We’ve long thought that Peggy Noonan’s deep dislike for George W. Bush was quite possibly due to the former president’s failure to recognize Ms. Noonan’s extraordinary brilliance, which she herself holds in high esteem, and his grievous error in not imploring her to join his administration.
Bush’s failure to accord Noonan the respect she may believe she deserves as President Reagan’s most valuable staffer (her view?), we suggest, might also be a primary source for her early and deep affection she expressed for Barack Obama:
“He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice. October 31, 2008, Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column
Whew! Is that not heartfelt, almost prayerful, endorsement? Can one say, “smitten”? Remember, the election was less than a week away. In that same column, she added this:
“Those who have historically been sympathetic to the Republican Party or to conservatism, and who support Barack Obama –Colin Powell, William Weld, and Charles Fried, among others — and whose arguments have not passed muster with some muster-passers, go undamned here. Their objections include: The McCain campaign has been inadequate, and some of his major decisions embarassing. All too true. But conservatives must honor prudence, and ask if the circumstances accompanying an Obama victory will encourage the helpful moderation and non-partisan spirit these supporters attempt, in their endorsements, to demonstrate.”
The latter sentence an interesting comment, intended, I think, to be Peggy’s hedge just in case. The irony is, she exhibits no such “prudence” in her paean to Obama’s looming wonderfulness. And then, this:
“A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.”
But, even a journalistic godess may occasionally see her infallibility take a hit. Such is the case in a column written as an analysis of the Obama 2010 State of the Union speech, Jan. 30, 2010 WSJ:
“The president did not speak of health care until a half hour in. “As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we’ve proposed.” Then, “If anyone has a better idea, let me know.” Those bland little sentences hidden in plain sight heralded an epic fact: The battle over the president’s health-care plan is over, and the plan will not be imposed on the country. Waxing boring on the virtues of the bill was a rhetorical way to obscure the fact that it is dead. To say, “I’m licked and it’s done” would have been damagingly memorable. Instead he blithely vowed to move forward, and moved on. The bill will now get lost in the mists and disappear. It is a collapsed soufflé in an unused kitchen in the back of an empty house. Now and then the president will speak of it to rouse his base and remind them of his efforts.
There! Peggy thus assured us there will be no “Obamacare.” Are we not all relieved?
Perhaps that column was a hint that Ms. Peggy’s ardor for The One, like Obama’s “temperatures” had “cooled.” After all, she may have realized that President Obama and his enablers were not all that into her. CNN awarded a gig to Peggy’s “conservative” romantic rival, Kathleen Parker, teaming with Elliot Spitzer for a mercifully short- lived, quite dreadful political commentary show. And Rachel Maddow was being regularly graced by being in the presence of her Messiah (strictly platonic, we are quite sure) right there in His Washington palace (formerly known by lesser beings who have occupied it, as the “White House”). Thereafter, some of Peggy’s columns hinted at her growing disenchantment with The Great Uniter.
Finally, this past week, Noonan seems to have finally called it quits, and the consequences of an Idol jilting a once-great admirer are ugly indeed. From Peggy’s latest column, via The Patriot Post, Feb.1, 2014:
“The president has taken to saying he isn’t ideological but this mandate—his mandate—is purely ideological.
“It also is a violation of traditional civic courtesy, sympathy and spaciousness. The state doesn’t tell serious religious groups to do it their way or they’ll be ruined. You don’t make the Little Sisters bow down to you.
“This is the great political failure of progressivism: They always go too far. They always try to rub your face in it.
“Meanwhile, back in America, disadvantaged parents in Louisiana—people who could never afford to live in places like McLean, Va., or Chevy Chase, Md.—continue to wait to see what will happen with the state’s successful school voucher program. It lets poor kids get out of failed public schools and go to private schools on state scholarships. What a great thing. But the Obama Justice Department filed suit in August: The voucher system might violate civil rights law by worsening racial imbalance in the public schools. Gov. Bobby Jindal, and the parents, said nonsense, the scholarship students are predominately black, they have civil rights too. Is it possible the Justice Department has taken its action because a major benefactor of the president’s party is the teachers unions, which do not like vouchers because their existence suggests real failures in the public schools they run?
“Meanwhile, back in America, conservatives targeted and harassed by the Internal Revenue Service still await answers on their years-long requests for tax-exempt status. When news of the IRS targeting broke last spring, agency officials lied about it, and one took the Fifth. The president said he was outraged, had no idea, read about it in the papers, boy was he going to get to the bottom of it. An investigation was announced but somehow never quite materialized. Victims of the targeting waited to be contacted by the FBI to be asked about their experience. Now the Justice Department has made clear its investigation won’t be spearheaded by the FBI but by a department lawyer who is a campaign contributor to the president and the Democratic Party. Sometimes you feel they are just laughing at you, and going too far.
“In the past five years many Americans have come to understand that an agency that maintained a pretty impressive record for a very long time has been turned, at least in part, into a political operation. Now the IRS has proposed new and tougher rules for grass-roots groups. Cleta Mitchell, longtime attorney for many who’ve been targeted, says the IRS is no longer used in line with its mission: “They’re supposed to be collecting revenues, not snooping and trampling on the First Amendment rights of the citizens. We are not subjects of a king, we are permitted to engage in First Amendment activities without reporting those activities to the IRS.
“All these things—the pushing around of nuns, the limiting of freedoms that were helping kids get a start in life, the targeting of conservative groups—all these things have the effect of breaking bonds of trust between government and the people. They make citizens see Washington as an alien and hostile power.
“Washington sees the disaffection. They read the polls, they know.
“They call it rage. But it feels more like grief. Like the loss of something you never thought you’d lose, your sense of your country and your place in it, your rights in it.”
Ah yes Peggy, love means never having to say you’re sorry. DLH
