At what point in the history of the American republic, I wonder, did it become incumbent on its leaders to talk about their feelings in public—presumably as a way of signifying authenticity? In The New York Times last month we read that, in response to the news of a bomb that killed seven students, five of them Americans, in the Frank Sinatra Student Center of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “President Bush expressed his anger,” saying: “I am just as angry as Israel is. I am furious.” Not that he could have felt any other way. The next day, the report was amplified: “I’m furious that innocent life is lost. However, through my fury, even though I am mad, I still believe peace is possible.” No point in getting too angry—as angry as Israel is, say, where they increasingly believe that peace is not possible.

But wasIsrael angry? That he could take for granted, apparently, just as he could the motivations of the bombers, whom he described as “killers who hate the thought of peace and therefore are willing to take their hatred to all kinds of places, including a university.” Anger? Hate? No one supposed that the president had any special knowledge about the emotional lives either of Israeli victims or Arab terrorists, but he has clearly learned their parts in the international psychodrama of war and peace, scripted by the media, as well as he has learned his own, which is to feel anger whenever