Peggy Noonan Regrets Sarah Palin. A Nation Weeps

Peggy Noonan is a bright analyst and a good writer. She also is one of the most shamelessly disingenuous.

Ms. Noonan has a habit of looking very forthright -- but only well after the fact. When it's safe. Long after she's helped create the very situation she's later criticizing.

The most notable example was in July, 2007, when she wrote a long, scathing critique of George W. Bush in the Wall Street Journal . She explained being "startled" and "disconcerted" by then-President Bush.

It was all so admirable, acknowledging that people who once praised George Bush now "grit their teeth." Except that nowhere in her lament did she acknowledge being one of the leading enablers of the man for seven years. Nor acknowledge being a blistering critic of those who had dared to point out, for seven years in the face of her slamming them, the very things she was now seemingly discovering before the rest of America. It's one thing to admit error -- that's noble. It's another thing to ignore that the people you had blasted were actually correct. In polite society, it's called, "Saying I'm sorry."

Worse, as George Bush was plummeting in the polls, and Republicans were jumping ship for their lives, she tried to rewrite history (something she does well, after the fact) -- slyly smearing her opponents in the process, while defending her own indefensible actions.

"This is what happens when the pickings are slim," she wrote, explaining away her earlier support of George Bush." Except, of course, that that wasn't true at all. Democrats didn't have slim pickings. Democrats had Al Gore and John Kerry -- one of whom went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the other of whom had won a Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts for bravery in war.

And now Ms. Noonan is doing it again. As she all-too-often does.

In her newspaper of choice, the Wall Street Journal, there is Peggy Noonan now slamming Sarah Palin, gutting her with a scalpel as only she can. It's a withering and scathing attack, the sub-headline of which is "Palin was bad for Republicans -- and the republic." How noble, how admirable, look at Peggy Noonan be forthright and blast one of her fellow-Republicans. Look at Peggy Noonan tell us all, at length, how incompetent Sarah Palin is.

Except...once again, it's far, far after the fact.

This time, she waited even more egregiously, until after Sarah Palin resigned office. Very forthright, that. This is the journalistic equivalent of punching someone in the face after they're dead. And strutting that they didn't lay a finger on you.

Mind you, when Sarah Palin was running for Vice President of the United States, Peggy Noonan didn't express any of this. When Sarah Palin had a serious chance of becoming a heartbeat from being president, from becoming the most powerful person in the world, Peggy Noonan sat on her typing fingers and never got around to writing about Sarah Palin what she writes now:

...she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it...

No, those words Peggy Noonan didn't write when it mattered. She wrote them when it didn't matter. When it did matter, she wrote lovely things about Sarah Palin -- all the while knowing that Sarah Palin, as she only now says, "was not ready to go national and in fact never would be."

In fact, the one time during the election when Peggy Noonan was caught off-guard, and a microphone caught her saying privately that, because of Sarah Palin, "it's over" -- Ms. Noonan not only wrote a convoluted article explaining that supposedly she didn't mean the election was over, but then went on to praise Sarah Palin. "I do like Mrs. Palin," she wrote, "because I like the things she espouses."

"I like the things she espouses," Peggy Noonan wrote when it mattered. Now, when it doesn't matter, she writes, "She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them."

How pathetic.

Indeed, there was only one thing in her faux-mea culpa that Peggy Noon apologized for, when it mattered. "I am certainly sorry I blurted my barnyard ephithet." (sic)

Yes, when it mattered, the one thing Peggy Noonan was sorry about was using a bad word. Never mind that in that same article, she was praising, supporting and trying to get elected someone she now says (when it doesn't matter), "She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

And Peggy Noonan was one of those doing the manipulation. Only now, she runs far away from that. Now, she proclaims to us on her high mountain that she knows something most of the country figured out long ago -- when it mattered. And now, once again, Peggy Noonan refuses to acknowledge that the people she was blasting were right.

And still, never saying, "Sorry."

The noble, forthright Peggy Noonan. Always there to kick the dead body. While telling you that she was there first.

Comments

[fmjohnson]

Let's be intellectually honest, Mr. Elisberg. Here is the link to Ms. Noonan's column from October 2008, when she could (and possibly did) have some effect on the outcome of the election:

Palin's Failin'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122419210832542317.html

"[We] have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office.

"In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism."

[whitehawk]

Watching Noonan on Morning Joe this morning, was difficult. I haven't seen that display of pure 'ego' tripping and arrogance yet, and that says a lot after the horrid year the Republican's have seen a 'new' low in thier Party, their rhetoric and their behavior. Wonder if they realize the only government God supports is his own, in heaven, not yet completed, but surely will be when the 144000 divinely chosen by our Father have all entered his 'estate' in heaven.

