"We've got the mom and dad of a brave soldier who lost his life, and a brother," Bush said as he looked at the grieving relatives in the front row for his speech at a semiconductor maker here. His voice caught as he said, "God bless you," and he struggled to regain his composure, leaning his elbow on the lectern and smiling.

After a standing ovation for the families, the president wiped tears from his eyes and continued: "I know your heart aches, and we ache for you. But your son and your brother died for a noble and just cause."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63361-2002Mar8.html

Big Girls Don't Cry-Yeye-Yeye lifted The Four Seasons to number one on the charts in 1962. 10 years later Edmund Muskie's Presidential campaign foundered when a boorish attack on his wife launched by the Nixon Tricksters brought tears of anger and frustration to the Senator's eyes at a press conference.

It was two decades later when the President of the United States openly wept at the memorial service for the victims of the Oklahoma City massacre. Those tears brought derision and accusations of political play acting from his dedicated enemies. His line, "I can feel your pain" became a derisive litany from the Right.

Presidents do cry and real men do mourn with strangers. When the tears slid from President Bush's eyes in Florida I have no doubt that the emotions that produced them were genuine. It is just that I am not sure what those emotions were. The speech during which the tears showed themselves was billed as boosting the President's education policies and doubled as a Republican fund-raiser. Somehow, no doubt by pure coincidence, the mother, father and brother of a young man who died in Afghanistan's snows happened to be in the audience.

People grieve in personal ways and this family chose to seek comfort in attending a political speech. No doubt the sight of the President carefully wiping a tear from each cheek - first the left and then the right - eased their pain. "We ache for you", the President said.

Franklin Roosevelt did not have the luxury of shedding tears over each soldier indexed by the graves registration unit. Nor did Harry Truman, Ike Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson or Dick Nixon. There were too many mothers and fathers and brothers for them to join the audiences for those Presidents' speeches.

But those were different men and different times when dead Americans were not coins of a new political capital to be spent purchasing popularity and when their families were not political stage dressing.