"Shall we have an editor?" (with apologies to John Jay, who originally wrote "a king")

Apparently, Thomas Jefferson used to send people copies of his draft of the Declaration of Independence. He didn't like Congress's edited version. Bill Bryson once observed that Jefferson, like most writers, thought his version was better than the edit; and that like most writers...he was wrong.

I was discussing editing with a former newspaper editor only yesterday. We both agreed that we could cut a piece to any length, maintain the tone and weight, and convey the same depth of research that had gone into the original longer draft. But editing is more than that.

Some of America's greatest politicians have been great editors (is there something in that?). There is a book called Ask Not by Thurston Clarke which examines the editorial work John Kennedy did on his first inaugural address (of course the title of the book comes from the speech's famous phrase - 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.') And one of the highlights of Garry Wills' Lincoln at Gettysburg is the side-by-side comparison of Secretary of State William Seward's draft of Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address and Lincoln's touch up.

Seward, for example, wrote: "The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battle-fields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angels of this nation."

And Lincoln lifted it to: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

I guess what I'm getting at is that an edit can ratchet up the meaning. The example I can think of with real punkt is again from the Declaration of Independence. In the great clause about all men being created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among them Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, Jefferson originally wrote: "We hold these truths to be Sacred and Undeniable..." In a hand that looks like Benjamin Franklin's, "Sacred and Undeniable" is crossed and above the line someone has written (a word that is perfect and unarguable): "self-evident".

A light on the hill (the Reagan Library)

We went out to the Reagan Library on Monday, 25th.

http://www.reaganfoundation.org/

It was actually a knockout, very impressive sitting way up there on its hill overlooking the vast sweep of the Simi Valley. And inspiring, I've got to say. Just to give a sense of the scale of the building, a Boeing (Reagan's own Air Force One) is on display, standing on columns, in a space the size of a hangar (of course), looking out a glass wall over the Valley. And the library is inspiring because it dramatises just how large the Reagan story was - and Southern Californian. There are all the signal events - the assassination attempt, the meetings with Gorbachev, the signing of a treaty banning medium-range missiles, the demand to pull down the Berlin Wall. Reagan sensed, rightly I suggest, that a president should concentrate on two or three key achievements and that this created memorability.

I've actually always been intrigued by the fact that Reagan campaigned for Harry Truman and endorsed Hubert Humphrey (with whom he remained friends). This is what I would explore if I were to dramatise his life.What happened? What, if any, anxiety did the switch (or was it a shift) cause him? He and his father loved FDR and the New Deal - 'loved'! - so was there an emotional cost? Of course the ultimate prize was the presidency. But in the library there is a statement from one of his 1976 radio speeches:

"Our problem is a permanent structure of govt. insulated from the thinking & wishes of the people; A structure which for all practical purposes is more powerful than our elected representatives..."

So that's the beef? A permanent structure of government? Bureaucracy?

There is one important difference I sense in the Reagan philosophy and that of his heirs in the Tea Party. Reagan had a sunny personality. He was personally engaging. His politics comes from a positive belief in the inherent goodness of people, following from a long-held principle of American society. The founding fathers saw Native Americans all around them who seemed to have no government; they seemed to have no regulation. Franklin talked about this in his Concerning the Savages of North America and so did Jefferson in a chapter of Notes on the State of Virginia. And the theory is that people left free to fully explore their own capabilities will generate goodness to all. But does it happen? I remember seeing a letter from Jefferson to a Shawnee explaining that "with us a majority suffices". The Iroquois Confederacy, however, looked for unanimity and, in the old days, used to naturally, reflexively, consider the impact of their decisions down to the seventh generation. They were self-regulating. And, even though a subsistence society, came from a feeling of plenty. I fear that the 'Tea Party' comes out of resentment and a 'poverty mentality': "Leave us alone", "there isn't enough to go round", "why should we?"; "why should we 'subsidize the losers' mortgages'?" (to quote from the radio spiel that some say started it all, and leaving aside that the pain was felt also by winners who didn't have mortgages).

One of the guides at the library told us that many people give talks out at the library (people such as Condoleezza Rice, 'not Democrats'). She said that 'Sarah' has spoken at the ranch. I asked the guide if Democrats really never spoke at the library. She said she couldn't recall any. But then she said, "they'd be welcome. This is America." And there was my ray of light.