Yep. Uh-huh. Exactly.
June 1, 2007 by Katherine Coble
The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq.What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom–a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don’t need hacks.
…Bush…presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.
That was Peggy Noonan’s stuff, there. I’ve been trying to think of a way to say all that for awhile now. But since she just did, I guess it saves me the trouble, huh?
This is not to take away from the substance of what Noonan wrote here: it’s very good and oftentimes very true.
However…
There is more to this than meets the eye. There is a personal nature to the sniping that’s been coming from Noonan, as she correctly states seemed to come to a head in January 2005. I’ve been observing this from afar, because I was a huge Noonan fan. From January 2005 on, her criticisms were many times petty, much of what she said I thought was beneath her. She joined in the Harriet Meyers pile-on. You don’t often see a coalition of Peggy Noonan and Ann Coulter, but it happened.
Because I see myself so much in these things, I’m convinced that Bush’s team wounded her in some way(perhaps they locked her out of the speechwriting for the 2nd inagural - after she had taken leave at WSJ to get Bush reelected). Like I said,I noticed the change at the time, and it was uncharacteristic and went beyond ideological differences. Her criticisms of the 2nd inaugural (which I thought was a very well written speech) were bizarre. “Too much religion”? This from the woman who wrote not two but FOUR gushing articles about meeting the Pope?
This may be ideological, but there’s also an element of school-girlish “getting even”.
Like I’ve said, the Bush Administration has many faults, but this is personal. Just my observation from afar.
Noonan’s politics have always been driven by a sense of personal grievance, though, haven’t they? I admit to not having followed her career all that closely for the past 6 or 8 years, but when I first became aware of her she certainly seemed driven to take stands out of personal spite. Certainly, her account of her own college-age conversion from liberalism to conservatism is bizarre unless one factors in the personal resentments she expresses. (I don’t mean by this that anyone whose opinions change in that way is bizarre, but only that by her own account her change was completely dependent on personal relationships.)
There is a personal nature to the sniping that’s been coming from Noonan,
See, I don’t think this is any more ‘personal’ than my disavowal of the Bush Administration.
If you read the whole thing you’ll see that she goes into great detail about the squandering of opportunity by both Bush administrations.
What you read as being overly personal, I interpret as her being a savvy, well-spoken person who sees the grave missteps of someone she once viewed very highly and is frustrated about the powerlessness she feels to correct those missteps.
Noonan takes politics personally–that’s why she’s always been a very good speechwriter.
This may be ideological, but there’s also an element of school-girlish “getting even”.
Do I get to point out how offensive that statement is? Revenge is not solely the province of immature females, you know.
Nor is it necessary to infer that when a woman levels criticism at the White House she’s doing so because she’s in an emotional quandary.
Well, it’s not as if he’d said it about Mary Matalin.
Kat, now you’re reading too much into MY words. My observations are about more than this post; I’ve been, shall we say a “student” of Noonan for quite a while. We Freepers have been parsing her every word for years to figure out if she was one of “us”. Now that the Freepers have turned on Bush, they’ve welcomed her back into the fold.
I actually like this article; she’s making official what many of us have known for years.
I just provided a little backstory, in case you weren’t familiar with it. nm obviously understood (even though we approach Noonan from two different sides)
And, about the “school-girl” thing: you should know me better than that by now. I’ve actually used the term “school-boy” for David Frum, another jilted Bush speechwriter, during the Harriet Meyers thing.
ME? Of all people? Faulting a female for emotionality? I don’t think so. I don’t consider emotionality in argumentation to be a fault.
I was going more for “pettiness” than “over-emotional” when I used the term schoolgirl. If it works better in the future, I’ll say “schoolkid”. I had no idea it would be taken that way - at least HERE.
But your post concentrated on the tree, I was replying with the forest. My fault.
You have to put Noonan’s remarks in the context of her history with Reagan and Bush 41 more than Bush 43. She was a true believer…went from working at CBS for Rather to the White House to write for Reagan. She wrote the “read my lips, no new taxes” speech for the convention for Bush 41. She (like many of us) felt personally betrayed that Bush didn’t govern the way he ran. She references this in the column, but while it’s just in passing there, I think it’s at the heart of her argument.
