Peggy Noonan Seems To Be Of Two Minds On The Matter Of Palin

Thanks to an unexpected misadventure with a live microphone on the set of MSNBC, we now now know exactly what former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan (and former McCain advisor Mike Murphy) thinks about the decision to put Sarah Palin on the ticket:

MURPHY: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state government work. Angler, Whitman, Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. And these guys, this is all how you want to (inaudible) this race. You know, just run it up. And it's not gonna work.

NOONAN: It's over.

MURPHY: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

NOONAN: I saw Kay this morning

MURPHY: They're all bummed out. I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

NOONAN: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.

MURPHY: Yeah, but what's the narrative?

NOONAN: Every time the Republicans do that because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it.

Story continues below

MURPHY: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical.

[WATCH, here.]

Now, the only question is: "What was Peggy Noonan thinking when she filed this column for the Wall Street Journal this morning? In it, she refers to Palin as a "a Hail Mary pass," a tactic that often fails to work, but "when they do they're a thing of beauty and a joy forever." Beauty? Joy? Forever? Forever didn't seem to outlast the afternoon!

[Noonan echoed the "Hail Mary" line on Morning Joe today.]

Noonan goes on:

Gut: The Sarah Palin choice is really going to work, or really not going to work. It's not going to be a little successful or a little not; it's not going to be a wash. She is either going to be magic or one of history's accidents. She is either going to be brilliant and groundbreaking, or will soon be the target of unattributed quotes by bitter staffers shifting blame in all the Making of the President 2008 books. Of which there should be plenty, as we've never had a year like this, with the fabulous freak of a campaign.

More immediately and seriously on Palin:

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

Shrewdly, Noonan plays it pretty coy, here, adopting a "maybe-she-will, maybe-she-won't" air to muse through her "gut" and beyond. But alone, unguarded, with Mike Murphy, she certainly doesn't seem to be hedging any bets. "It's over," leaves very little wiggle room. Neither does "political bullshit." Noonan, in her column, goes on to caution (her readers? herself?) about the tendency of the "chattering classes" to encase themselves in a "bubble." One imagines that her Journal readers are wondering: was Noonan in "bubblehead" mode when she was chatting with Murphy, accidentally on air, or was it when she wrote her column?

Comments

[OpusIsUnderTheBed]

Say you were given a job where everybody expected and hoped you'd be an honest person. Say, I don't know, say a commentator for the Wall Street Journal, or say, I don't know, how about President of the United States?

And say, in either or both cases, an individual was basically dishonest, all the time, or at least when it suited them.

Could the individual, forgoing honesty, find ways to profit or benefit personally?

[TRYKER]

Could the individual, forgoing honesty, find ways to profit or benefit personally?"

Does the bear sh*t on the Alaskan scene?

[PJay1]

"Two minds"??

Hmmm....Maybe she was projecting when she made reference to the "two headed bowling ball child"??

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/peggy-noonan-and-the-two_b_122344.html

[aubrey8]

Noonan is the most insincere piece of crap that ever spoke on the tube....Olbermann should ban her.

[LPK]

As Jon Stweart would say "In Peggy Noonan's defense, she is a lying sack of s..t!"

[Speakchic]

LOL! Indeed she is...

[TheOldSchool]

Disingenuous Republicans?

Who would have imagined?

It's High Noonan in America once again.

That said, I wonder when the mainstream corporate media going to point out all of the outright, baldfaced lies Ms. Palin read in her speech last night, and that the RNC touts in her bio?

[Tobiasism]

Well, reformer narrative is unraveling rather quickly form Alaska to DC.
There is enough talk about Ted Stevens and VECO and the earmarks that
in a little time it may actually sink in even to Noonan taht this cynical act is not going to work

[Lisette]

JOHN MCCAIN HAS TURNED THIS ELECTION INTO A 3 RING CIRCUS

BRINGING THAT BOORISH WOMAN AND HER BROOD INTO THE POLITICAL ARENA.

