Peggy Noonan is some Democrats favorite conservative columnist -- Really, I've heard more than one say, "well of all the conservative columnists, she's at most tolerable and writes well."
Those people must immediately read Charles Pierce's dissection (dare I say evisceration) of Noonan's Bush Library ceremony column.
Noonan sees the "modest, humorous, proud but unassuming, and essentially philosophical" Bush as an
antidote to Obama-to the imperious I, to the inability to execute, to the endless interviews and the imperturbable drone, to the sense that he is trying to teach us, like an Ivy League instructor taken aback by the backwardness of his students. And there's the unconscious superiority.
Yes. She really did write that. But wait. It gets worse: She writes that Obama's speech at the Library:
veered into current policy disputes, using Mr. Bush's failed comprehensive immigration reform to buttress his own effort. That was manipulative, graceless and typical.
Pierce quotes what Obama said about immigration at the Library:
Seven years ago, President Bush restarted an important conversation by speaking with the American people about our history as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And even though comprehensive immigration reform has taken a little longer than any of us expected, I am hopeful that this year, with the help of Speaker Boehner and some of the senators and members of Congress who are here today, that we bring it home - for our families, and our economy, and our security, and for this incredible country that we love. And if we do that, it will be in large part thanks to the hard work of President George W. Bush.
Noonan's repulsive distortion of what Obama actually said is one of the most dishonest, bitter and malicious things I've read in a long history of malicious right wing opinions.
She goes on:
What was nice was that all of them-the Bush family, the Carters and Clintons-seemed like the old days. "The way we were." They were full of endurance, stamina, effort. Also flaws, frailty, mess. But they weren't . . . creepy.
Yes. He's "creepy." Unlike you, Lady of the Dolphins. Oh and glad you're nostalgic about the Clintons -- didn't you describe Hillary as ""a squat and grasping woman?"
And finally, the coup de grace from Pierce commenter Cameron Kelly, altering Noonan ever so slightly:
They were full of endurance, stamina, effort. Also flaws, frailty, mess. But they weren't.....Negroes.
Indeed, Noonan.
Update: From Regular Pierce Poster Barry Friedman, at the top of Pierce's comments -- Barry's best Noonan Impersonation. Brilliant stuff:
What hurts me—not physically, but metaphorically, rhetorically, to (she taps her heart)—is the disdain some have for this man, a good, wonderful family man and someone who put down the bottle and picked up, —how do I say this?—God. His God. All of our God, even if you believe in another one. How can you not want to wrap your soul around that story? It’s something Democrats—how do I say this?—don’t have. Maybe their arms are too small, maybe—how do I say this?—they don’t see the soul in which to hug. All I know is they’re afraid—they seem to be afraid, I should say, uh--wow, this is hard, because I don’t really know— to show love. It’s a kinder, gentler love they’re lacking. And it makes me—how do I say this?—sad. And I grieve."