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This week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington's Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment. From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, "a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes...

The president has been taking time thinking about Afghanistan. I cannot see why this is bad. If he's really thinking, he's not dithering—thought can be harder than action, weighing plans as hard as choosing and executing one. A question of such consequence deserves pondering. A president ought to summon and hear counsel before committing or removing American troops.

Americans feel increasingly disheartened, and our leaders don't even notice.___ The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren't rising, they're bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we're entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever...

In response to the NY-23 news, Rush Limbaugh tells me: “Hmmm... I thought the Era of Reagan was over? Who was it that said that? Oh yeah, the smart people on our side who told us the only way we could win was with moderate/liberal candidates like Scozzafava. Hmmm...”

OCTOBER 30, 2009 We're Governed by Callous Children Americans feel increasingly disheartened, and our leaders don't even notice. By PEGGY NOONAN The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren't rising, they're bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we're entering...

The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. ... No one thinks we're entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008. * * * The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened,...

At a certain point, a president must own a presidency. For George W. Bush that point came eight months in, when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the presidency—all his decisions, all the credit and blame for them—was his. The American people didn't hold him responsible for what led up to 9/11, but they held him responsible for everything after it. This is part of the reason the image of him standing on the rubble of the twin towers, bullhorn in hand, on Sept.14, 2001, became an iconic one. It said: I'm owning it. Mr. Bush surely knew from the...

We are a nation fully settled by government. The terrain ahead is both crowded and costly. People who oppose a health-care overhaul are not in love with insurance companies. They're not even in love with the status quo. Everyone knows the jerry-built system of the past half-century has weak points. They just don't think the current plan will shore them up. They think the plan would create new weak points and widen old ones. They think this because they have brains. But even that doesn't get to the real subtext of the opposition. Yes, the timing is wrong—we have other,...

It is absurd and it is embarrassing. It would even be infuriating if it were not such a declaration of emptiness. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has embarrassed itself and cheapened a great award that had real meaning. It was a good thing, the Nobel Peace Prize. Every year the giving of it was a matter of note throughout the world, almost a matter of state. It was serious. It mattered...

Three-steps-from-crazy-cat-lady WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan is teaching at Harvard. Our spies report: "Peggy's a ridiculous, hilarious person to speaking with any authority on anything at all." They've provided us with her awesome quotes. We're presenting them emoticon-contextualized them for you...

A few days ago, I was sent a link to a screed by MSNBC's left-wing anchorman Ed Schultz, in which he explained opposition to the president's health-care reform. "The Republicans lie. They want to see you dead. ... They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don't have anything for us." Next, a link to the syndicated show of right-wing radio talker Alex Jones ... "They'd love to kill 10,000 Americans," and, "The republic is falling right now." This, increasingly, is the sound of our political conversation. It is not new to call this kind of...

Looking back, this must have been the White House health-care strategy: Health care as a subject is extraordinarily sticky, messy and confusing. It's inherently complicated, and it's personal. There are land mines all over the place. Don't make the mistake the Clintons made and create a plan that gets picked apart, shot down, and injures the standing of the president. Instead, push it off on Congress. Let them come up with a dozen plans. It will keep them busy. It will convince them yet again of their importance and autonomy. It will allow them to vent, and perhaps even exhaust,...

>-snip-< What a disaster this health-care debate is. It strains, stresses and pierces, it unnecessarily agitates and is doomed to be the cause of further agitation. Who doubts the final bill will be something between a pig in a poke and three-card Monte? Which is too bad, because our health-care system actually needs to be made better. *** There are smart and experienced people who say whatever the mess right now, the president will get a bill of some sort because he has the brute numeric majority. A rising number say no, this thing has roused such ire he won't...

