The Presidency
It is dawn along the Potomac River. James R. Schlesinger, ex-Secretary of Energy, former Secretary of Defense, former CIA chief, former AEC chairman, stands beside the marshes in a golden silence as old as earth. Mallards rise into the sun. Indigo buntings flit in the trees and goldfinches play below. Says Schlesinger with rare emotion, "Look, a long-billed marsh wren." He raises his binoculars, studies the scene for long seconds, breathing cool morning air, humbled by the beauty before him in a way that his old adversaries in power never succeeded in humbling him.
For more than a decade Schlesinger was...