The distraught Peggy Noonan writes: “America Is a Coalition of the Worried”
There’s something I’ve been trying to write for a few weeks but can’t get my hands around—but it’s as if there’s no president, it’s an empty White House, nobody’s really there, it’s not an administration but an eccentric event that causes clamor. I’ve never had that feeling before, that a White House is empty and weightless. The media, whose job it is to hold it to account, are distrusted. A Knight Foundation-Gallup survey released this week showed 86% of Americans seeing “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of political bias in news coverage. The Democrats can’t agree on what they’re running on beyond “We’re Not Trump, ” which may or may not be enough, with a presidential candidate age 77 who sometimes seems confused. People can’t even be confident the election will work, that it will be orderly, that the old rough integrity of the system will hold. They know there will likely be no “election night” with states called and a winner declared. But will there be an election week? Month?
Poor Miss Peggy.
In her 20th year writing a column for the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan becomes more incoherent with each now-pitiful attempt to ‘put words to paper’.
Poor Peggy. in her column this week, Ms. Noonan is “worried”…and so is all of America, in her ‘mind’.
Maybe it is. Or, maybe the entire nation is not experiencing a ‘paralysis’ of fear and concern.
In Noonan’s case, she’s been “worried” since 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president. Before that Peggy apparently was an admirer of his predecessor, Barack Hussein Obama.
Prior to the Obama reign, Peggy was not so happy with G.W. Bush. That was mainly because, in our opinion, Mr. Bush just refused to recognize what Ms. Noonan considers her outsize talents, wisdom, and past contributions to the nation, made during her labors in the Reagan and GHW Bush administrations.
As we’ve noted before, Peggy’s most notable contribution to GHW’s “success” was her speech writing ‘gift’ to his eventual one term presidency: the “Read my lips, no new taxes” line she is famous for.
Probably, that was the principal reason behind GW’s failure to offer Peggy a high post, or any post, in his presidency.
Though, I ‘ve never seen the term “miffed” in any Noonan column or speech, I think it describes how she has felt toward GOP presidents ever since. Her view of GW and regard for Obama was reflected in the following:
In 2016, she wrote this: “He [Obama] 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…”
There was no such optimistic refrain at the beginning of Trump’s presidency.
And, for that and other reasons, Peggy Noonan has written herself into “has-been” status and as a columnist who doesn’t have much to say of interest these days. dlh
More “dead horse” memes for your gratification:
