David Gergen

A Good Man Drifting Away

My friend David Gergen has dementia. It was announced in a sad and lovely Boston Globe column by his daughter Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett. I do not want to wait until he leaves us to pay tribute to this splendid man. We were not close friends, but political soulmates; we came from the same part of the jungle, the bristly center (though I more bristly than he; he was always the courtly North Carolinian). David worked for both Republican and Democratic presidents. He was a human guard-rail. He was that oft-mythical creature: the adult in the room.

David and I bonded over the importance of national service—he had served in the Navy—and the importance of the values and disciplines instilled by the military. Once, after I’d embedded in Afghanistan and watched a spectacular young U.S. Army Captain govern a town that had barely emerged from the Stone Age, I called David and said, “I think these kids—this volunteer army—are going to be the next great generation of leaders. I want to write a book about them.” David agreed immediately and started sending me names of young Post-9/11 veterans. They were terrific. The book, Charlie Mike, didn’t make many waves, but David never let the idea go. A few years later, he co-founded, with the eminently admirable Marine Rye Barcott, the With Honor Political Action Committee, which helps raise money for veterans of both parties running for Congress—as long as they sign a pledge to work together in bipartisan fashion. In the military, a signed pledge means something—and our members have worked hard together to pass numerous bills, most of them relating to national defense and national service. We will have nearly 40 members in the new House and 10 Senators affiliated with us. I say we because Rye claims that I’m a member of the With Honor Advisory Board (if so, an honorary and very peripheral one, compared to some of the real firepower in the organization).

David will leave this as part of his legacy. His is an old-fashioned one, a classic American legacy. He was a Republican, but put country first. He believed in our republic, deeply, in the most valuable sort of way: he worked to cross party lines, break down barriers; he was an inspiration to many members of our bipartisan caucus.

In a happy moment of clarity, David spoke of his beliefs to his daughter. These are taken from the piece Katherine wrote for the Globe and they sound a perfect distillation of what David believed, of how he has lived his life:

On service: “As awful as life is currently in the public sphere, there is still reason to believe in our country and its leadership and to go into service. The country has given a great deal to us and lots of people have been killed or lost their families for our country. We must give a salute to those who are trying to change the country and have fought for our country. Young people entering national service — military, AmeriCorps, Teach for America — people like that are holding things together. There should be more people that should run [for office] and contribute for a few years.”

On future generations: “Many in the next generation are going to the best schools and not giving back what is remotely needed by our country. We need to continue to ensure that we have people in the next generation out front pulling the wagon — innovators and people in the public sector — delivering on the goods.”

On resilience: “Working through years when you are challenged and being pushed down, you grow. On the cusp of the Civil War, people were grieving the loss of life on farms and villages but leaders like Dwight Eisenhower reminded people to accept responsibility and move on. We do not need to continue to relive the past. Americans can endure any crisis, but they need to continue to take a sense of responsibility for their country.”

On heroes: “Remember the Greeks who said, ‘Pity the country who has no heroes. No, pity the country that needs heroes.’ … But I would argue we do need heroes, and good-hearted people are more heroic than those who are simply smart.”

On fear: “We are going through a period of fear. People are terrified. We have been tested, we are being tested now, but we must recognize that politics in our country is like a pendulum. The pendulum has swung back in a way that may be very dangerous. But books such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s ‘The Cycles of American History’ show us that as a country we have been here before. We must hold onto the inspirational moments of our history and use them to light our path forward. … I keep thinking about Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech — and though we still have so far to go as a country, you could not have imagined everything that could have happened from that moment.

On the strength of our country: “This is a country that has carried the weight of the world. We carry the intellectual leadership and have the highest number of Nobel laureates in the world. We have a dynamic economy, host the great universities and centers of education, and are leaders in innovation and technology. We have the strongest military and some of the greatest medical breakthroughs, such as vaccine development. We still have a strong global leadership presence, though we must not take that for granted.”

On purpose: “Bill Moyers once wrote that to be a fulfilled person in today’s world, people must shape their purpose. If everyone needed to put three logs into a fire in their lifetime, my question would be ‘what are your three logs?’ ”

On timeliness: “In Ecclesiastes, we read ‘Is there anything new under the sun?’ Ultimately, we know that everything here has been said before but must be said again.”

David has been a moderate in every sense of the word. I never saw him angry. He inspired me to be more hopeful, less of a curmudgeon. I hope he stays with us longer, as long as he can. He is the sort of man who Made America Great in the first place. I want him to know now, before he goes, how much I’ve cherished his friendship, his kindness, his example.