The Peggster Finally Gets It

I have avoided posting/talking about/referencing Peggy Noonan for two years.  She fell for the Obama rhetoric like a bowling ball off a high-dive, labeling him a "gifted politician," and an "extraordinary intellect."  While she still hasn't come back in the fold, she is starting to realize that the Bamster is incompetent.  Her weekly column over at the Wall Street Journal titled "He Was Supposed to be Competent," brings her back with baby steps and is worth the read:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

Work with me here, Peggy.  Why do you think he behaves this way?  We are supposed to have eliminated "stupid" from the option list a long time ago, so that can't be it.  Could it be that he has another agenda and he doesn't give a damn about the American people, the United States in general and certainly not our Constitution??  And why is it a "terrible thing?"  The American people, including you Ms. Noonan, were hoodwinked in 2008 - remember "hope and change" and the "sea levels falling?"  Those of us not seduced by the smooth as Essolube rhetoric kept asking the hard questions, that only now are people of your ilk starting to formulate:

• Who is this guy?
• What does he really believe, because when we look at his associations from Father Flager to Rev. Wright to Bill Ayers, there seems to be a disturbing pattern?
• What are his qualifications?  We do need qualifications don't we?  Does voting "present" most of your political career prove you are a good leader?

I could go on and on - go back into the Rumbler archives to the summer and fall of 2008 and you will see that folks like us were on the job.  She goes on:

In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—"catastrophe," etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, "I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite." But his strategic problem was that he'd already lost the battle. If the well was plugged tomorrow, the damage will already have been done.

I actually gagged through the news conference yesterday and swung between yelling at the screen and grabbing the trash can to vomit.  When he opened with the line about "we were in charge from the very beginning..." I knew the lie-fest was on. The White House should have just hung a sign over the teleprompter that read "It's not my fault."  Of course the blowout wasn't his fault, no sentient human being could suggest that...neither were 9/11 and Katrina Bush's fault.  Anyone with any appreciation of the complexity of the problem created by the blowout could imagine the President/Federal Government swooping in with a magic wand and making it all better.  It was his detachment and finger pointing that was sickening.  It's the vacations, fund-raisers and golf games that are pi..ing people off. He's a year and a half in power and he still, reflexively, blames Bush...amazing!

The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It's not good to have a president in this position—weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support—less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensble nation" be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen.

I weep for the people of Louisiana and other affected Gulf states.  The marshes will die, thousands of jobs will be lost, and when the next big hurricane comes the barrier islands will not be able to protect cities like New Orleans, Gulfport and Mobile.  But I do not weep at all for the political end of this poser we have as President...he is "weakened" and he is definitely "polarizing," but he has served one extraordinary purpose in his short reign: he has awakened the American people to the reality that our freedom can easily be put in jeopardy.   In this he has been unifying.  I know a number of people who swooned and voted for the Bamster from whom the scales have fallen from their eyes and they see.  This tragedy in the Gulf and the immature response of Dear Leader have no doubt driven even more from their cult-like adoration of "the One."  This, Peggy, is how America works and if we have a crippled leader for a couple of years, we will overcome it.  Remember, it took the lowness of Jimmy Carter to get us Ronald Reagan.  Yes, the country will pay a price internationally - it already is - and I am not at all happy about that, but maybe, just maybe, this generation of Americans will learn that their vote matters and we should always place hard facts above wished-for utopias.