The Morning After

Peggy Noonan:

Let us get our heads around the size and scope of what happened Tuesday. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. This is huge.

George W. Bush is the first president to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988. (Bill Clinton failed to twice; Mr. Bush failed to last time and fell short of a plurality by half a million.) The president received more than 59 million votes, breaking Ronald Reagan's old record of 54.5 million. Mr. Bush increased his personal percentages in almost every state in the union. He carried the Catholic vote and won 42% of the Hispanic vote and 24% of the Jewish vote (up from 19% in 2000.)

It will be hard for the mainstream media to continue, in the face of these facts, the mantra that we are a deeply and completely divided country. But they'll try!

Who was the biggest loser of the 2004 election? It is easy to say Mr. Kerry: he was a poor candidate with a poor campaign. But I do think the biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief--CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's "60 Minutes" attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election--the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country.

Last note. As much as anyone, the POW wives of Vietnam, who stood against the Democratic nominee for president and for the Republican, can claim credit for the Bush victory. Everyone with a computer in America, and a lot of people with TVs, saw their testimony about the 1970s, and their husbands, and John Kerry. You could not come away from their white-haired, soft-faced, big-eyeglasses visages without thinking: He should not be commander in chief.

I have a few thank-you's of my own:

Thank you, John O'Neill. You've been there since the beginning. More than any other single person, this was your fight. I wish I'd had the guts to come up and shake your hand at the KerryLied rally: to say thank you for everything you've done. But I'm saying it now.

Thank you Laura Armstrong, and all the folks at Vietnam Vets for Truth. You came along at a time when I was very discouraged, when I was starting to wonder why I couldn't let go of this. And you made me believe it wasn't stupid to care about it. God bless you.

I didn't want to post this yesterday, but this will be my final tribute to those men and women who served. Over thirty years ago, they came home to us, some whole, some shattered, some in between.

Too many never came home at all.

And we didn't welcome them properly. We let a man cheapen their service and blacken their honor for political gain. And some are doing this to our servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan even today.

We must never let that happen again.

We must never forget how they fought. And how they served. And how they died.

For us.

Yesterday, America's Vietnam vets got the welcome home they should have received all those years ago.

I won't say any more on this subject. I know I've been tiresome, and I thank you for your patience.

It's time to let go.

- Cassandra