Peggy Noonan has some sobering thoughts

[question everything]

From her WSJ column:

The McCain campaign has famously spent the past week trying to increase doubts as to Mr. Obama's nature, background, intentions. Their crowds have been irascible. Here is a warning for Republicans: When your crowds go from "I love you" to "I hate the other guy," you are in trouble, you are on a losing strain. Winning campaigns are built on love. This is the time for "McCain is the answer," not "The other guy is questionable."

One thing McCain has going for him, a big arrow in his quiver, is this: In a time of crisis, do you really want one party to control the entire government? Don't you want one party controlling one power center, and one in charge of the other, with each side tempering the other's worst impulses?

With regard to the continuing saga of our vice presidential candidates, I think it was a strategic mistake to send Sarah Palin out on the stump as warrior girl. Mr. McCain is war-y enough. It would have been better if she had been, and seemed, a social conservative who is for diplomacy, for an easy-does-it approach to foreign affairs. Instead she has seemed martial, speaking breezily in interviews of war with Russia or an attack on Iran. They forget: Americans don't like war. We fight it well but don't like it, especially in times of economic stress.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122359863551021415.html

This is where they are going now: Noonan and George Will last week on the ABC talk show - we need to split the parties. If one controls Congress the other should control the White House. Funny, they never suggested this in the past 8 years.

[myrna minx]

1. YEah, it didn't seem to bother her when the Republicans controlled EVERYTHING. n/t

[Arugula Latte]

43. No kidding. It's not having one party that's the problem -- it's THAT party that's the problem.

[PretzelWarrior]

2. too late, assholes

you're stuck with a majority of Democrats who actually reflect the will of the electorate. NO DLC. No Republican LITE. We're talking across the aisle stuff for sure. They don't need to be dicks about it like the fascists who are mostly retiring in fear now.

We will all get good at PUBLICIZING how we turn the page on this sad, ugly chapter in American history and enjoy a few years with PROGRESSIVE values.

[quiet.american]

3. Your comment was exactly what I thought of when reading this. nt

[Bucky]

4. I dunno, I can rarely take Peggy Noonan sober.

Anyway, this fear of one-party government argument is a lot of hoo-ha. Utter baloney from Republicans realizing that they don't have any real arguments left. I've heard George Will, Pat Buchanan, and a few other Republicans say this on TV. Basically, they're admitting they're desperate and have no real arguments in favor of their guy.

[last1standing]

26. That's OK, she's rarely been sober.

At least that's what I concluded from reading a few of her columns.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Gee. Yet another self-serving hypocritical repuke. They just cannot change their stripes.

The repukes need to be put so far out in the cold and for so long that they all get icicles in their noses.

[Drunken Irishman]

6. This is what hurt Kerry in 2004.

People didn't hate Kerry, but more people hated Bush than really, really liked Kerry.

That didn't work out because the Democrats consistently had a large enthusiasm gap with Bush.

[question everything]

11. Right. Remember all the ABB threads here?

We are Democrats and will never be 100% behind any one. Not even 91% the way the Republicans do, not bothering to question and to think for themselves.

However Dukakis, Gore and Kerry never excited the voters the way Obama does. I did not support him during the primaries; agreed with Hillary's "all he has is a speech." However, in the past several days, as the calamity of our economy looms, I am glad that we can have a President who, like Roosevelt, can at least offer us hope.

I don't know how much he will be able to do - or anyone else. Presidents do not create jobs, unless he embarks on programs the way FDR did. But at least for now, we can look at him, and listen to him, and believe in him.

[Drunken Irishman]

12. Pretty much.

I voted for Kerry and would have voted for him regardless, but he didn't excite me. He was a good man and I respected him, but my vote wasn't FOR him and instead was AGAINST Bush.

We're seeing the opposite here. People are voting AGAINST Obama, not for McCain and I don't know if that ever works.

It didn't work in 1996 when they voted AGAINST Clinton and not FOR Dole.

It didn't work in 1988, as you stated.

It didn't work in 1984 and it won't work now.

[dchill]

7. That "big arrow" in McCain's quiver...

is all wormy and bent. It won't fly this time.

[BeatleBoot]

8. Space Cadet Noonan

Is "war-y" a word?

Can you hear me Major Noonan...

Can you hear me Major Noonan...

[beac]

9. Another GOP-enforced hair shirt for Peggy

as she tries to get back in their good graces after her open mic gaffe about Palin.

Pathetic.

[Afikpo Chic]

28. Peggy the double-speaker

Peggy Noonan is afraid to say anything that will piss off the brainless gnats on the right. She wants to speak her mind but she can't. She is just being intellectually dishonest at the expense of the readers because you know she can't be this stupid. But who can blame her; her side is filled with very vicious attack dogs ready to eat their own at any hint of disloyalty. Just like Kathrine Parker is no longer in their good grace. So my dear, Noonan has no choice but to speak from both sides of her lips.

