Homecoming Queen of the WSJ Conventional Wisdom Parade Peggy Noonan has a big sad, because she was licking her lips over the chance to be mean about Crazy Joe Biden instead of that bookworm Hildebeast’s cankles, for a change. “The Biden Eclipse and the Trump Plateau“:
Something big happened at the Democratic debate. It didn’t have to do with Hillary Clinton besting Bernie Sanders or Jim Webb. What she had to do, after the long, battering summer, was show she is up to the battle, ready for it, capable—that she can do this. She did. She was crisp, lively, a presence. In demonstrating that she is up to the race she deprived Vice President Joe Biden of his rationale for getting into it. People say he didn’t have a rationale but of course he did, it just wasn’t something he could say or leak. His rationale, at 72 and having recently experienced great loss, was: The party’s in trouble, the front-runner can’t win, she’s too encrusted by scandal, in an act of heroic sacrifice I’m going to swoop in and save the day…
Too bad! Mr. Biden would have added a layer of affection to a so-far cold enterprise. He would have added an element of old-time normality to the field. He would have been as entertaining in his way as Donald Trump, and it would have been instructive to see how Democrats respond to the entrance of President Obama’s two-term vice president. Who has the party’s heart?…
Luck matters in politics as in life and Mrs. Clinton has now been lucky twice in a short time. Kevin McCarthy blunted Republican arrows on Benghazi, then Bernie Sanders blunted arrows by saying the email scandal doesn’t matter. To many of his supporters, presumably, it did. Now all Democrats have permission not to care. It’s nice to get a pass like that!
And now the one candidate who could have derailed her will likely not get in. She is on a roll…
While we’re sweeping out the bar, someone check if Maureen Dowd has passed out face-down in the ladies’ room, again.
But this is the Noonan nugget that’s really got all us moonbats in an uproar, for good reason:
The only thing I feel certain of is how we got here. There are many reasons we’re at this moment, but the essential political one is this: Mr. Obama lowered the bar. He was a literal unknown, an obscure former state legislator who hadn’t completed his single term as U.S. senator, but he was charismatic, canny, compelling. He came from nowhere and won it all twice. All previously prevailing standards, all usual expectations, were thrown out the window…
Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog hits the tenpenny nail on the head:
… Who really lowered the bar? I’d say it was the party that not only reveres an ex-actor and insult comic named Ronald Reagan but seriously considered him as a possible presidential candidate when he’d been in elective office less than two years. I’d say it’s the party that put George W. Bush and Dan Quayle on two tickets each. I’d say it’s the party that gave respectful consideration to presidential aspirants such as Pat Robertson, Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain. And I say it’s the party that made Sarah Palin its vice presidential candidate, then made her a superstar.
If the bar’s low, Peggy, your party’s voters are the reason.
Noonan, of course, didn’t just somehow overlook Reagan’s career — she was a prime enabler, who first made her GOP celebrity bones writing “morning in America” pap for that second-banana aged-out-of-Hollywood-pretty-boy figurehead. “No, no — Gary Cooper for President, Ronald Reagan for best friend!” we joked. Those were more innocent days.
Anyone can run for president now, and in the future anyone will. In 2020 and 2024 we’ll look back on 2016 as the sober good ol’ days. “At least Trump had business experience. He wasn’t just a rock star! He wasn’t just a cable talk-show host!”
Or a B-movie actor, Peggy! To paraphrase Mr. Pierce: Clio the Proclaimer, Muse of History, needs that alcoholic anesthesia more than you ladies right now.
Open Thread: Someone Pry That Bottle Out of Ms Noonan’s GraspPost + Comments (99)