Missing From This Picture: Leadership

Maybe this is what they mean by “normal.”

As in, this is the normal life that we’ll be getting back to just as soon as we reconcile ourselves to how normal it is.

But might we ask for some help with the transition?

Hello, Washington? Hello?

I have a friend in Alaska whose example reminds me that people are remarkably limber and self-sufficient in what dangers they can learn to cope with. But they are just as brittle and in need of a steady hand to hold on to when the threat is something new.

My friend lived alone in the wilderness with her dog team. In the summers, she kept a wary eye on grizzly bears that stalked her homestead. In winter, she was alert at all times because even a little injury, like wrenching her back, could mean her demise if she couldn’t carry the firewood to keep herself from freezing. Her nearest neighbor was 25 miles away and she had no telephone. This was normal.

Then she flew to California. An acquaintance met her at the airport. They hopped onto the freeway in his BMW. When traffic stalled, he tuned the radio to a local all-news station. The driver cursed their bad luck. There was a fatal accident ahead and it would make them late for dinner.

As my friend tells it, she panicked. She ordered the driver to turn around at the next exit and get her back to the airport. A voice in her head screeched: This is crazy. People dying on the roads and other people worrying about dinner reservations .

An astute observation, no doubt. We urban dwellers have adapted to the daily slaughter on our highways, 100-plus deaths a day. Yet we drive like carefree banshees to get to work in the morning, so we can gaze with dread on the hidden danger that may lurk in our mail.

I recall my friend’s story because it soothes me. Terror comes from the shadows, not from the routine. Sooner or later, our eyes adjust to the shadows and we find ourselves enduring threats that seemed unfathomable at first.

The question is, has someone got a flashlight? I’m referring to “leadership.” You remember the word from the presidential campaign. Do you suppose there was a single politician in the country who did not assert claim to it?

Well, how about some?

This week, Congress looked like an anthill after a 6-year-old kicked it: Everybody running hither-dither.

And the president hasn’t done much better on the homeland front. His resolve to confront terrorists has not been matched, not yet anyway, by a willingness to address the terror they have wrought. His message: The government is doing everything it can.

No, it isn’t.

It is not enough to say that we should trust government; far from it. The government cannot vaccinate us against bioterrorism. The government cannot make the mail safe to open. At the moment, part of the government cannot even convene.

A working majority of those who are running the country right now were elected on a platform that we shouldn’t trust government. We don’t, and it’s disingenuous for them now to ask otherwise.

What we need to do is trust ourselves, and we need leaders at the bully pulpit to inspire it.

That much, government can do.

The great leaders of World War II, such as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, are remembered for the resolve they roused at home against ominous threats from abroad.

“When the eagles are silent,” Churchill warned, “the parrots begin to jabber.”

The anxiety now sweeping across America is not unprecedented. Among us are people who have lived through far worse--like the schoolchildren along our coasts in 1942 who were told to carry their biggest textbook with them at all times to shield their heads from debris in the event of a bomb raid and to bite on an eraser to soften the shock of explosions.

The lesson I learned in Alaska is that humans can cope with dangers of the strangest kinds.

The lesson gleaned from history is that it’s easier if we don’t have to do it on our own.