Peggy Noonan goes wingnut
Peggy Noonan was one of the more (ostensibly) reasonable voices on the right during the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections. All that has changed. Noonan’s latest column on Obama’s dire predicament not only conveniently ignores the president’s continued popularity, but also wildly exaggerates the impact the three ‘crises’ he has faced in his short term as president. The oil spill looms largest, but Noonan also includes Obama’s healthcare reform bill and his opposition to the Arizona immigration law as evidence of his impossible position come 2012.
This is crazy.
The healthcare bill will work in Obama’s favor in the next election, and the immigration issue – while still probably an important one – will not focus on Obama’s reaction to the controversial Arizona law. The oil spill is the only potentially damaging thing, and even that is unlikely to really hurt Obama who is much more likely to respond to the disaster in the next two years with strong environmental regulatory reforms.
As Sullivan notes,
The premise of Noonan’s moronic column is that the federal government, especially the president, should be capable of ending an oil-pipe rupture owned and operated by private companies, using technology that only deep-sea oil companies deploy or understand. And if such a technical issue is not resolved by government immediately, it reveals paralyzing presidential weakness and the failure of an entire branch of political philosophy. Again: seriously? It’s Obama’s fault that under Bush and Cheney, government regulation of oil exploration was so poor and corrupt, corner cutting appears to have been routine? And this, Peggy, is what governments do, even when run by crazy-ass liberals. Governments do not dig for oil; they merely regulate those who dig for oil. That the government failed to do so under the previous administration does not seem to me to be proof that this administration has failed.
Larison points to more Republican hypocrisy over the oil spill and Obama’s handling of said spill, and points to the sheer nonsense in Noonan’s claim that Obama is somehow out of touch with the broad center of American politics:
Had he been adamantly against offshore drilling all along, he might have been called an environmentalist ideologue and “out of touch” with the blessed center, but he could point to the oil spill as an example of why he took that view. Were he actually the left-winger Republicans like to pretend that he is, his response to a major oil spill by a multinational corporation would have been much more aggressive and angrier, but that isn’t who he is. Unfortunately, he is all too often “in sync with the center,” by which I mean the Washington centrists’ center, and that means accommodation and support for entrenched and powerful interests. It is largely because of his instinct to accommodate that he finds himself in this mess.
In the end, the next election will be decided based on two things: whether the Republicans can even run someone with a chance of winning – which is doubtful – and whether the economy has picked up. Unemployment could very well be the deciding factor. Other issues, like a potential stand-off with North Korea, could also factor in, but I think it will be the economy – not healthcare reform or immigration or the oil spill – which will decide Obama’s reelection fate.
Peggy Noonan has stooped to pure propaganda, tossing a big chunk of red meat to Obama’s critics in what can only be described as her attempt to veer back to the right after spending so much time in the center toward the end of Bush’s presidency.
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Erik:
Newsflash. Dolphin Lady has never not gone wingnut. The fact that a few folks thought she wasn’t wingnut just shows that they misapprehended her pundit-survival instinct for a change in cognitive structure.
I’m not much of a Noonan afficianado, so you’re probably right.
In response to another comment. See in context »My theory has always been that the entity that we call “Peggy Noonan” is actually a pair of twins that switch off living the same life every other day. Peggy One is reasonable, empirical, sensible. Peggy Two is hacky, obnoxious, and doctrinaire. It’s not unlike the scenario posed by the film, The Prestige. It’s one theory to explain the extremely schizophrenic nature of her commentary, anyway.
Frankly, despite their occasional grace notes, Noonan and David Brooks strike me as some of the worst of what punditry have to offer, and I think they routinely hurt conservatism and America with what they do. They’re both smart people who routinely write ignorant things for ideological reasons, both people whose idea of moderation consists of following conventional wisdom. Those two turned against Bush in 05-06 when everybody was doing it. Compare that with someone like Andrew Sullivan who, whatever you might say about him, cut bait with Bush way before it was cool. Both of these people (and their wannabes) have a long record of being “reasonable” conservatives whose unreason comes at just the wrong times. Noonan was a huge cheerleader for Clinton’s impeachment, of course, and Brooks was quite pro-Iraq. They cheer the GOP into committing its worst mistakes, and then criticize them for the results. It’s a fundamental lack of a sense of responsibility on either of their parts that makes me despise them. If the Tea Parties wanted to do one productive thing before they inevitably collapse and flame out, they’d take “respectable” conservatives like these (and George F. Will as well, for starters) and kick them out of their movement. Snake-oil salesmen, all of ‘em.
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