We’ve never been particularly fond of Peggy Noonan. She rarely has had a kind or even ambivalent word about George W. Bush.
We’ve always suspected that at the root of her contempt for the former president was Mr. Bush’s failure to recognize Ms. Peggy as the real brains behind the Reagan administration, whom she worked for as one of that president’s speechwriters and as she seems to have seen herself. Noonan has thus resented Bush’s failure to invite her to be a member of his administration’s “brain trusts”. Of course that’s just our guess.
At any rate, like the stopped clock, even Peggy gets it right occasionally (unlike the clock though, she never gets it right twice a day).
This time, though, we have to give Peggy the “quote of the day”. Recalling the intellectually and psychologically weak and disloyal brother of the heir to the Corleone Mafia family, Noonan writes about the colossal humiliation President Obama suffered this week at the hands of Vladimir Putin and Bashir Assad:
“As for Mr. Assad he’s famously ruthless but he’s also turned out to be tougher than…(Obama)…understood. When told four years ago that he was over, he essentially did a Moe Green, from “The Godfather” : “I buy you out, you don’t buy me out….the Corleone family don’t have that kind of muscle anymore.”
“Yes, in the end Moe was done in. But he was up against Michael Corleone, not Fredo.” *
- “In both Puzo’s novel and its film adaptations, Fredo is characterized as the weakest and least intelligent of the three Corleone brothers, and therefore is often given the Corleone family’s menial tasks.” More here.
DLH — Readers may find this little clip instructive as regards what Obama is up against as regards Putin:
