Salon.com > Peggy Noonan

Beltway scandal machine breaks, knows nothing about America

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:02:00 +0000

The great Charles Pierce may deride it as “Tiger Beat on the Potomac,” but sometimes I’m damn grateful we have Politico. Good reporters like Maggie Haberman and Ken Vogel aside, even Politico’s trademark triviality sometimes provides an important political service.

Case in point: Its hilarious “D.C. turns on Obama” piece last week, which marked the crest of Scandalmania and also helped explain polls that show Americans trust President Obama’s version of events when it comes to the Benghazi and IRS controversies. I expected polls to show people believe the president on these issues, but I’ll admit I was surprised to see his approval rating actually ticked up a bit despite the constant drumbeat of scandal. But it did -- and that should force the media to look in the mirror, though it probably won’t.

Peggy Noonan hears a dog whistle

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:45:00 +0000

Here’s the best evidence the GOP knows the IRS scandal doesn’t reach into the White House: Now they’re saying they don’t need to find evidence that President Obama directed or even knew about the investigation of Tea Party groups’ non-profit status; his actively campaigning for reelection represented a “dog whistle” to tell the agency to target his political enemies.

The dog whistle quote came via NBC's “Meet the Press” Sunday from Peggy Noonan, who can no longer be taken seriously as a writer or pundit. When host David Gregory pressed her on the lack of evidence for her claims that the IRS scandal was worse than Watergate, Noonan insisted that the president “was giving a dog whistle to people who could launch this thing." The former Reagan-Bush speechwriter vividly summed up, in her thousand points of crazy style, where the IRS “scandal” went over the last few days: Obama didn’t need to order the tax agency to harass Tea Party groups (and his critics don’t need proof that he did so): his criticizing the group during the 2012 campaign, as well as blasting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, represented an implicit order to do so.

Obama’s real leadership challenge: Democrats

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:45:00 +0000

There’s been so much trolling President Obama in the last two weeks, with columnists and pundits and politicians calling him “a lame duck” or “just lame” -- Peggy Noonan knows lame -- or comparing his leadership unfavorably to fictional characters in movies and TV shows (not to mention LBJ), that the most important task for a reasonable political analyst has been to swat aside the silly and try to clear the air of delusion, projection and dejection.

Chasing delusion and projection is easy. Dejection, not so much, especially when some of it seems to come from the president himself.

First the easy part: Obama is a real president, Michael Douglas wasn’t. LBJ had overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate; Obama’s party lost the House, and its Senate majority is meaningless because of the outrage of current filibuster rules. LBJ also dealt with reasonable Northeastern Republicans, who gave him overwhelming majorities for civil rights legislation when the Solid South began to secede from the Democratic Party largely over race. Obama, by contrast, has mainstream Republican leaders who are terrorized by their right flank and who declared their highest priority was blocking his reelection and his agenda; they failed at the first part but are doing a good job at the second.

The antiabortion movement’s brewing civil war

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:05:00 +0000

Some antiabortion activists were crowing about their apparent victories in North Dakota last week -- including an unprecedented ban on abortion at six weeks, before most women know they're pregnant -- but, notably, that's not what Peggy Noonan wanted to talk about on "Meet the Press" yesterday. When Chuck Todd asked her if such legislation "could be what motivates evangelicals again," Noonan promptly changed the subject. It was no accident.

"The real story this week is the haunting and disturbing story of this doctor in Philadelphia -- [Kermit] Gosnell, who is being tried this week," she said, adding, "This was a man who had an abortion mill, that was in fact a death mill for babies essentially born. Being tried now, we'll see how it goes. But this is a story that is haunting, about the implications of decisions made by courts." (In fact, Gosnell is accused of crimes that have never been sanctioned by any court, and appears to have been exploiting gaps in access for low-income women.) The point was this: Noonan, in keeping with the bigger antiabortion groups, doesn't want to talk about banning abortion in the first trimester, when it is overwhelmingly supported by Americans. They would rather change the subject to grislier, rarer, later procedures. Too bad for them that a growing number of state legislators aren't getting in line.

Idea for Supreme Court: Focus on law, not politics

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000

Are discriminatory laws, like big financial institutions, Too Big to Fail? After the statements of Supreme Court justices during yesterday's hearing on California Proposition 8, this is the single biggest unanswered -- and still unasked -- question in the fight for equal rights.

To appreciate how that single radical jurisprudential theory of Too Big to Fail connects issues as disparate as financial regulation and same-sex marriage, remember that the last few weeks has seen America's normally opaque government for the first time articulate that theory in public. As you may recall, the attorney general, the assistant attorney general and President Obama's nominee to head the Securities and Exchange have all admitted that prosecutors take into account external factors (macroeconomic effects, shareholder losses, etc.) when deciding whether to charge lawbreaking financial institutions with serious crimes.

Rove loves Ginsburg now?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:50:00 +0000

Conservatives may have fallen out of love with Chief Justice John Roberts, but they’ve also found an unlikely new hero: the Supreme Court’s most liberal justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That is, at least as far as they believe she provides cover for their argument against the Court recognizing marriage equality.

