Obama and the Runaway Train The race, the case, a hope for grace.(Peggy Noonan's Dribble)

New York Times ^ | 10/31/08 | Peggy Noonan

[Saint Athanasius]

The case for Barack Obama, in broad strokes:

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. Obama and the Runaway Train The race, the case, a hope for grace.

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.

Read the rest of this dribble if you want...

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

[txgirl4Bush]

BHO probably is paying her. Maybe promicing her a job in his administration? And to think I use to like her.

[CaliforniaCon]

RE: “Peggy is suffering from a severe case of the Marxist Obama tingle. She’ll make a good lefty.”

**********

No kidding. Anyone past their mid-fifties should instantly recognize the Ayers/Dohrn names and all that they represent — and be horrified. And Ayers’ association with Obama is no rumor; it’s fact. So many lies put forth and still other lies of omission.

No matter how unflustered and well spoken someone like Noonan might find Obama to be at times, his long history of associating with Marxists/Socialists/Communists SHOULD be cause for reconsideration and the decision to vote McCain!

[CaliforniaCon]

RE: “That’s precisely it. Envy has completely warped her brain — envy of Palin’s youth, her power, her lack of pretension, and of course her looks. Combine that with the fact that Peggy’s politics have never been philosophically grounded and the result is what we now see.”

***********

Exactly. Noonan has revealed herself to be merely a speechwriter — one who would work for just about anybody if given enough fame and fortune for it. This woman is a disgrace and gives even most RINOs a bad name!

[CaliforniaCon]

RE: “...................I for one will not abandon George Bush even when the overwhelming majority of the nation has.”

*************

I will not abandon him either — I will always have great respect for George W. Bush as a man and as a president.

[CaliforniaCon]

RE: “I never thought I would live to see that day in America.

But I’m starting to feel like I live in some sort of third world country where the masses are waiting for their Chavez or Castro to save them.

It is enough to make one shake with fear.”

*********

No kidding — and amazingly most of the people I’ve chatted with in recent days feel the same way — a neighbor, dental hygienist, a brave soul who had a McCain sticker on her car. I feel like I’m in some alternate universe right now. Everyone seems to WANT the socialism Zero promises. They WANT to turn everything over to govt. and have their basic needs covered in return.

Of course, they have no CLUE what is about to befall them, but they are HOPEful! Idiots!

[1035rep]

I’m with you!

[woofie]

She’s auditioning to be David Gergen.

Or a potted plant

[woofie]

hear hear

[nathanbedford]

(dark Wolf, I address this post to you because I think yours was so good)

There is something very telling about this latest Peggy Noonan piece. It is not its fey detachment from realism. It is not its narcissistic quality which prompts Noonan to write in a style approaching literary masturbation. When Peggy gets the basics so wrong the soaring rhetoric crashes and and serves only to compound the embarrassment.

Peggy Noonan is not a conservative, she is a Roman Catholic. Her faith delivers her into the conservative camp on several issues, principally abortion. She is opposed to abortion and mentions it in virtually every piece, as she does here. It is important to understand that she arrives at her position on abortion not as the logical extension of a conservative' s regard for the individual as a God ordained political unit, but as an extension of her Roman Catholic faith. Let me hasten to observe that her faith has got it absolutely right on the issue of abortion. But the syllogism is, for me or least, is a political conservatism info informed by my religious faith and from that comes a philosophy which forms opinions about issues like abortion. Peggy Noonan skips the middle step.

The result of that is that Noonan has no real philosophical bonds to the Republican Party or, indeed, even to the conservative movement. Many Freepers have commented that Noonan is wallowing in emotion in these columns and it is hard to argue with that description but I would put a finer point on it, Noonan is expressing a religious mysticism. She applies this mysticism to matters political and wanders in and out of mystical language and in and out of political speak. No wonder her reader is alternately confused and frustrated.

It is not difficult to understand why Noonan herself appears to be confused. Mystics simply see the world in a different way. She operates from her faith, by definition she is not operating from reason. Faith is not necessarily antagonistic to reason but detached from it, transcendental. So Noonan can rehearse Obama's bizarre biography and give it a significance 180° removed from its plain implications. We read her conclusions about Obama's character drawn from his biography and scratch our heads. Noonan genuflects. It is not that Noonan is a traitor, it is not (as I have previously erroneously written) that she is pandering to the salons in Manhattan, it is that she is transported from deduction to intuition.

Political parties need mystics. When a transcendental issue confronts us we need the moral clarity which comes best from faith based vision. If the issue is slavery, civil rights, abortion, or American exceptionalism, we need the moral certainty, the unflinching Churchillian commitment to stand for the right against all odds.

