The list of Americans gathered at the White House yesterday should be enough to bury once and for all the falsehood, so popular on the left, that our president is some sort of philistine. There in the East Room were two Harvard professors, Richard Pipes and Ruth Wisse; a scholar of the classics, Victor Davis Hanson; and a great jazz guitarist, Les Paul. They were just a few of those honored by President Bush with the National Medal of the Arts or the National Humanities Medal.

Though our editors have been students of Professor Pipes and guests in Professor Wisse’s home, the honoree that put a particular spring in our step yesterday was our partner, Roger Hertog, who is the founding chairman of this newspaper. He’s too modest to want it written about, but he was among the first several investors to put money into this paper, back in June of 2000, nearly two years before an issue of the paper was even published. He was among the participants in the early meetings at which this newspaper was planned.