THIS MORNING I WATCHED WITH FASCINATION as a bipartisan commission presented its report in a news conference with a warning that “the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.” I tried to imagine what President Bush and his closest aides must be thinking as they were rebuked for their current strategy in the Middle East. I am also trying to guess what their response will be in terms of policy. I am hoping Democratic Party leaders will resist the temptation to boast that they were right all along and that the President and his crew were wrong, and that both groups will determine to join in a bipartisan effort to solve the problem that jeopardizes our union.

Coming to the end of a year in which I’ve spent just about as much time outside my country as in it, I find myself examining my feelings about and my responses to America. I am proud to be an American. I feel myself swelling with pride when I come across acknowledgments in other countries that America has often been the source of inspiration and sometimes the very salvation of people who are not Americans. I felt that pride last month when Margaret and I walked past the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the Left Bank in Paris. I felt it every time I walked on a street named for an American (Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy). I long to have a sense of pride in my country replace the dismay and sorrow and embarrassment I have felt in many conversations about the Iraqi situation.