WASHINGTON -Doubtless it is my own fault. Attribute it to too many years overseas in the Beiruts, Bombays and Burundis of the world. Too many romantic novels and dark, swashbuckling, sloe-eyed heroes out of “Casablanca” and “The Godfather.”

Until now, it never occurred to me that balding, paunchy Americans with pacemakers, and lean, rangy cowboys swaggering out of the American sunset, and good churchgoing Yankees with the gleam of God in their eyes and political gospel in their hearts, could turn out to be men with the dreams of Napoleon and the dangerous saintliness of the Crusaders.