When George W. Bush did town halls like that—full of people who'd applaud if he said tomorrow we bring democracy to Saturn—it was considered a mark of manipulation and insecurity. The first question was from a Democratic state representative from Dover named Peter Schmidt. He began, "One of the things you've been doing in your campaign to change the situation is you've been striving for bipartisanship." "Right," the president purred. They were really holding his feet to the fire. "My question is," Mr. Schmidt continued, "if the Republicans actively refuse to participate in a reasonable way with reasonable proposals, isn't...

Don't strain the system. Don't add to the national stress level. Don't pierce when you can envelop. Don't show even understandable indignation when you can show legitimate regard. Realize that the ties that bind still bind but have grown dryer and more worn with time. They need to be strengthened, not strained. Govern knowing we are a big, strong, mighty nation, a colossus that is, however, like all highly complex, highly wired organisms, fragile, even at places quite delicate. Don't overburden or overexcite the system. America used to have fringes, one over here and the other over there. The fringes...

We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate. They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care...

The wishy washy "reaganism/conservatism" of P. Noonan began long ago before Obama. Here is what she wrote about Reagan after the Reagan/Mondale Debate in 1984. After this comment, as you know, The Gipper has been elected in the biggest landslide since George Washington ran unopposed in 1792.

Dame Peggy is now hoping that “Common Sense May Sink Obamacare.” This is why she gets the big bucks: | This is big, what’s happening. President Obama | appears to have misstepped on a major initiative | defining issue. He has misjudged the nation’s mood… Oh, has he now? Maybe a few other people did too? Like–perhaps yourself–you ego-bloated twit? I have news for you, Peggy…[Pardon me, I don't usually do this, but I feel a sudden need to switch to all caps and channel Mark Levin....THERE] …HEY PEGGY, COMMON SENSE WOULD HAVE SUNK THIS FRAUDULENT JACKASS BACK WHEN HE...

It turns out the president misjudged the nation’s mood.This is big, what’s happening. President Obama appears to have misstepped on a major initiative and defining issue. He has misjudged the nation’s mood, which itself is news: He rose from nothing to everything with the help of his fine-tuned antennae. Resistance to the Democratic health-care plans is in the air, showing up more now on YouTube than in the polls, but it will be in the polls soon enough. The president, in short, may be facing a real loss. This will be interesting in a number of ways and for a...

You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. But it's not the normal kind of jealous, the kind reserved for girlfriends who can squeeze into size 2 jeans. No, it's the kind of jealous that hurts, that grabs your gut and twists, that has you howling with rage into your pillow in the middle of the night, screaming "It's not fair" like a two-year-old denied another piece of cake. It is Sarah Palin jealous...and it is consuming you. You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You are a card-carrying member of the intellectual conservative elite, a PBS-anointed expert on family values who worked...

Return to the Article July 18, 2009Peggy Noonan: Sarah Palin JealousBy Stuart Schwartz You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. But it's not the normal kind of jealous, the kind reserved for girlfriends who can squeeze into size 2 jeans. No, it's the kind of jealous that hurts, that grabs your gut and twists, that has you howling with rage into your pillow in the middle of the night, screaming "It's not fair" like a two-year-old denied another piece of cake. It is Sarah Palin jealous...and it is consuming you. You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You are a card-carrying...

Peggy Noonan used her Friday column in the Wall Street Journal to throw some dirt on Sarah Palin’s grave. It’s vintage Noonan: airheaded, dripping with condescension, and completely missing the point. No serious conservative needs to hear anything from Noonan except her groveling apology for being so horribly wrong about Barack Obama, who she energetically supported for president. However, it’s worth picking through the flotsam and jetsam of this embarrassing column, to appreciate the kind of intellectual fat that conservatives need to trim from the Republican Party. Let’s begin by setting the stage: Sarah Palin resigned her governorship last week,...

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, who famously wrote for President Ronald Reagan but slowly become a RINO thanks to spending way too much time in the Beltway (see this embarrassing clip of Ms. Noonan from September of last year declaring the GOP dead meat) is no longer a must-read. In her post today, she bashes Sarah Palin one final time, just to make sure that the almost former Alaskan governor knows what the main streamers think about her and her policies. Among the pathetic quotes: Her history does not need to be rehearsed at any length. Ten months ago...

