“Mr. Bush, as we all know, has a tendency to mispronounce words, like a bright and nervous boy trying to show the admissions director that he's well-read. His syntax is highly individualistic. He's bouncy and affectionate and funny in a joshy way as opposed to a witty way.
But he is, almost transparently, a good man. He cares about children; he wants government to be honest; he wants to protect his country from bad guys; he wants to stand up for those who protect us. He is a good governor, he has a natural sympathy for those--the hardware store owner and the woman who starts her own housecleaning company--who are taxed and regulated to death in America. He thinks this abusive. He wants to liberate them. If he becomes president--when, I believe, he becomes president--he will drive conservatives to distraction with his tendency to think with his heart, and not his brain.”
In her 10/23/2000 WSJ opinion piece, subtitled “George Bush is Reaganesque. Now America Knows it”, she wrote of George Bush:
“George W. Bush not only won the debate Wednesday night, but in a way that damaged a central assumption of the Gore campaign. That assumption is that Mr. Bush doesn't know very much. But Mr. Bush demonstrated that he knows a lot, and that his common-sense views and observations can be spoken in a common-sense language accessible to all. He sat back in his chair, spoke of America's role in the world, and made it clear that that role should be grounded in moral modesty and strategic realism. He suggested that the various forces at work in the world should be met not with American hubris but with moderation, and with attention to the kind of example we can, as a great power, set. He seemed thoughtful, knowledgeable, and he buried the memory of the less-seasoned Gov. Bush who one day in Boston flailed when pressed by an interviewer who insisted he name the ruler of Pakistan.”
The following week Peggy scribbled a column entitled, “The Loyal Opposition” and further glorified the future Nuremberg-class war criminal:
“….He is a good man. He'd be a better man if his life had been harder. But you can't have everything…..I was thinking the other night: Mr. Bush seems the least radical politician in America. He lives in the middle of the land of the possible. He is by nature moderate, by habit and thinking a moderate man…..”
Evidently prognostication and character assessments are not Ms. Noonan’s strengths. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to conclude that George Bush was the best man to serve as the “democratically elected” front man for the criminal enterprise we call a government, and that Ms. Noonan is a highly paid shill for our deeply entrenched oligarchy.
In February 2007, the WSJ published her, “Happy Birthday, Mr. Reagan”, subtitled “He was a man of determination and good cheer---one of America’s greats”:
“Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" was CBS's White House correspondent during the Reagan administration, and I asked her what she remembered most. She said, "We reporters would stake out 'the driveway' to see who was going in to see the president. In the first few years there was a stream of people who came to argue against his budget-cutting proposals. They would march up that driveway in a huff, smoke coming out of their nostrils as they rehearsed their angry arguments about why he was destroying the lives of poor people, or schoolkids.
‘I remember specifically a group of mayors from big cities, livid about cuts to their welfare programs, school-lunch programs, etc. They were there to give the president a scolding; they were going to tell him. And in they'd march. Two hours later, out they came. We were all ready with the cameras and the mikes to get their version of the telling off. But they were all little lambs, subdued. . . . He had charmed them. . . . The mayors told us Reagan agreed with them. That they had persuaded him. . . .
Thirty minutes later Larry Speakes was in the press room telling us the numbers would not in fact change. The mayors had 'misunderstood' the president. Still, I'll bet anything if you talked to those mayors today, they would tell you Reagan was a great guy.’"
Peggy is right. America needs more “greats” who can subdue people like "little lambs" when they dare to demand we use public money to provide assistance to the poor or to hungry children. One with the guile to defuse the anger of those fighting for social justice with lies and false promises most certainly qualifies as a “great guy”.
When Gerald Ford died, Ms. Peggy opined in her 12/29/06 WSJ piece, “Ford Without Tears,”
“The first is that when he pardoned Richard Nixon, he threw himself on a grenade to protect the country from shame, from going too far. It was an act of deep political courage, and it was shocking. Almost everyone in the country hated it, including me. But Ford was right. Richard Nixon had been ruined, forced to resign, run out of town on a rail. There was nothing to be gained--nothing--by his being broken on the dock. What was then the new left would never forgive Ford. They should thank him on their knees that he deprived history of proof that what they called their idealism was not untinged by sadism.”
Thank you, Peggy, for having the courage to be the voice of reason. Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a noble act indeed. Imagine if he hadn’t cut a deal with Alexander Haig to become president in exchange for the pardon. We might actually have seen a US President tried, convicted and imprisoned, for crimes both foreign and domestic. (Let’s not forget Nixon’s secret, illegal bombings in Cambodia that annihilated 600,000 human beings). Compliments of Gerald Ford, the US ruling elite can continue running rough shod over the Constitution and committing mass murder with impunity.
Peggy offered us this gem on the notoriously reactionary Rick Santorum in November, 2006. She called it, “We Need His Kind”:
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