Whatever Happened to Peggy Noonan’s Brain?

Long time readers of this blog will understand that I have become increasingly nonplussed by Peggy Noonan’s utterings these last ten years or so.

But, this just cuts it.

I keep thinking about the dynamics the past few years between the president and what used to be called official Washington. That relationship is ugly and broken, but it could have been otherwise.

When he came in he was a shock to the system, almost literally. He didn’t act like a liberal or a Democrat, or a conservative or a Republican. It was not clear he thought, as opposed to felt. It was clear he was emotional—lots of resentments, wounds and complaints. As the first year went by and then the second the stories were out there, sometimes from his own aides. He doesn’t read, doesn’t like his briefings, he’s spending time tweeting and watching television. He’s picking fights with celebrities and haranguing the Boy Scout Jamboree about our rotten media. He’s firing people or they’re resigning—the chief of staff, chief strategist, then the generals. The travel ban, Charlottesville, he’s a “stable genius,” he’s shoving the prime minister of Montenegro and blowing up immigration talks.

Pretty quickly and to the entire edifice of Washington, it became clear Donald Trump was not a Jacksonian shock to the system, which is what his supporters think he was. He was a daily system overload, a one-man frying of the grid.

Frankly, I can’t possibly think of a way she would get this more wrong than she has, here, though how she arrived at this juncture is certainly understandable if you know something of history… particularly recent history.

Several things are made clear by these comments of hers.

She still doesn’t understand how Trump won, doesn’t understand his supporters, doesn’t understand the rank-and-file of the Republican Party, and has very little understanding of, and little care for, what happens outside Washington. But, at least she’s honest about her elitist desires.

Peggy Noonan has in fact become part of the problem that I described in discussing the example of George Will some time ago. Put more succinctly and somewhat euphemistically, she has become part of the swamp.

For many years Peggy Noonan was part of establishment Washington, and in particular part of the establishment GOP. When the establishment GOP was running things, or even when the Democrats were running things, she did just fine. She is a talented writer, a point which even Ronald Reagan recognized.

She lost her way however, when the establishment GOP came up with Jeb Bush as it’s obviously chosen nominee, something that she obviously felt she couldn’t support. She was smart enough to sense that there was something wrong with the choice, but couldn’t quite bring herself to identify why.

Being solidly establishment GOP, and establishment Washington, she couldn’t bear to bring herself to overtly criticize their chosen critter. She sensed (and I suspect correctly) that she wouldn’t be invited to as many Washington cocktail parties as she used to be, if she correctly identified why Jeb Bush should not have been the choice.

Then, when somebody else outside of the Washington establishment won, the whole thing unraveled for her.

Don Surber notes all of this:

Noonan’s piece, “How Trump Lost Half of Washington,” is her latest attack “not about policy [but] behavior,” which condemns it to the bin labeled Personal Attack.

Don Surber

Oh, she couches it in some high-minded self-righteous talk but nearly four years after he formally announced for president, she still cannot argue against his policies. The ad hominem attacks continue because she will not engage him in policy, lest her true beliefs become public knowledge.

And what are those? Surber, who usually gets things right, continues that trend here, in brutal fashion, but quite fair;

“He destabilized the entire town.”

No. The town’s Road Rage against him comes from their refusal to accept the will of the people and the policies that serve America and not Washington.

She is rooting for Democrats to offer a safe choice who will calm the waters, this shaming the legacy of Ronald Reagan for whom she once worked. Oh well, she always said Dan Rather was her favorite boss.

Hers is a cry from Versailles for Sloppy Joe Biden to save them from this Orange Man who wants to Make America Great Again.

Biden’s slogan is “America’s Coming Back Like We Used To Be.”

By America, he means the people who chatted with Zbig at cocktail parties.

Unfortunately so does Peg Noonan.

One almost feels pity for the woman because clearly, the message around establishment Washington DC that Noonan has for so long considered herself a vital part of, is if you say anything kind about Trump…. or God forbid you actually work for him, your career is most certainly over.

So it is that she finds herself between a rock and a hard place. Not that she’s alone in that position of course. Bill Kristol, Michael Medved, Mitt Romney, the late John McCain, to a somewhat lesser extent, Jonah Goldberg… All Share in that position, all being driven by the desire for establishment Washington to be re-established.

Noonan, along with the rest of the people that I’ve listed here still cannot understand, ( or will not admit they understand) Trump was not the cause of their demise but the result of it. The American voter long since has declared establishment Washington dead.

And Peggy Noonan should understand that better than most but doesn’t. If she had thought about it for any amount of time she would have remembered that establishment Washington wasn’t too pleased about her former boss, Ronald Reagan either, and for precisely the same reasons that she holds Donald Trump in contempt now.

The desk in the oval office wasn’t even cold yet from his having left it before Reagan’s legacy was being torn down by establishment Washington. (Hey, Peggy, when’s the last time you argued for supply-side economics? For actually reducing the size of government?)

That started the American voter down the road of not trusting establishment Washington.

Clearly, that’s the establishment’s hope today, that once Trump goes away, they will be able to put things together and make them the way they were before Trump showed up, and Peggy Noonan, along with them. But, as Don Surber says…

Noonan’s column is like a plantation owner in the 1870s longing for a return to the Antebellum South.

Nope. The Old South failed. Now Old Washington has failed too. We are not going back. No amount of personal attacks on the president will change that.