Friday, April 25, 2008

Miss Peggy's Moody Blues

Peggy Noonan writes a moody elegy on the state of middle American lives, and both Obama's and Bush's problems therewith. Of Obama, she says
Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is Mr. Obama's problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men's Vogue.... What does he think of America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was lovable, and what does he think about it all?

Of Bush, she finds
I finally understand the party nostalgia for Reagan. I think it is a manifestation of dislike for and disappointment in Mr. Bush. It is a turning away that is a turning back. It is a looking back to conservatism when conservatism was clear, knew what it was, was grounded in the facts of the world.
You owe it to yourself to read the whole sad rumination on what we've become.