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Peg … Don’t Worry … Be Jolly!
Friday at the WSJ, Peggy Noonan’s weekly article is titled, “My Sister, My Uncle and Trump.”
It is notable in much of what Ms. Noonan reveals in the article about her sense of things, her outlook, her instincts … behind the scenes. She has not revealed any of this previously in her own WSJ writings (to my knowledge) as her bias heretofore has decidedly been very never-Trumpish. She is a very talented writer with terrific observation skills. It is my belief that she has allowed her fear to override her natural instincts. But my sense is, she’s moving toward the President.
Throughout the article, relating discussions with her sister and uncle, she makes the case for President Trump. She understands the reasoning, the rationale, the feeling of freedom … and yes, joy … that is unleashed with pushing back on the entrenched elitists attempting to control our lives. An example from the article:
But they were looking at their country and seeing bad trend lines. In choosing Mr. Trump they were throwing a Hail Mary pass, but they didn’t sound desperate. They always sounded jolly. And I realized they hadn’t sounded jolly about politics in a while.
Below the jolliness I sense the spirit of the jailbreak. They were finally allowed to be renegades. They were playing the part of the rebel in a country that had long cast them as the boring Americans—stodgy, dronelike, nothing to say. The lumpen working and middle class, dependable heartland-type boobs. Everyone else got to act up and complain. They were just there to pay the taxes, love the country, send the boys to war.
Now they were pushing back, and hell it was fun. It was like joining a big, beautiful anti-BS movement. It was like they were telling the entire political class, “I’m gonna show a little juice, baby, brace yourself.”
[Um … Peggy … it’s President Trump. Respect the Office and all.]
But at the end, she ultimately retreats and lets the fear (of what, Peg? Donald Trump? C’mon, woMan!) take control of her again and she aches to try to articulate her pearl-clutching feelings … but, but, but … “unreadiness.” Oh, for Pete’s sake. You want to talk about “unreadiness” Peg? At the same WSJ today, your colleague Michael Blechman writes “Liberalism Isn’t What It Used to Be.” These Socialist Democrats ain’t your grandfather’s Democrats. These folks hate America. Even Creepy Uncle Joe Biden is going to be chewed up and spit out before this primary is over … by his supposed friends. This is what “the unreadiness of the White House” looks like. If you love your country, you will board any train that beats this beast back.
So … let it go, Peg. Fear is crippling. It robs you of your good natural instincts. Jump on the train. Keep America Great. Heck, you could offer your services to the President Trump re-election campaign and let Kim Strassel take your place at the WSJ. Think how proud of you that your sister and uncle will be. Think how much America will benefit. Imagine … what President Ronald Reagan would think about you doing this, throwing caution to the wind (based upon your gut instinct) and being jolly, a “renegade,” and playing the part of a “rebel in the Country” that needs exactly that right now! And you can once again help to add articulate words of hope and joy for the President of the United States to speak.
So take a running jump into the pool! The water’s fine. And the setting reminds us of President Reagan, the last GOP renegade. You’ll feel right at home with the rest of us sisters, brothers, and uncles.
Published in General
Noonan has finally realized that Trump is the revenge of the normals. And he will likely be re-elected because the Democrats no longer even pretend to tolerate much less respect normal sensibilities.
I’m with Peggy Noonan with all of her nuances.
We shall see who the Dems nominate.
I don’t know that there’s much more barrel bottom to scrape.
I so hope you are right. Trump is just what our grand old party has needed to appeal to real America rather than a small room full of intellectuals who quote 18th century philosophers and disdain the common man.
Today’s Democrats are like a slow motion Khmer Rouge they seek to utterly destroy all opposing thought. Year Zero, it won’t end well if they regain power.
I just read her column. It is amusing in that she accurately describes the reactions that I also saw to Trump’s candidacy in 2016. A good friend of mine is a financial planner, and his initial reaction to Trump’s running for office was, “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Today my friend is an ardent supporter. And no wonder. Things are going well. And Trump has done a lot of things that are getting everyone’s attention–jobs for convicts being the most recent one.
