I suppose I should give Peggy Noonan credit for writing half of a good column. In today’s Wall Street Journal, the former Reagan speechwriter expresses deep disappointment in the president, his “new” policy, and this week’s speech on troop escalation in Iraq. She quoted a like-minded reporter who said, “So this is it? The grand strategy is to repeat a strategy they weren’t able to execute the first time they tried it?”
Indeed, Noonan was unusually blunt in her criticisms. She described the president’s televised remarks as “jarring” and “unnerving,” and she described Bush’s decision to reject the Iraq Study Group as “a dreadful mistake.” She quoted an old Republican hand saying, “[Bush] looked like he was over his head” this week. Noonan concluded that top administration officials “should be ordered to draw up serious plans for an American withdrawal.” So far, so good.
Then Noonan got to the Dems and what she described as a “vacuum” in the Iraq story.
The second is the power vacuum that will be created in Washington if the administration is, indeed, collapsing. The Democrats of Capitol Hill will fill that one. And they seem–and seemed in their statements after the president’s speech–wholly unprepared to fill it, wholly unserious in their thoughts and approach. They seem locked into habits that no longer pertain, and absorbed by the small picture of partisan advancement at the expense of the big picture, which is that the nation is in trouble and needs their help. They are sunk in the superficial.
When Nancy Pelosi showed up at the White House Wednesday to talk with the president it was obvious she’d spent a lot of time thinking about . . . what to wear. She wrapped herself in a rich red shawl. Dick Morris said it looked like a straitjacket. I thought she looked like a particularly colorful mummy.
I didn’t edit this to make Noonan appear foolish — she went from describing Dems as “unserious” and “superficial” in one paragraph, followed immediately by another paragraph on the House Speaker’s choice in shawls.
As Paul Kiel recently asked, in an entirely different context, “Is there such a thing as irony-deafness?”
I mean, really. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page isn’t exactly renowned for its superior wisdom or judgment, but there are editors who work there. Indeed, Noonan is one of them. Did it not occur to anyone that complaining about a lack of seriousness in one sentence, followed by another about the Speaker looking like “a particularly colorful mummy” might make the writer appear ridiculous?
As Glenn Greenwald put it:
Seriously, how is it even possible that this thought did not occur to Noonan as she wrote her column: “My criticism of the Democrats is that they are so superficial and unserious, and to prove that, I’m now criticizing Nancy Pelosi for her clothing choices. I seem to be exhibiting, as completely and transparently as possible, the very flaw which I am attributing to Democrats.” Wouldn’t just a minimally functioning human brain compel that recognition?
For what it’s worth, Noonan concluded her column by insisting, “What is paramount is a hard, cold-eyed and even brutal look at America’s interests. We have them. I’m not sure they’ve been given sufficient attention the past few years. In fact, I am sorry to say I believe they have not.”
I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what any of this means. It sounds as if Noonan believes the United States has interests and we should consider them right now. That sounds delightful, I suppose, if not overly simplistic.
Maybe I’d understand her point better if I weren’t so “wholly unserious” in my “thoughts and approach.” Maybe after some fashion critiques, my national security and foreign policy perspective will become more credible.