Another bit of footage I revisited during the 9/11 cycle was the video of President Bush sitting in that Florida classroom. Watching it again five years later, Bush looks boyish and uncomfortable, as though someone had put too much starch in his clothes.
He was not reading ``My Pet Goat,'' as was so often reported. Worse, he was listening to a classroom of 16 second-graders reading ``My Pet Goat'' aloud to the torturously numbing, metronomic thumping of someone rapping in time on a desk top.
Snapshot: Andrew Card steps into the frame to tell the president that a second plane has hit the other tower. The president seems briefly stunned, and then the children begin reading.
For five interminable minutes.
Bush's mind must be racing. Ours is. We know what he knows, and yet he sits. And sits. And sits.
Snapshot: Three days later, Bush is at Ground Zero rallying first responders. He lifts a megaphone to his mouth and utters those now-immortal words: ``I can hear you (applause). The rest of the world hears you (applause). And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon (applause).''
Then Bush drapes his arm over the shoulder of the fire chief standing next to him. For the first time I notice that Bush is basking. The amiable clown is suddenly transformed, from playing president to being president.
In that moment, we are all transformed. No longer innocent, no longer in denial, we're all grown up now.
In the past five years, we've learned a great deal about our enemies and ourselves. We are wiser and smarter now. It is a good thing, too, because our enemies are also wiser and smarter.
And they're on century time.