The Lamb and the 144,000; Revelation 14:1-5, 18: 3......The Fall of Babylon...."Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The Kings of the Earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her extensive luxeries.``

I am a Liberal. I am a woman who has watched the evils of the Republican Party turn America and it`s values upside down. Now, they run around with loose lips, loose morals, strip the country of every dime........with fraud, send the World into economic slavery and boast of their ``relationship`` with God. How dare they!! Republicans ......``YOU BLEW IT``.

[whitehawk]

Noonan calls them as she sees them. Frankly the entire globe would second that in a minute an d most Republican women. Only the deadbeat traditionalists of 20 % like her.

[sharkface]

Noonan is an embarrassment to all republican women. Palin is the only good thing in politics today. The proof is that politicians can't stand her honesty and integrity because they don't have it!

[queotic]

Palin? Honest? Is this Bizarro HuffPo?

[BuzzingAlong]

Palin is the only good thing in politics today to those low information people who are afraid of books and learning and have no use for education. Education hurts the space between your ears.

[whitehawk]

Yes; BuzzingAlong; Palin is only good for those who love to be directed and lead by the 'absent' of thought, Palin herself is absent of a construction thought pattern and an inability to learn anything. She did a wonderful job bluffing, and with all her highschool friends in her administration, they kept her secret and manufactured grandiose accomplishments for her job, and more importantly theirs.

20% of the Republican base is what we have listened to in past three 1/2 days as inept Repubican Senators has shown their utter ignorance of the law and contempt for the law and the constitution. As usual, my ear was aching from repetitive slander from the 'peanut' gallary of your elected Senators. REally bad on global television to display their inefficient, low standard, 'vacant' mindless rhetoric. Don't ever be proud Republican­'s........­..........­..you are an embarrassment to the Party of Abraham Lincoln, your constituents, the States of the Union and other countries. Appalling display of ignorance by all of you.

[Schalaine]

When describing Sarah Palin and you use the words honesty and integrity -must be an oxymoron. If not sharkface, I just don't get it.

[radiclib]

.
.
Noonan was a Reaganite.
She's one of many responsible for a quarter-century of right-wing fever.
She speaks with a forked tongue.
.
.

[fabricnthreads]

I can't stand watching her on the Sunday Morning shows.

She looks down her nose at everyone, acts coy and bats her eyes.

And sometimes, she thinks It is better if we don't look back (as in at the Bush administration).

No use for her. She is as partisan and Republican as they come.

[PlanetKansas]

Watch Peggy Noonan when she talks, she avoids eye contact and looks down. This is a person not comfortable with her own views and long ago sold her soul to make a buck. It makes me cringe just watching her.

[desertdweller]

Who knows, maybe someday, probably not soon, Noonan will announce that Saint Ronnie was a phony and his "great" presidencncy was nothing but smoke and mirrors.

[heliz]

Mr. Elisberg,

Noonan let everyone know last year that she thought Palin was a fool. She wasn't Al Gore brave, but she did stick her neck out - albeit perhaps not as far as you would've liked. Her column on Palin is no 180. Thank god we have conservatives like Peggy Noonan. I'm no conservative, but I admire her smarts, tenacity, and instintive, dead-on feminist sensibilities.

[desertdweller]

It's easy to be brave when there's nothing at stake.

[Lemon722]

So these silent Republicans hate America? Supporting W when they knew he was wrong - why didn't they quietly volunteer with Democrats or independents to curb the excesses and consider the good of the country. Dems are not saints by any means but Repubs wave the flag as they sell us down the river.

[fabricnthreads]

It is a question of integrity. You either have it or you don't.

It isn't something that magically appears when it is convenient. It is there when the going isn't so easy, and you get battered around a little.

[nunzia]

Noonan is to writing what Specter is to politics. (I deliberately omitted the word "journalism").

[rbelitnikov]

A PARTY of the easily manipulated? Surely she meant "a NATION of the easily manipulated". In a country where Twitter defines the length of an individual's concentration span, Palin presents as Socrates. As does Noonan. As does Huffington.

[Pleneras]

The imaginary presumption that people listen to these folks for assistance in making their own choice when voting is laughable. The rich need to stay home or take trips around the world and stop passing off as "elitist who know what's right for the people". Feudalism is dead!

[HeevenSteven]

Noonan is and always has been a paid Republican propagandist. A column in the WSJ doesn't give her any more credibility on any issue.

[duchamp2008]

In fairness to dear old Peggotty, she's been high-minded critic of Palin for some time (during the fall campaign), certainly well before it became fashionable to bash the Neiman Marcus fashionista within conservative circles. She may have enabled Bush, but perhaps that experience made her put out an early stop sign before the frenzied rapture for the perky Governor.

As for being on an ego trip: she's no worse than Chris Matthews or even the late Tim Russert on that front. If you're in front of the camera, a big ego goes with the territory.