She worries that his office is in “chaos” in part because of his personality and in part because the office is understaffed, which she says is his fault. That is not an objective job evaluation. What were the goals? Were they achieved? That’s what matters. I say Trump must be doing something right.
Readers of her columns need to realize that she also trashed GW. I stopped reading her columns at that time and have read only a few of them ever since. One minute she liked him, the next she despised him. It was wild. And it made me realize that Peggy Noonan is a celebrity, and a lot of celebrities let the attention go to their head. Put aside your own feelings about GW for a second-the fact is, one minute she was his most stalwart supporter, the next minute she was his scold. It was just plain weird to read.
I love The West Wing. It’s a great show and very funny, and it’s a wonderful window into the thinking of the Democratic Party. If you’ve ever seen any of it, you’d understand Peggy Noonan a lot better. She was a major contributor to that show. Martin Sheen is her idea of a perfect president.
I find that extra amusing because frankly, there are some scenes in which he treats his wife and daughters and other women in ways that I think are completely unacceptable. But Democrat women excuse this type of unchivalrous behavior as normal for Democrat men. It’s all really weird psychology. Yuck. It’s really obvious that they trust the good intentions of a Democrat man just because he’s a Democrat. But it’s really funny to listen to these people criticize Trump’s manners. Goodness, he and Martin Sheen are two peas in a pod. They are truly a lot alike. Some of that is generational, some of it is New York and Los Angeles. The only difference is really their political affiliation. At least that’s what I think. Sheen is obviously a better actor than Trump. But if someone didn’t write Sheen’s lines for him, he would sound as “factless” as Trump sounds sometimes. :-)
This is who Peggy Noonan is. Not a great intellect. She just follows her whims and heart. There does not appear to be an objective thought anywhere in her head. She’s an entertaining writer. That’s really it.
Here is the article. https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-sister-my-uncle-and-trump-11561069936
I do not have Peggy Noonan’s fine touch. She is speaking for me here:
“He of course has big things going against him. Among them: From the beginning he has had peace and prosperity—both relative, both provisional, but he has them—and it doesn’t show. They’re everything. He shouldn’t be polling in the high 30s and low 40s, he should be breaking 50. He’s not.
“One reason is that in his speeches he rarely tries to persuade the uncertain, he only tells the certain they’re right. He does antagonism and aggrievement. But the American people are not only about those things, and young people with searching minds are not those things. He needs to give a sense of striving for something larger, if only to provide the idea we canstrive for anything together, that we’re not so blasted to bits that we can never again have a common mission. He will not do this because he doesn’t have the tools, and thinks it’s for sissies.
“He has many possible supporters but he exhausts them with his oddness. His embarrassments and crudities, his making trouble that doesn’t have to be made, his sloppiness and lack of professionalism—all give a sense that there’s no there there if trouble comes. He exhausts you not into submission but into ultimate aversion.”
Doesn’t matter. A vote for any Democrat is a vote for the fringe leftist agenda. It’s a vote to give more power to Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Occasional-Cortex. It’s a vote for racist, libertine, Jew-hating baby-killers.
Anyone who calls himself a conservative and yet votes for a Democrat is no conservative at all.
She lives deep in the elitist bubble. These people all get their news from the same anti-Trump sources. She complains that he’s not polling higher while ignoring the media brainwashing — because she herself (like so many Nevers) has been brainwashed by the media they consume to believe the worst about President Trump.
They have been mind-controlled. They need an intervention.
Agreed. The point is … Peggy and others … direct your same questions, attention and yes, fears of the sitting President … and apply them to the democrat agenda. There is not a sane pro-American in the lot. Their slogan might as well be … Make America A Socialist Third World Country … and it would be more truthful.