LIKE BRINGING THE CLOWNS TO TOWN

IT IS SO OUTRAGEOUS AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS

AND CINDY JUMPING OUT OF HER SEAT TO APPLAUD IS BEYOND HUMAN TOLERANCE

THE WOMAN IS AN UNFIT MOTHER-SUBJECTING ALL HER CHILDREN AND THE PREGNANT
ONE IN PARTICULAR TO PUBLIC SCRUNTY!

[dadw5boys]

I don't all the conservatives are so selfish that she would be considered one of them when the most she has accomplished is too get some ear marks from congress for airport paving project.

[edgarallenpoe]

Clearly we can only trust what Peggy and Mike say off camera. They are nothing but actors when they are on camera.

[abigail1]

I've said this before about the "hail mary pass" thing, but I will say it again, nobody throws them in the middle of the game!!!!!
It's September. 2 months left until the election. there are debates yet to come. and no amount of attacking community organizers is going to cover up the fact that Sarah Palin is a power abusing right wing nut for that long.

[GLaB]

"I've said this before about the "hail mary pass" thing, but I will say it again, nobody throws them in the middle of the game!!!!! ""

You must not be a football fan. There's this thing called "Halftime."

And just before "Halftime" is exactly when most "hail Mary passes" are thrown.

[lejman]

peggy, peggy, peggy...GERARD phelan caught the hail mary; not EUGENE phelan...nice try to impress kay bailey hutchinson and the great scarborough with your college football lore acumen....

[HHarvey]

I watched the RNC press club meeting with Arianna, Peggy noonan, Tucker Carlson and I forget the other guy and Peggy did quite a bit of talking and further expanded on her "Hail Mary Pass" rhetoric and the impression I got was that she was less than enthused about this VP candidacy. So I'm not sure what this article is about.

[suvbaby]

do you want a woman who is heard laughing (audio: Huffingtonpost.com)
while her opponent Lyda Green is called a Bi..h and a cancer (Lyda was a cancer survivor) and laughed when Lyda was called fat? Those are just 2 of the many substantiated ethical errors, from a woman who spouts reform. Check in to her relationship with Ted Stevens and the money she raised for his campaigns, because it was politically correct for her.
I would look very deeply at the moral character of this woman, and then have a go at watching all of the McCain interviews. He is unfit to lead this country, although Sarah Palin might make a good babysitter.
John McCain even refuses to define the word HONOR, which he refers to all the time when talking about himself, in the Time interview on his own plane, the point being, unless somebody is there to feed him words he has no clue.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK. What you find out will take you past the glitz and glam and meat slinging of last night and show you the real people. The ones they don't want you to see. I am a republican and this is NOT "Patriotic or Country First."

[suvbaby]

It was obvious from last nights performance (and please, don't think for one moment it wasn't) that Sarah Palin is a quick study and is great at repeating the words of her speech writers. I was hoping that I would see an electric but humble appearance as she duped the American public by portraying herself as something she is not. While beautiful and charming she is of Washington and has been since she was mayor by making decisions that were not in the best interest of the people she served or giving any credability to the office she served.
When appointed mayor she could not deal with it alone so she hired a manager to the tune of $60,000, taxpayer dollars. It's odd that none of her predacessors needed a teacher.
Consider this scenario: The McCain/ Palin ticket makes it to the white house. John McCain drops dead in March 09....then what?
We are left with a beautiful, charismatic woman who knows pretty much nothing except how to distribute oil revenue to the citizens of Alaska, revenue that they themselves call "hush money."
Do you want a woman in office who has three ethics violations against her; (yes she did the same sort of bullying when she was a mayor),

[Jaid]

So let me get this right. I have a idiot party but I will defend it to the death. Party right or wrong. The Republican are really losers but the party comes before the American people. The sky is blue but if Peggy Noonan tells me its red then it must be true. Sarah Palin is an empty pantsuit but if the conservative Mike Murphy tell me otherwise on television regardless of what he thinks off-mic I should just take his word for it. Noonan and Murphy is what is so very wrong with this country.