Peggy Noonan, the sometimes Republican (but hardly conservative) columnist/ Obama supporter, devoted her weekly editorial to sticking a fork in Sarah Palin and pronouncing her "done". Here are some of the linguistic gymnastics Noonan uses to express her disdain for everything Palin: she was not thoughtful She was a gifted retail [politician] She never learned how the other sides think She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. What she is, is a seemingly very nice middle-class girl with ambition, appetite and no sense of personal limits....

Sarah Palin's resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take. They mean to rebuild a great party. They need to do it on solid ground. Her history does not need to be rehearsed at any length. Ten months ago she was embraced with friendliness by her party. The left and the media immediately overplayed their hand, with attacks on her children. The party rallied round, as a party should. She went on the trail a sensation...

Like Specter who complained he was "ostracized" for voting for President Obama's disgraceful $787 billion stimulus package -the biggest spending bill in the history of the Republic- Noonan treats his vote for the measure as just another vote. It's not. It was, as conservatives saw it, the Mother of All Votes, and it capped a long career of giving the finger to conservatives. That single vote - which among other things erased the landmark Clinton welfare reforms, helped lay the foundation for socialized medicine and expand Leviathan's reach- gave the nation's left a forward momentum that it hasn't had since...

We didn't need another reason to avoid reading the slippery Peggy Noonan, but she gave us one anyway. Still in awe of the Dear Leader whose news conference Wednesday night was in her words "a bit of a masterpiece," in her Friday Wall Street Journal column Noonan shows that she has become a captive of liberal conventional wisdom on yet another issue. Noonan implies that the Republican Party is too conservative and as such it forced liberal Sen. Arlen Specter to defect to the Democrats. Noonan complained that the people inside the party "can't always be kicking people out of...

Out of all the conservative betrayals in the last election, none broke my heart more than Peggy Noonan's. I've loved her writing for years. I grew up hearing the wonderful speeches she wrote for Reagan. Her political memoir, "What I Saw At The Revolution," is still my favorite of its kind. I agree with a lot of what she says in her latest article, but I still wonder why she feels so dismissive of Joe-Six Packs and Hockey Moms. I don't think you can grow a party by dissing ordinary people the way she did during the last election.

If the Wall Street Journal keeps to its usual schedule, the next column from Peggy Noonan will be published on Good Friday. I hope she takes advantage of that timing to offer one of the meditations on faith that she still writes better than almost everyone else, rather than another confused essay about President Obama. When her subject is Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, or grace encountered on the streets of Manhattan or Washington, D.C., Noonan shines. But Barack Obama frustrates her so much that even her occasional jabs at his opponents are poorly aimed. Last October, Noonan carelessly...

It is six months since Lehman fell and the crash (or the great recession, or the collapse—it's time it got its name) began. An aspect of the story given less attention than it is due, perhaps because it doesn't lend itself to statistics, is the psychic woe beneath the economic blow. ********* It is six months since Lehman fell and the crash (or the great recession, or the collapse—it's time it got its name) began. An aspect of the story given less attention than it is due, perhaps because it doesn't lend itself to statistics, is the psychic woe beneath...

It is six months since Lehman fell and the crash (or the great recession, or the collapse—it's time it got its name) began. An aspect of the story given less attention than it is due, perhaps because it doesn't lend itself to statistics, is the psychic woe beneath the economic blow. There are two parts to this. One is that we have arrived at the first fatigue. The heart-pumping drama of last September is gone, replaced by the drip-drip-drip of pink slips, foreclosures and closed stores. We are tired. It doesn't feel like 1929, but 1930. People are in a...