President Trump is in the midst of his third year in the Oval Office. All of your hypothetical, imaginary, theoretical fears have been proven as wrong as can be. Keep it up and you’re gonna be rightfully labeled as the new “Birthers”. In his 8th year in office, you risk still claiming that he’s not ‘fit’ and is ‘unready’. A decidedly unbecoming look.
And … during this entire time, you’ll continue to choose not to be ‘Jolly’. Which your idol President Reagan never failed to be.
Jump in the pool already!
Indeed. There is no rational thought process involved at all. Pure OMB conditioned response.
I appreciate that you feel this way and believe what you do. I would ask you to consider whether if it is possible for someone to have a principled conservative aversion to President Trump, and not be labeled as part of the GOPe. See http://ricochet.com/631823/four-years-ago-june-16-2015/
By what principle do you support the party of baby-killers, Jew-haters, gun-grabbers, racists, pedophiles and warmongers?
She lost me when she went after GW so often and so bitterly.
So we really are the ones we’ve been waiting for?
Noonan’s situation mirrors that of both New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Charles Blow. Dowd routinely has turned over her Thanksgiving week column to her brother in past years, whose political positions have been far to the right of his better-known sister, while Blow penned a column four years ago about traveling to visit his brother in Texas and ending up at a gun show, where he learned those who attend shows like that aren’t all homicidal maniacs.
However, in all three cases, the feelings of the family members are related, but not absorbed (and in Peggy’s case, given her pre-2008 election column that all but endorsed Barack Obama over John McCain, it’s taken quite a while in her column-writing career for her to even let on she has members of her own family who are likely more in tune with her readership than she is).
I suspect, pure speculation… that Noonan drinks ( wine, I’d guess) . I mean, she’s a writer, Irish and erratic. You don’t write like that without a little performance enhancement. She has some real insights, and unlike most never Trumpers, she gets the reason why people like and support Trump.
But she also is that guy ( or gal) at the bar who makes compelling sense, and then goes off to the point where it negates her previous insights, and you find yourself confused and befuddled. How can someone who can make so much sense get obvious things so wrong?
Example: he should be polling highly because of real- world results like the economy. No mention of the incessant snark and denigration, false charges, hostile interpretations of otherwise benign statements or actions. What planet is she living on? Oh riiight, New York Eliteville. Add some wine and you get Peg.
There’s a reason I refer to her as Bandwagon Peggy. It’s interesting that she now thinks this is the bandwagon to jump on.
This!
I find it fascinating and disheartening that so many people gloss over the constant negative coverage since election day 2016 as if that might not be a contributor to low poll numbers. It seems that part of the media/Dem strategy is just to wear out the electorate with constant harping just so they vote for the “normality” of a Dem prez.
Conversely, the press continues to talk about the scandal free days of 2008-2016, pretends that paying off Fusion and Steele wasn’t buying Foreign intel, and discovers that Biden has a problematic past.
It’s all about the filter.
I suspect Peggy is trying to regain elderly readership by revealing she has relatives who are not only elderly but enthusiastically voted for Trump. As an elderly elitist, Peggy continues the tradition of American elites who long for the respect of Europeans (dream on) and hopes we will vote for John Hickenlooper.
There are a number of pundits besides Peggy who are trying to convince themselves right now that four years of a Hickelooper or a wacky Uncle Joe wouldn’t be all that bad, compared to enduring four more years of Trump in office.
David French, subbing for Jim Geraghty on ‘Three Martini Lunch’ on Tuesday was pretty much saying the Democrats’ ‘Medicare for All’ push was just a bait-and-swtich on their own gullible base, and whoever gets the nomination won’t try to do that if they win. But even if they did, Cocaine Mitch would block them in the Senate. (I think French has come in for too much abuse as far as being the poster child for the #NeverTrump crowd — he hasn’t thrown away his past beliefs on things like tax cuts or Supreme Court nomination tactics, as someone like Bill Kristol has — but there was a definite whistling-past-the-graveyard vibe here, as if he was trying to convince himself “Hey, I could live with this“, if the Democrats don’t nominate someone from the Bernie/Swalwell/Warren/de Blaiso wing of the current primary field.)
