Noonan's Direct Hit
Posted in Politics by John Marshall
Peggy Noonan's current
piece engages Obama's ideological certainty not only for its political threat to his presidency but also because it now tears at his basic ability to govern.
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Yes, pundits from the center-Left all the way through the Right are claiming the overall competence of the Obama Administration is now in doubt (not surprising considering he has zero experience running a results oriented institution - ie military, business, executive). I heard a great line the other day: "It's as if facts have declared war on the Obama Administration".
However, Noonan's casual denunciation of Bush was quite small of her. I guess she might be said to be a microcosm of the soccer-mom vote, and for her his silent and relentless execution of the War on Terror does not absolve him of the sin of being unable to make everyone like him like Reagan and Clinton.
That is a good line.
It is hard not to be happy that the Obamaites are being taken task for incompetence in this. They railed about the incompetence of the Bushites over the same sorts of things.
However, I don't see what the Obama Administration was going to do about the oil catastrophe any more than I could see what the Bush Administration was supposed to do about Katrina and state of Louisiana's levees. Really, there are lots of things that effect the nation that the federal government cannot be expected to do anything about, at least not effectively. The government is just not the answer to every problem. It can't be.
What is juicy about this for conservatives is that the whole gang who claim that government IS the answer to every problem are in government now and seemingly inept, powerless and incompetent. Given their prior claims, they are ripe for the roasting.
Bush was and perhaps will be castigated for not being able to overcome the insurmountable. Nobody likes having to face uncomfortable facts like that there is a war on terror because terror is at war with the world. That Bush gets blamed for it does not make it possible for the current administration to ignore the fact. Yet Bush's being unable to overcome those impossible things made this administration possible. Nobody likes being between a rock and a hard place, which we are, and it is hard not whine about the fact from time to time.