[question everything]

33. Hi AfikpoChic. Welcome to DU!

I think that all the non-rabid Republicans are having problems with it. They were never certain about McCain; I think that most wanted Romney. They know that Palin, while injecting some youth into their convention, is not qualified to be President, but if they win, this is a real possibility.

Some of them, though, who supported Reagan, and Bush (Jr.) support Palin because they have their own plans on how to run the country behind the scenes and all they need is a pretty face for the front who will not ask question, just say and do what s/he is being told.

[anonymous171]

10. Yeah, but after 8 years of Bush the executive branch has way too much power

for a republican to safely handle it.

[Skittles]

13. fuck you Peggy, you fucking republican WHORE

FUCK YOU

[question everything]

15. As long as you get this off your chest

:hi:

[Skittles]

19. LET'S KICK HER REPUKE ASS

:hi:

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. Good god, these people need to learn some history.

News flash for Peggy Noonan: in our greatest national crises to date, the Civil War and the Great Depression, one party controlled both the presidency and the Congress. Abraham Lincoln had a Republican Congress; he saved the Union. Frankin Roosevelt had a Democratic majority for the entire 12 years he was President; the New Deal very possibly saved the Union again, and gave this country an unprecedented twenty years of prosperity. So to answer her question: yes, I want one party in control in a time of crisis, if they're the party that actually has a plan to get things done. When the times call for decisive action, partisan obstructionism is not helpful. Had Lincoln had a Democratic Congress, the South might have been allowed to secede, and slavery may have persisted for decades; had Roosevelt had a Republican Congress, we might not have Social Security, we might not have recovered economically as soon as we did (lest we forget, it was the Republicans who made the Depression WORSE with the boneheaded Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act), and we might have remained isolationist at the beginning of WWII, to the detriment of British and Soviet efforts against Nazi Germany and the likelihood of eventual victory. I would love for Peggy Noonan, or George Will, or any other conservative trying to push this talking point, to explain how these outcomes would have been preferable.

[question everything]

16. These are excellent points

I hope that we will start seeing comments like yours on the same media where the Republicans are pushing these ideas.

[AdHocSolver]

20. Smoot-Hawley actually worked for the corporations by giving tariffs and import quotas a bad name.

However, tariffs had less to do with causing the depression of the 1930's than the wholesale corporate thievery of the 1920's by the financial sector which cost jobs.

Just as today, stock market swindles and real estate swindles bankrupted companies and the middle class, which saw massive job losses. Lack of demand, because people had no money to buy goods whether domestic or imported, was the reason for economic collapse.

Japan in the 1960's and 1970's, and China in the 1990's up to today, both grew their economies due to import restrictions and import tariffs. The U.S. has had some of the lowest import restrictions and tariffs of any country for years. This has allowed the corporations to make huge profits sending jobs overseas to take advantage of low wages. Low import duties, just like cheap labor costs, increase corporate profits.

U.S. corporations could fight those countries refusing to import American made goods. They don't do so because it is more profitable to make everything over there where labor is cheap and, at the same time, not have to pay import duties to bring it to the U.S.

Therein lies an answer to the question of how we can save the U.S. economy. Impose import duties and quotas on foreign-made goods to allow American companies who wish to make stuff here a chance to compete. It worked for Japan and China, so why not do what the winners did? This will create jobs in America, we will reduce our foreign debt, working Americans pay income taxes so it will reduce the federal deficit, and Americans will be able to make their mortgage payments, buy new American-made hybrid-electric cars to save oil and help the environment, and avoid a really bad recession.

The bad-mouthing of import tariffs and restrictions, and the constant prattle about the supposed benefits of "free trade", which doesn't even exist, is so much corporate claptrap. The U.S. today is a colonial empire spending its way into oblivion due to phony wars and wholesale destruction of the source of a country's wealth -- its own middle class. Read the recent books by Kevin Phillips such as "Wealth and Democracy".

In his book "American Theocracy", according to Wikipedia, "Phillips uses the term “financialization” to describe how the U.S. economy has been radically restructured from a focus on production, manufacturing and wages, to a focus on speculation, debt, and profits."

This country is being pillaged into oblivion. Until Americans start understanding how the economy really works, and how the scams are perpetrated and how the public is bamboozled by meaningless phrases such as "free trade", these problems will not be solved.

[Spider Jerusalem]

24. Protectionism that results in retaliatory tariffs and the loss of export trade

(as the Smoot-Hawley tariff did) is not a good thing; note also that I never said the tariff CAUSED the depression, merely that it made it worse (by discouraging exports, including agricultural exports, which led to a serious fall in farm prices and devaluation of rural assets at a time when the banking system was already hard hit; this contributed in part to the collapse of many rural banks--the effects are well-documented, and most economic historians agree on the cause).

