Noonan Nails It

Peggy Noonan's work is uneven; sometime brilliant, sometimes bathetic. When she's on her game there are few better. This column for The Wall Street Journal is one of her good ones. Her topic is the stimulus bill just passed by the House without any Republican votes. Her key point is this:

The president will enjoy short-term gain. In the great circle of power, to win you have to look like a winner, and to look like a winner you have to win. He did and does. But for the long term, the president made a mistake by not forcing the creation of a bill Republicans could or should have supported.

I think she's right. This isn't the new politics we were promised by The One. It is the old gotcha, zero-sum pork barrel politics we've suffered through for the last 16 years. Only now we are in real economic trouble and we need a real government by adults, which we ain't got.