I think she saw Bush 43 as a chance for a do-over. She wanted him to redeem the failings of his father. And instead, she’s had to watch him repeat the shunning, belittling and reviling of conservative thought from 41. For many people who are conservative first and Republicans second, these have been a painful six years. Outside of temporary tax cuts and one great Supreme Court pick (Bush gets no credit for Alito, because he was forced to do that–he wanted Miers) 43 has been a huge disappointment to conservatives. Many of us stood with him for a long time because of his strong position on the war on terror. But then we saw that he didn’t really follow through there either. Hello 32% approval rating. Hello thrashing from Peggy Noonan.
ME? Of all people? Faulting a female for emotionality? I don’t think so. I don’t consider emotionality in argumentation to be a fault.
Well, we know I do, and so I extrapolate the appelation of fault.
I’ve been, shall we say a “student” of Noonan for quite a while. We Freepers have been parsing her every word for years to figure out if she was one of “us”.
I flirted briefly with the Freeper world many years ago, and while we have a fairly large common-set, there are several areas where we part ways.
This would be one of those areas. This “us” and “them” thing that Freepers have is grating to my more libertarian sensibilities. I know many of them call themselves libertarians and hold many libertarian values. But when it gets right down to it, the whole “is this person Right Thinking?” business bothers me a bit.
There’s so much parsing of speeches word-for-word, prooftexting and second-guessing, nobody gets to have a clear message anymore.
Beyond that, cronyism is destroying government. And I think the Freeper “us v. them” mentality feeds that Crony Monster. It creates the atmosphere of choosing underqualified people on the basis of their ideological adherences alone.
Freepers AREN’T the only ones who do this. All the folks who say things like “I won’t patronise this business because it’s not Blue” are the same way.
It inserts too much of cronyism into politics.
This post wasn’t ABOUT Peggy Noonan. It was ABOUT WHAT SHE SAID. That’s the point I’m trying to get across. I don’t care if she said it because she had a bad day or drank the wrong brand of tea. She said something I agreed with. I don’t need to put Peggy Noonan in a box of people I like, or be concered with where she eats or shops or who she telephones on weekends.
Who people are doesn’t matter to me as much as what they do.
And that’s why I bristled. Because I saw in your comment all of that Freeper stuff, that cronyist stuff. And it bugs.
Because that’s when we stop listening to what people say or think and start assuming motives based on action and we’re back to business as usual.
Many of us stood with him for a long time because of his strong position on the war on terror. But then we saw that he didn’t really follow through there either.
Seeing as I’m one of those people, yeah. Bush has, lately, been a pig in a poke.
Unfortunately I fear that this much-vaunted Democratic Congress will prove to ultimately be the same thing.
Kat, I apologize for having contributed to drag the conversation away from your point.
Oh dear.
I didn’t mean that. I don’t mind that it’s gone off-topic. Really.
(This is one of those days where I think I’m failing to communicate properly.)
I’m not mad at anyone, including Slarti.
Really.
I’m not.
And I guess I should have realised that Noonan is a Personality, and as such invites comment. That’s why I don’t quote more Personalities on my blog.
I don’t think Slarti is a sexist pig. (referencing a comment made over at tcp, now)
I don’t really have much knowledge of Noonan’s personal life and can’t address that.
I don’t truck with genderising political topics–I’ve written about that before–and so Slarti’s use of the term “schoolgirl” bristled me a SMALL bit–but not nearly as much as it would appear people think it did.
I’m not mad at anyone, including Slarti.
Correction.
I AM mad at George W. Bush.
[...] Jump to Comments Here’s the money part, as far as I’m (and apparently Kat Coble as well) concerned: The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in [...]
“Mission Accomplished” did it for me. It was apparent by that act, especially the speech he gave, that he and his administration did not know what they had just done or what they were in for. You can read it here for a refresher:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html