Grow Up Peggy

With friends like these...

So, I notice the title of Peggy Noonan's latest column and am immediately suspicious:  "Americans Vote for Maturity"   Hmmm, I think I know where this is headed.

But, I'm surprised.  After making a couple of overhead points about the increasing ineffectiveness of negative advertising, as well as the ubiquity of microphones and cameras, the balance of the first half of the article is devoted chiefly to taking President Obama to task for his somewhat petulant press conference on Wednesday afternoon.  She even mentions that it dawns on her that he will likely make a very poor former president.  So far, so good.

But after luring me in with this, she reveals the real point of her piece.  And the real point is...?  You guessed it, the Tea Party is still a problem and Sarah Palin is an even bigger one.

Ahhhh! 

First, her take on the Tea Party:

What the tea party, by which I mean members and sympathizers, has to learn from 2010 is this: Not only the message is important but the messenger.

Even in a perfect political environment, those candidates who were conservative but seemed strange, or unprofessional, or not fully qualified, or like empty bags skittering along the street, did not fare well. The tea party provided the fire and passion of the election, and helped produce major wins—Marco Rubio by 19 points! But in the future the tea party is going to have to ask itself: Is this candidate electable? Will he pass muster with those who may not themselves be deeply political but who hold certain expectations as to the dignity and stature required of those who hold office?

This is the key question the tea party will face in 2012. And it will be hard to answer it, because the tea party doesn't have leaders or conventions, so the answer will have to bubble up from a thousand groups, from 10,000 leaders.

Electable doesn't mean not-conservative. Electable means mature, accomplished, stable—and able to persuade.

Does Ms. Noonan mean by "mature, accomplished, stable--and able to persuade", candidates like Bob Dole and John McCain?  You know, the kind of candidate of which she and her sort regularly approve, but who lose nevertheless.  Moreover, has she already forgotten that those inclined to follow her kind of advice were very early supporters of the candidacy of Governor Crist as a sure bet in Florida and derided the Tea Party for pushing its favorite Marco Rubio?  It appears to me that their record of picking winners is no better than the Tea Party's.  And their record of picking loyal Republicans is worse.

Which brings me to her comments about Sarah Palin.  Here's what she wrote:

Conservatives talked a lot about Ronald Reagan this year, but they have to take him more to heart, because his example here is a guide. All this seemed lost last week on Sarah Palin, who called him, on Fox, "an actor." She was defending her form of political celebrity—reality show, "Dancing With the Stars," etc. This is how she did it: "Wasn't Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn't he in 'Bedtime for Bonzo,' Bozo, something? Ronald Reagan was an actor."

Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I'll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.

The point is not "He was a great man and you are a nincompoop," though that is true. The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the world.

Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service. And you need actual talent: You have to be able to bring people in and along. You can't just bully them, you can't just assert and taunt, you have to be able to persuade.

Well, I watched the interview to which Noonan is referring.  It was with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.  It was the one where Palin called the media a bunch of "corrupt bastards".  Remember that?  I can tell you that Noonan's take on it is a complete misrepresentation.

What really happened is that at one point in the interview Wallace brought up Palin's appearance on a "reality show", as he disparagingly called it.  His point was to probe her about whether or not she might be diminishing her stature by doing such things.  At first she balked at it being called a reality show, but then she shifted gears and defended herself by pointing out that Reagan had been similarly derided for doing such things, for being an actor, for being an actor who appeared in ridiculous movies such as "Bedtime for Bonzo".

By bringing him up in this context, and this was obvious to any honest observer, Palin was in no way seeking to diminish Reagan.  On the contrary, she was wrapping herself in Reagan.  They, that is, the "smart set", that is, every Democrat and many Republicans as well, routinely dismissed him as nothing more than a B-movie actor who was skilled at comfortably reading 3x5 cards in front of an audience.  Reagan accepted it all with grace and nevertheless rose above them all.  Rose so far above them all, in fact, that he went on to become and remain a most beloved president.

But not only did Peggy Noonan misrepresent the interview, she then used that misrepresentation to make "a larger point" that is also untrue.  Sarah Palin did not begin as a TV star who hoped to succeed in politics.  Rather, she was, and is, to this point anyway, a successful politician, who, like Reagan, started at the bottom and rose to the top (PTA president, mayor, governor, vice-presidential candidate).  She is now capitalizing on that success in order to make a few bucks and secure a better life for herself and her family, and maybe, just maybe, position herself to try her hand at electoral politics once again at some point in the future.

I suspect Ronald Reagan, were he still with us, would not only wrap his arms around Sarah Palin, he would also proudly point to her as an American success story, an example of what anyone, man or woman, can do in this great country.  He would then wink and remind us that, even better, she was a solid conservative Republican to boot.

But not so Peggy Noonan.  As much as she rushes to defend and celebrate her hero Ronald Reagan, I'm afraid she did not learn all that much from his example.  What does she do to Sarah Palin instead, who, as far as I know, has never done anything to her?  She mocks her.  She looks for opportunities to mock her.  She invents opportunities to mock her.

Why?  I don't know fully, but I'm beginning to think we'll need to resurrect Dr. Freud in order to answer that one.  But the really sad and disappointing thing is that Peggy Noonan is not alone.  Noonan here, and others elsewhere, are representative of a type, a type that is dangerous to the Republican Party, and all the moreso because they are convinced they are doing it a favor.

Let me be clear, if Sarah Palin were to announce today her intention to seek the Republican Party's nomination for the presidency in 2012, and she was, in short order, joined on the dais by several of the other names we already routinely hear bandied about, I suspect she would suffer by the comparison.  Suffer so much, in fact, that I sincerely doubt she could secure the nomination.  Now, do you see, I just wrote that without mocking her, without disparaging what she represents, without insulting those who are enthusiastic about her presence, without doing damage to Republican Party.  Is it too much to ask the same of those who claim to be of the Party as well?

In the meantime, if candidates who are "strange, or unprofessional, or not fully qualified, or like empty bags skittering along the street" is where Ms. Noonan, and others, draw the line, then might we suggest they turn their collective attention and gifted pens on the likes of Barney Frank, Charley Rangel, Richard Blumenthal, Maxine Waters, any Kennedy?   For heaven's sake, the woods are full of crazy Democrats.  Is it really all that unreasonable for us to urge them to reserve their most biting prose for those of the other party and not those of their own?