There were Karl Rove and Peggy Noonan on "This Week" on Sunday, gleefully seizing on Ginsburg’s prior statements about Roe to make an argument against Supreme Court recognition of minority rights in general. “Americans don't take it well and don't accept it as a resolution when their black-robed masters in Washington decide to put on them what they decide is the right thing,” said Noonan. “One of the great sins of Roe versus Wade, the abortion decision of 40 years ago, was that it decided everyone has to do it one way, instead of leaving it to the states. May I note, by the way, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a famous court liberal, her acknowledging very recently was in I think the Times today, that the Rove versus Wade decision, the abortion decision, had gone too far and was an overreach. That is an epic statement from an American liberal left jurist.”

Celebrated author, speechwriter and columnist Peggy Noonan: Obama made Pittsburgh depressing because he did not pass a stimulus bill

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:56:00 +0000

Peggy Noonan went to Pittsburgh and it made her sad, and a little scared. Everyone I talk to says Pittsburgh is lovely, but Peggy Noonan simply did not like the airport, or the airport hotel. (Maybe Peggy Noonan should've gone during the baseball regular season; PNC Park is supposed to be super nice.) This is all Obama's fault, because of the sequester. Also the federal tax code, which is "a killer of the spirit of guts ..." Guts have spirits.

A thing in the airport was broken:

I'm in Pittsburgh, making my way to the airport hotel. The people movers are broken and we pull our bags along the dingy carpet. There's an increasing sense in America now that the facades are intact but the machinery inside is broken.

Maybe once Michael Bloomberg is done fixing the escalator at Washington Union Station he can get started on the airport in Pittsburgh.

Do Republicans comprehend what sequestration is?

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:22:00 +0000

We all know sequestration is super boring and no one is paying attention to it, but our brave newspaper columnists have to press on and write about it nonetheless, so maybe we should forgive Peggy Noonan for being a little confused about the package of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts that will go into effect at midnight tonight.

In her Wall Street Journal column today, which thankfully lacks any attempts to read John Boehner's “vibrations,” Noonan ruminates at length about whom the American people will blame for the pain the sequester will inflict:

Everyone has been wondering how the public will react when the sequester kicks in. The American people are in the position of hostages who'll have to decide who the hostage-taker is. People will get mad at either the president or the Republicans in Congress. That anger will force one side to rethink or back down. Or maybe the public will get mad at both. [...] If the sequester brings chaos and discomfort, it's certainly possible the Republicans will be blamed. But it's just as possible President Obama will be.

Watching the Sunday shows so you don’t have to

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 19:45:00 +0000

Here's what I learned this morning on "the Sunday shows," the three network news panel programs that define the parameters of the national debate for elite Washington: No one wants the sequester to happen, if the sequester happens it will be because Barack Obama failed to show leadership, what we need is a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction, the sequester should happen but in a smarter way, video games may not cause violence but they are gross, and "Zero Dark Thirty" is the best film of the year in part because John McCain disliked it.

I don't watch the Sunday shows. Basically ever. I watch clips if something particularly stupid happened, but for the most part, you can get everything you need to know about what happens on these shows by reading the brilliant liveblog by the Huffington Post's Jason Linkins, America's foremost Sunday show interpreter. While no one should pay attention to these shows, as long as millions of Americans watch them under the mistaken impression that they're seeing serious discussions of our most pressing issues with our wisest media observers and most influential political leaders, they should probably be monitored.

The biggest losers (pundit edition)

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney weren’t the only ones with something on the line last night -- America’s greatest treasures, its political pundits and talking heads, had their reputations at stake as they waited to find out if their predictions and prognostications turned out to come true. Unfortunately for a lot of them, especially for many on the right side of the political spectrum, things didn’t go so well. But fortunately for them, being good at predicting things seems to not be a requirement of being a paid political predictor, so their jobs are probably safe. Here’s your guide to fine men and women of the Sunday shows and the opinion section who will likely see zero negative impact for their false prophecies.

Mitt Romney is going to win!

This was, of course, the biggest class of pundit losers, and includes almost every conservative Tweeter, blogger, columnist, and TV analyst. Almost all, en masse and despite the polls, predicted a Romney win. And what do these pundits know that the polls don't? Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan explained, “All the vibrations are right.” How so? Romney is “stealing” the thing while “we’re not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data." Her evidence: “yard signs” (there were apparently more for Romney than Obama), big Romney rallies, and “a person who is helping [Romney]” told her.

Sunday show roundup

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:48:00 +0000

With fewer than 7 weeks until the election, pols and pundits made a show of force on the Sunday talk shows:

On "Face the Nation," conservative op-ed writer and Romney critic Peggy Noonan said Republicans thanked her for her critical column in private:"I will tell you, Bob, it was very interesting. There was a lot of formal official and public blowback from the Romney campaign, from Romney surrogates, et cetera. What was interesting to me, however, was that privately, the constant communication I got was, thank you for saying that they need help at the Romney campaign, they need to be woken up, they need to raise their game."

Peggy Noonan is wrong about your birth control

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:30:00 +0000

Peggy Noonan recently magnanimously pronounced Sandra Fluke "not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist, and a fool." Why? Because "she really does think — and her party apparently thinks — that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school ... that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills."

Since Noonan has a sizable platform and this apparently needs to be said roughly once a week, a quick review: Controlling one's fertility is an economic issue. So is the overall cost and provision of healthcare through private insurance -- paid for by "other people's" money, your money, your employer's, in a pool to lower risk, which is how it largely works in this country. Unintended pregnancy (and ovarian cysts, in the case of Fluke's testimony) still costs that pool far more than preventing that unintended pregnancy. (As for "a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose," such doubt must hit home for the ever-rambling Noonan.)