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Dean gave a wonderful speech today, the speech the best in him dictated he give. Oddly, after I heard it on CNNI, I went to dinner in London, and sat near a table of Frenchmen, and probably at least one Brit, because they were speaking in English. They were talking about Empires, and the anniversary of Dunkirk, and drinking lots of wine, and finally one of the Frenchmen said with great feeling, and what might have been some regret, that the English had learned something the French had not: "nobility in defeat."
Dean showed that nobility today -- and with his call to stay true to what is important, he showed that noble acceptance of one kind of defeat can embody its own greatness. After dinner, I turned on CNNI again, and heard Bruce Morton reporting on Dean, quoting Ted Kennedy at the l980 Democratic Convention, after his last run for the Presidency: "For all of those whose care has been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."
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