My Peggy Noonan Moment

In the past year, I have stopped caring what former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan thinks, about much of anything. There are several reasons for this, her trashing of Sarah Palin during the election being one of them. This troubles me, because Noonan is one of those women whom I truly with to admire. Really. But she keeps coming up with reasons for me to conclude that Der Tommissar might be right about her (which he is about most things anyway, so...).

The latest sizable egg she has laid, is this one:

A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night. By the end of it Barack Obama had become president... Years ago I wrote of an Italian woman in my neighborhood who made spaghetti every day. When I asked how you tell it's done, she showed me: You take a strand and fling it against the wall. If it's done, it sticks. If it's not done, it falls off the wall down the side of the stove. You keep flinging till one sticks. At the end of the day that is Obama's recovery plan. Cash infusions for the banks, fling. Tax increases, thwack. Pork -- excuse me, public investment -- splat. When we look back years from now, we'll see what stuck.

The true measure of greatness, then, is the ability to spend other people's money, and get a standing ovation for it.

Really, if you're going to adopt a view that mystifies the people with whom you have been of like mind for most of your adult life, you should at least leave the conversation better than you found it. Barring that, there are those who have something to say, and those who have to say something.
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