A plane is in distress, it's lost one engine and now two and it's going down, and people on the ground hear the sound, look up, say, "That's going awful low," and whip out their cellphones. You could see the pictures they took later on the news. It sounds like Chesley Sullenburger and US Airways Flight 1549, but that was five weeks later. This was the military jet that went down in San Diego; this was the story that ended badly. Then this week it took a turn. (snip)The White House this week was consumed by extreme interest in a...

A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night. By the end of it Barack Obama had become president. Every president has a moment when suddenly he becomes what he meant to be, or knows what he is, and those moments aren't always public. Bill Safire thought he saw it with Richard Nixon one day in the new president's private study. Nixon always put a hand towel on the hassock where he put his feet, to protect the fabric, but this time he didn't use the towel, he just put up his feet. As if it were his hassock. And...

All week the word I kept thinking of was "braced." America is braced, like people who are going fast and see a crash ahead. They know huge and historic challenges are here. They're not confident they can or will be met. Our most productive citizens are our most sophisticated, and our most sophisticated have the least faith in the ability of our institutions to face the future and get us through whole. They have the least faith because they work in them. Tuesday I talked to people who support a Catholic college. I said a great stress is here and...

Conservatives sworn to dinner secrecy By: Jonathan Martin January 14, 2009 12:40 PM EST Call it a charm offensive or a high-level “Listening Tour,” but Barack Obama is already signaling that he intends to break with the current president in one obvious way: hearing from his critics. Obama Tuesday night trekked to the Chevy Chase, Md., home of conservative columnist George F. Will to talk politics and get to know some of his fiercest intellectual adversaries: Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Larry Kudlow, David Brooks, Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, Michael Barone, and Paul Gigot. The two-and-half-hour dinner, which came at Will’s...

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081207/peggy-noonan-lesley-stahl-and-friends-raise-more-money-wThe purse strings haven’t completely closed for start-ups looking to raise money–even niche Web sites that hope to stay afloat by selling advertising. Wowowow.com, a site launched earlier this year, which targets women over 40, has raised a $1.5 million round led by Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group and the Rhime Group. No word on valuation, but I’d guesstimate Wowowow.com’s investors peg its value in the high 9-figure range. The company has now raised $3.1 million in less than a year. The five founders–former publisher Joni Evans, “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl; New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith; ad exec...

Understanding Peggy Noonan I read the other day that Peggy Noonan voted for John McCain. What's news is that that is news. You would think that we could assume a leading conservative writer didn't vote for Barack Obama, but Peggy Noonan has given us reason to wonder. After Peggy declared that “Palin's Failin'”, the notion was taken up far and wide that she wandered from the conservative fold. “Peggy, we hardly knew ye” has become a refrain among on-line conservatives. But her wanderings didn't begin with that op-ed. I have read all of Peggy Noonan's books and followed her column...

You're lucky to live through big history. And you're living through it. The explosion of joy in large pockets of the country Tuesday night was beautiful to see, and moving. For me, at the end of the evening, looking at live shots of the throngs in Chicago's Grant Park, I flashed back to 1960 and how it felt, as a child, to see that the grown-ups had elected a Catholic president. I can't say we stood taller—we were Irish, we already stood tall—but yes, there was a wave of feeling: "What a country," "What a development!" The other day, when...

Holy Shiite! I flipped on Oprah just for a moment to gawk at the freak show. Peggy Noonan was waxing poetic about last night's historic moment. She was giddy as she described hearing the honking horns in NYC and seeing the young people in Grant Park, and the way in which it reminded her of the glorious day that JFK was elected. I thought she was going to throw her head back and let loose with a Meg Ryan style orgasm a la When Harry Met Sally. My hand was burning from touching the power button as I backed away...

Lopez: Sarah Palin is a mom with spunk and executive experience. Does she not demonstrate some patriotic grace? Noonan: Well Kathryn, we have disagreed on the meaning and implications of Mr. McCain’s choice of Mrs. Palin. Here are some cool words from a cool head, George Will, who saw early on what a number of us came to see, and who said better what I would try to say later. “The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience. Any cook can run the...