Just to add to the above, French does have a point if your an Evangelical about losing the moral high ground to complain about future Democratic candidates’ patterns of behavior if you’ve gone 110 percent in on Trump. But at the same time, if you’re holding whoever the Democrats pick to a lower standard than Trump because they are Democrats (see George Will’s column a year ago telling Republicans they needed to turn the entire Congress over to the Democrats to teach the current GOP legislators and Trump a lesson), you’re really valuing your own desire for moral purity of your own side over any real-world outcome.
It’s time for Republicans and conservatives to come to grips with what has happened to our left and what it means. They must be defeated again and again until the kids grow up, if they can. If we can’t hold them off while we gradually return toward the constitution, we’ll go the way of every, that’s every, no exceptions, civilization in history; centralization until the takers dominate, shrink and can’t change.
The current situation is analogous to 1972, when the far left wing of the Democrats pretty much seized control of the national party and not only shut down the Southern Democrats at the DNC Convention that year, but also shut out Richard Dailey and his Chicago people as payback for the police treatment of the far left protestors at the ’68 DNC Convention.
They did that because they were sure Nixon only won in a fluke in 1968, and the Tide of History was on their side, boosted by the new law allowing 18-20 year olds to vote. So they didn’t need to listen to anyone else in order to win.
That takeover by the angry left played out in slower motion than the current one, since presidential campaigns didn’t run for 2 1/2-3 years back then. But the mindset of the left 48 years ago is the same as it is today — we just get to see and hear more of it because of the longer cycle, and the rise of social media and unabashedly partisan cable news channels and other media sites. And as with ’72, it would take a major rebuff by voters to make the left, if not change how they feel about the rest of the country, at least go back to being quiet about what they’re really thinking (and while Trump’s not winning 49 states like Nixon did, if he actually did gain some states the Democrats now see as reliable Blue bastions, it would spark some major post-election infighting over the direction of the party).
@franco … you have expertly described Peg. And Steely Dan wrote that song just for her!
It also describes Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 24 years in the Senate, where he could pick apart everything wrong with Democrats’ social programs in his writings or on the Sunday morning talk shows … and would then go out and vote for the very bills he just demolished. He’d provide the world’s best talking points or sound bites for opponents of the plans (“Boob bait for Bubbas” and “Defining Decency Down” were two just from the Clinton years), and then vote 180 degrees opposite of what he had just said.
I have considered this “principled” aversion. I like analogies and metaphors. Let’s say that this “principled” aversion was like a garment.
In my opinion, before May 26, 2016, this garment was a full outfit. After this date, it became a fig leaf.
After November 8, 2016, there was no garment at all any longer. Such folks were left naked and ashamed.
In the middle of 2019, this naked and ashamed look is really embarrassing. For example, Bill Kristol is being almost entirely funded by a radical anti-American leftist (I repeat myself) …
So with the Dems you either vote for the overt, open and proud Socialist, or you vote for the closeted, masked , socialist. I don’t see where anyone who calls himself a conservative has any doubts about what to do.
Trump has governed as conservatively as anyone since Reagan. That’s the reality.
It is taken for granted that DJT is low on the scales of moral values. I’m not so certain. His current decision to back off an attack on Iran is a case in point. They blew up an unmanned drone…expensive unmanned drone, yes, but still unmanned. President Trump called off the retaliatory attack at the last minute because he saw that response as disproportional when he was advised that at least 150 mostly innocent Iranians would have died because of the attack. So I have to ask, at what point does a man’s morality get judged by a bragging comment about young women rather than a deep concern for human life? I have heard much discussion about Trump’s latest decision on Iran. But I can say he made me very proud. It showed me a strength of character, a certainty of his own values, for which he will never be given credit by Peggy Noonan or Mona Charen, and, of course, so many more.