Peggy Noonan Gets It! Do You?

Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite political pundits. She is a conservative speechwriter and committed Republican from the Reagan years. But she is not some blowhard partisan who is unwilling to look at the faults and flaws in her own side (like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, etc.). It comes as no surprise that she is not a Hillary fan. But the beauty and clarity of her writing is such that even if I don't agree with her conclusion I can appreciate her line of reasoning and her perspective. Her column this morning illuminates Hillary Clinton's candidacy in a way that makes me wish I'd written it myself:

"But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape. Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves."

Her description of how the press may feel in covering Clinton is how many of us now feel about President Bush. We are so over him and his presidency and the mendacity of those he has surrounded himself with that we are eager to move ahead with someone new, just NOT someone named Clinton. I am so fearful of another four years of cynicism that I just cannot bring myself to support her. The press and the country are obviously ready to move past oligarchy if she would just get the hell out of the way, er, I mean, step aside.