The nation’s pastor. Billy Graham would be a shoo-in for the job, if such a job existed. After all, he has held that position unofficially for decades already. Of course, Americans, who first settled this land precisely because they were fleeing government-run churches, would never agree to an official religious post along the lines of Britain’s archbishop of Canterbury or Iran’s ayatollah. But Billy Graham has been doing the job without need for the title for at least a quarter century, on hand for the major milestones of American life: the presidential inaugurations every four years, the scandals that have led occasionally to resignation or impeachment, the inevitable deaths of presidents, and the shocking and senseless national tragedies. He has been the great consoler, the eloquent unifier in hard-to-define adversity, the articulator of the troubling questions that tragedy invariably raises.