it, every moment of it. Jennifer has imagined the families on those doomed planes, the ones traveling with young children. She has imagined sitting in that same seat with our three children — 8, 6, and 2 — and waiting for death. Like all mothers, I suppose, she already lives in a world where danger lurks in every dry-cleaner bag and over-sharpened pencil, where tragedy is just one small, removable toy part away.

Now that world has appeared on her television. The unimaginable things she secretly imagined have now appeared before her eyes.

So as I listened to President Bush speak to the nation Thursday night, I watched her. She's no Bush softie. She's been very critical of the lack of passion in his public statements immediately after the bombing attacks.

But Thursday night, the president reached her. He carefully addressed her fears. In fact, he told her he was waging a war against fear, "a war between fear and freedom….and we know that God is not neutral between them."

Unlike a certain former president, George Bush did not try to placate my wife with emotion. He simply told her how he was going to make the fear go away. And it worked.

After the speech, when the pundits started weighing in, their commentary hit her like a rude intrusion. It was as though Sam Donaldson had stuck his head into the confessional and taken a few swipes at Father Chet's homily. "What's this got to do with you, Sam?" was her reaction.

We pundits thrive on spin and obfuscation, which is why we loved the Clinton presidency. Bush's speech was so simple and direct it left them little to say.

And this directness showed me something: Clarity is the enemy of fear. The president didn't tell my wife there would be no more attacks. He didn't tell her that he felt her anxiety.

Instead, like a doctor with a cancer patient whom he knows can be a survivor, the president simply described the disease (global terrorism and the fear it breeds in free societies), wrote his prescription (sustain military, diplomatic, and financial war on the international terror networks) and sent the patient home with a reassuring hug.

And now my wife is ready for the struggle. There will be more moments of fear, no doubt about it. I've noticed she's making more frequent visits to our children's bedrooms after they're asleep. I'm often standing right behind her.

But now we know the enemy, we have a vision of how we're going to fight, and we have a confident leader who is certain of the outcome, and whose certainty allays our doubts.

America's enemy is terror. My wife's was fear. Thursday night, George Bush took them both on.

Today, we're halfway to victory.