[AdHocSolver]

38. Farm prices fell in the 1930's because people were broke and could not afford to buy much.

The problem was NOT that farmers couldn't export their products. The problem was that Americans who had no jobs couldn't generate enough denmand to raise the price level.

The Republican response to low farm prices was to burn crops, dump milk, and slaughter animals to drive up prices by reducing supply. This was sheer stupidity as the public did not have enough money to buy the stuff to raise demand.

The Republican "solution" was another example of their belief in supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. The idea that foreign purchases of U.S.-made goods is necessary for the economy to function is total nonsense.

The U.S. economy grew quite handily after WWII despite the fact that much of Europe and Asia were flat broke and unable to buy much of anything from us.
This is because there was a lot of demand for goods internally since rationing was eliminated and the production system was converted back to producing consumer products.

Smoot-Hawley was largely irrelevant since the depression was already spreading around the world and foreign countries couldn't afford to buy much from us anyway. Any so-called retaliatory tariffs were an irrelevant joke.

Most of what passes for economic expertise is so much claptrap. Economics 101 principles, properly applied, can explain everything. What is paraded in the media and echoed here on DU is based on the premise of supply-side economics. It is totally false. What drives any economy is DEMAND. To really understand what is happening, this fact must be kept in mind, as all understanding derives from it.

A healthy economy requires people having good paying jobs so as to earn enough money to buy goods and services. That is it. The stock market is a gambling casino for rich people and a location from which they can run their Ponzi schemes a la Enron.

[jbnow]

27. You can respond to her article with that

You raise good points

As republican as she is last Sunday she said she had not decided who she'd vote for.
She said some other things on MTP Text

NOONAN: Well, the—I think more and more with Mr. McCain—we’re seeing two different things with the candidates. Mr. McCain has—there’s a sense of containment that you see with him more and more, where he is containing a certain amount of "hm," indignation, anger, what it is, but—whatever it is, but he has to contain it.

MS. IFILL: Not terribly well. I mean, sarcasm really is not containment.
(snip)
MS. NOONAN: Sort of like he’d rather deck the guy, and—but instead he’s a little sarcastic.
With Obama, there is a greater sense that if there’s a tiger in that tank, he doesn’t have to work hard to contain it. There’s still that languidness and calm that is serving him well, and it is one of the unspoken things that’s helping him now, I think. American people in the past year in this long campaign have gotten to watch him long enough that they don’t know him quite, but they kind of have a sense of him.
(snip)
What we need now is grace. We need real patriotism, which patriotism isn’t used as a weapon in a campaign. Patriotism actually needs grace in order to function. We got to be our best selves right now. We got to hit our game in a higher way. We got to be forbearing. We got to be adults. I sometimes think one of the problems in America is there are too many people that don’t want to embrace the role of the simple grown-up and show the maturity and forbearance of a grown-up.

It's not that I trust her or don't think she'll play games for her party but she won Peggy won a little piece of my heart when Wright clips broke and hype was at full steam. Peggy came on to Morning Joe that Monday Morning. Everyone else was panting and foaming and howling about Wright (only a slight exaggeration).

In the midst of that when asked if this was it for Obama her calm and thoughtful voice and words were a relief.
She didn't defend Wright but she did defend Obama, that Wrights words in no way reflected Obama. While she said she didn't know how the campaign would do through it what she did know was Obama could make it a healing moment for this nation like no one else could. She said he should use his enormous talent, sit alone and write from his heart and then give a speech to the country about the issue of race, turn this whole thing to the good.

She spoke so well of him and his heart and intellect and authenticity, his ability to speak to us like grown ups. In the midst of the maelstrom I cherished that.

I looked to see what she wrote after the speech...and she appreciated all of it except... can't recall exact words but to paraphrase. Never mind, I looked it up
http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=407

Here’s what didn’t work. Near the end of the speech, Mr. Obama painted an America that didn’t summon thoughts of Faulkner but of William Blake. The bankruptcies, the dark satanic mills, the job loss and corporate corruptions. There is of course some truth in his portrait, but why do appeals to the Democratic base have to be so unrelievedly, so unrealistically, bleak?

This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has—the fear one has, actually—that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. (snip)
But most people didn’t experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn’t that way. Do the Obamas know it?

That was the one time I ever looked for her column and left a comment. On that part I suggested that her rejecting how bleak things were for so many people meant that she was the one who did not know much about America in the middle class and below.

I'm sure I said it politely...because of her kindness in the crazy time and she wrote so much more about what was right with the speech than the little part she found wrong. Some examples

I thought Barack Obama’s speech was strong, thoughtful and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear that’s what he wanted, and this is rare.
(snip)
This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit.
(snip
The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics.

Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line—“And families in Michigan matter!” or “What I stand for is affordable quality health care!”—and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.

Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn’t summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn’t hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he’d said.

If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they’d get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don’t write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.

They should try it.
(snip
My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former.

That was not the first or the last time she has spoken very well of him, much better than she has on McCain...and it didn't stop when the primary ended. She is also critical of him but she is harsher on McCain.

Again I don't doubt she'll shill if needed but unlike people like Will or Murphy who are very willing to criticize McCain she often shows appreciation of the unique gifts Obama brings with him. She has always appreciated grace and being talked to like a grown-up, it is no surprise she'd be fond of Obama.

[question everything]

39. This, of course, is why we have a so-called "liberal media"

or, rather, reporters who do not have much use to Palin and the rest of them.

If you are a real reporter, if you have the capacity to comprehend, to seek information and then to intelligently and coherently report it, if you have a master of the written word, you really cannot help it but feel contempt to Reagan, and Quayle, and Junior with their limited vocabulary and incoherence. The only escape route that you have is that those bumbling idiots charm the masses and then you take comfort that, once they are in office, the adults in the party would run the country.

This is why a supposedly intelligent person like that guest on Bill Maher from the WSJ can actually support Palin and keep straight face about it. (Yes, he is intelligent. One thing about the WSJ - they have excellent writers, as too often even DUers reluctantly comment). They want to keep the White House and they don't care who sit there. As a matter of fact, they'd rather have malleable Palin that independent McCain.

Noonan, of course, was Reagan's speech writer. I remember driving home when the Challenger was lost and listening to Reagan words of comfort. And as tears welled in my eyes, I was thinking to myself, these are not HIS words. But, then, of course, this is why so many still admired him. He knew how to play the role.

[AdHocSolver]

17. If McCain should become president--heaven forbid--we would have a one party government.

Bush/Cheney effectively neutralized congress and swung the Supreme Court far to the right.

The only way to still maintain a semblance of a two-party system is for Obama to become president.

[vaberella]

18. Finally a person commented on the fact Palin basically declared war on Russia.

That woman wants to set up on World War and she's using the General Election podium to do it. She's dangerous and I do feel she's the reason and her words, along with McCain's was the reason that Russia declared us a rogue state to international courts.

[pam4water]

21. Well Putin is looking in her window and the is a fawriners, you know.

Every day Palin gets up and looks out her window at Russia and says in he best De Niro Voice, "Are you looking at me?" .

[Monk06]

22. At a time when real leadership is required, let's put two retards in power to fuck things up

Better nothing gets done than one party have
a clear mandate to legislate.

No wonder the US is circling the drain.

[retread]

23. The weekly meme arrives. They are running out of memes and weeks! n/t

[Higher Standard]

25. So, the argument comes down to "Vote McCain because he's not a Democrat"

So, they've given up the hope that he can come up with any positive reasons for people to vote for him over the next few weeks, huh? That's pretty pathetic.

[question everything]

40. And a point that she raised, too

that when people who attend his rallies do not shout that they like McCain but that they hate Obama, his campaign is doomed. At least she has the honesty to admit that.

[terrya]

29. The Republicans under one party rule made a complete fuckup of things in this country,

It has nothing to do with one party rule.

[FarCenter]

30. So this Xena Palin thing isn't working out for them?

[spanone]

31. ms noonan is a republican shill, elitist pig

[frickaline]

32. Actually I have heard a lot

of usual democratic voters and Obama supporters (friends of mine) saying this almost verbatim. I believe that this argument resonates with a lot of people.

[question everything]

34. Because it sounds nice on paper

and, I suppose, we can give examples of Reagan with a Democratic Congress and Clinton, after 1994, with a Republican one. Never mind Gingrich shutting down the government..

But as the examples given above, and as we've seen in the past 8 years, one party dominance allows to put unscrupulous people, like DeLay in charge who just run amok with no checks or balances on their actions.

[renie408]

35. Wierd, I didn't know Peggy Noonan had SOBER thoughts, much less sobering ones. n/t

[ClarkUSA]

36. WTH are you posting her drivel here? She spends the whole article snarking at Team Obama....

While giving McCain tired old tactical advice.

Gee, thanks. Are you sure you're at the right place? :sarcasm:

[Orsino]

37. They're suddenly eager to rewrite the Constitution when they see power slipping away. n/t

[grantcart]

41. Ok they can have congress lol Like that's going to happen lol

[grantcart]

42. Funny thing is this could be a killer argument up until thepoint that they picked Palin

and made it a non issue.

[Bread and Circus]

44. After her "bullshit" comment I just can't believe anything she says as

everything she says "on record" is calculated for effect. To borrow her own words, she's full of bullshit.

[butterfly77]

45. Where was all of the distress

from this B---- while RepubliCONS have been running the country,controlling all of the government and fucking it up. They have been spouting this shit for days now and Scarborough is about to blow a gasket.