MORE SCALES FALL FROM PEGGY NOONAN'S EYES

Noonan today:

[One] possibility is that the administration's slow and ambivalent action [on illegal immigration] is the result of being lost in some geopolitical-globalist abstract-athon that has left them puffed with the rightness of their superior knowledge, sure in their membership in a higher brotherhood, and looking down on the low concerns of normal Americans living in America.

I continue to believe the administration's problem is not that the base lately doesn't like it, but that the White House has decided it actually doesn't like the base.

Noonan just after the 2004 election:

I think Mr. Bush, the better man in terms of character, was also the more normal man. And we like normal. He loves sports and business and politics, and speaks their language. Normal. His wife is important to him, and his kids seem a bit of a mystery to him, and perhaps even to some degree intimidating. Normal. He thinks if bad guys attack New York City and the Pentagon, we go after them and kill them--normal. He thinks marriage is between a man and a woman--normal. He thinks if Baptist preachers in a suburb of Louisville have an after-school plan that has an excellent record of turning kids from juvenile delinquency to thinking about college, those Baptist preachers should be helped and encouraged every way we can, and it has nothing to do with "church and state." Normal. He thinks if there's an old plaque bearing the Ten Commandments on the wall of the courthouse you should leave it alone--it can't hurt, and it might help. Normal.

It's true, Peggy -- he's actually a member of the elite! He's not just some middle-class dad from the 'burbs who's saving up for a boat! I know, I know -- who knew?

****

(I'm skipping the even sillier stuff in Noonan's column -- e.g., her conclusion that The Da Vinci Code should have a co-production credit for Satan. For glosses on the rest of the column, see Lawyers, Guns & Money, Alicublog, and Shakespeare's Sister.)