For a number of weeks now, conservative Beltway insiders Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan, among others, have narrowed their sights not on the Democratic candidate for president, but the Republican candidate’s running mate. Sarah Palin has brought out something in them that rivals the ‘80s sitcom Full House when it comes to the shudder factor. Why beautiful, accomplished women like Parker and Noonan would join the MSM pile-on of the beautiful, accomplished woman from Alaska is, on its face, confusing. But for anyone who knows anything about how DC works, maybe it’s not so confusing after all....

As if the mainstream media's dumpster-diving campaign against Palin isn't galling enough, the conservative elite's casually dismissive attitude toward the brightest GOP star from Alaska may be even worse. Washington insiders' common mantra is "readiness." Colin Powell dismissed Palin as not "ready to be president." Kenneth Adelman, forgetting the governor is already above his pay grade, patronizingly declared her "not close to being acceptable in high office." Their disdain is rivaled by some East Coast conservative pundits. New York Times columnist David Brooks declared Palin "a cancer," and Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker called her "clearly out of her league."...

Others have noted the vitriolic attacks by Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker on Sarah Palin. More interesting is the use of the sentiments or statements of others who precisely mirror the opinions Noonan and Parker hold against, and write about, Sarah Palin. Noonan and Parker conveniently find these journalistic equivalents of confidential informants or jailhouse snitches whenever they want to characterize Gov. Palin as, at best, ignorant. Noonan wrote: “[¶5] There has never been a second’s debate among liberals, to use an old-fashioned word that may yet return to vogue, over Mrs. Palin: She was a dope and unqualified from...

With the rise to enduring power of president Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, a new type of Republican emerged in reaction to FDR's attractive and overawing power - the-me-too Republican. Until the election of president Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies, but claimed they would administer them better. Of course this led to a half-century of Democratic dominance of American government and politics.

According to the silver-penned Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, “In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics.” Leave aside Noonan’s negative judgment on Sarah Palin’s candidacy, a judgment I don’t share. Are we really seeing “a new vulgarization in American politics”? As opposed to the good old non-vulgar days? Politics in a democracy are always “vulgar” — since democracy is rule by the “vulgus,” the common people, the crowd. Many conservatives have never been entirely comfortable with this rather important characteristic of democracy. Conservatives’...

I'll link to a favorite article by Noonan, from 2007, where her elitist snobbism was really on parade in a minute. I do think it's important to say that Noonan was fired from the Reagan Administration under Donald Regan. Granted, Donald Regan, himself, was fired eventually. But what's interesting is that Noonan wasn't invited back. Here's the relevant paragraphs from that long-ago article about Noonan being forced to 'engage' with lowly working class New Yorkers: "I walk into a shop on Madison Avenue daydreaming, trying to remember what it was I thought last week I should pick up, what was...

"Sometimes the leak is so bad that even a plumber can't fix it." This was the concise summation of a cable political strategist the other day, after the third and final presidential debate. That sounds about right, and yet the race in its final days retains a feeling of dynamism. I think it is going to burst open or tighten, not just mosey along. (snip) But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for,...

It is nothing short of stunning this election year to read and listen to some of our most noted national conservatives demonstrate no practical understanding of conservative America. It would serve Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Kathleen Parker, and Bill Kristol well to shirk cocktail parties and mid-town lunches with the broadcast and publishing hierarchy in Manhattan and D.C. and travel like a presidential candidate for a time. Potluck dinners, small-town festivals, state fairs, church picnics and bowling alleys would be great places to start. Shake some hands. Converse with people. Were they to dare attempt such a journey,...

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign...

Fittingly, the news is broken on a show hosted by the second-most fatuous suck-upper on MSNBC. Even if you buy her explanation for the infamous open mic mishap before Palin’s speech (also on MSNBC, coincidentally), this won’t come as a shock to anyone who reads her regularly. She’s a speechwriter and The One gives a good speech, or so I’m assured. That alone was probably enough to earn him a second look.