These values do not obtain when one is weighing the advantages of moving the tax scale up or down a few percentage points. In the nuts and bolts of politics we need commonsense and reasoned argument. Other times, we need the insight of the mystic, we need that moral clarity, we need a compelling imagery. I believe that we are as Americans confronted with a moral issue in the election of Barak Obama. Our problem is that we have been confronting a pathological vision with common sense reasoning-a debate in which those with common sense are always destined to lose if the pathology spreads like a virus as it has the person of Barak Obama. In my view, Barak Obama has a vision, a radical, anti-American, ultimately tyranical vision but a vision nonetheless. 50% and likely more than 50% of the country is laboring under a pathology, a cult of personality, a perfect storm of political factors, which will sweep a potential tyrant into office who has no qualification whatsoever apart from the melanin content of his skin. Think of the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana.

To combat this mass psychosis, this political pathology, with an election campaign tethered to common sense, as John McCain has done, is to attempt to use willpower to check diarrhea. That is why I have been maintaining for so long that the Republicans had to redefine the rules of the game or lose this election. Further, that is why I have been so relentlessly pessimistic warning that if Barak Obama were not morally destroyed this election was lost. You cannot triumph over a virus with logic. You must find stronger medicine.

This brings us back to Peggy Noonan and the tragedy of her fatal flaw. Her epistemology, for whatever reason, simply does not bring her to see that Barak Obama is potentially more threatening to her faith than any crazed Mohammedan who plots from outside America to steal her faith and put her to the sword. It is a very great pity that Noonan cannot compute the raw data and, in an epiphany, create the imagery out of her rich talent that would at once define and morally destroy Barak Obama.

Peggy, why do you think we have been keeping you around all this time?

[AmericaUnited]

This women is pure, unadulterated, 110% TRASH!

[LouisianaJoanof Arc]

Believable as of late. Factual errors (Obama out of money).

Wonder what her former boss would have to say to her today. Here's a quote to you Peggy, from your former boss:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."Ronald Reagan

[Recovering_Democrat]

Does she change herself in the middle of the piece, or is this REALLY an endorsement of Hussein?

[Recovering_Democrat]

I just read it...she gets the end right “God is in charge of history”. But she seems resigned to a Hussein/Democrat government.

I am not there yet.

[Darkwolf377]

Very well said.

I disagree only on one point. I DO believe she is pandering to her Manhattan lib buddies, and for the reason I stated. Her "off mic" comments about Palin reveal, I believe, someone who's as much interested in being seen as someone who doesn't get fooled by all that "hockey mom" stuff, something which I have seen firsthand is VERY important to liberal women, whose vehemence against Palin is pretty startling.

Great, as always, to read your analysis. I won't even ask you The Big Question about the election--I fear it's the same as mine.

[Darkwolf377]

I mean, I fear your answer would be the same as mine.

[Mac from Cleveland]

“When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t replace that by believing in nothing— he replaces it by believing in anything”.

G.K.Chesterton

Peggy was tolerable sometimes way back when-a windbag, but a few good nuggets, and overall benign-now Good Lord. I think she needs an emergency operation to get the shot glass removed from her throat.

If she wants to reminisce about Ronald Reagan, she should think about what RR would think about this Socialist POS so close to the Oval Office.

As far as BO’s Dickensian childhood, give me a break, Reagan and Nixon, to name two GOP s off the top of my head, had it much worse, and were 100 times the man BO Plenty is.

Some of the NR pantywaists are making the same symbolic argument “Oh, wouldn’t it be grand to one day have a black President-tra la la” No, it would be “grand” to have a grand President. Sweet Mother of God.

[Alkhin]

She’s the Demosthenes of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”. Don’t pity her. Don’t mourn her leaving. Excoriate her. She is Dead to the Conservative movements. She is One Of Them. Good riddance, Noonan, you ignorant slut.

[PjhCPA]

I refuse to read this. She’s turned in to a dumb +wa+. (excuse my language, but she really P!sses me off)

[FarRightFanatic]

Peggy Noonan has become such an elitist, such a snob, and she is so upset at the very idea of one of the little people, one of “them,” being nominated for the VP slot, that she has LOST HER MIND.

I knew Sarah Palin would be great for our party, great for our country, but I had no idea she’d be this great. For years, people have been irritated by the country-club types in the party, those elites who honestly look down on the rest of us, but are happy to sell their books to us and hope we read their articles. Now that we have ONE OF US potentially being elected to the 2nd highest office in the land, we will now be able to purge some of these phonies.

Oh, and by the way, Peggy—you’re a bitter old shrew and Ronald Reagan is ashamed of your recent behavior.

[nathanbedford]

I fear you are right. Soon it will be time for a come to Jesus reckoning for conservatives. We will have very little but our character to see us out of the wilderness.