Peggy says...

Telegraph.co.UK published an article: Republican fears of historic Obama landslide unleash civil war for the future of the party

There's a very prickly section about Sarah Palin.

From the page—

“
In addition to Mr. Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain's running mate as a "symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics." Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party".

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You might be interested in reading the rest of the article. What I took away is that the civil war brewing in the party, landslide notwithstanding, might be a great opportunity for the Grand Old Party to clean house. It's about time.

The illustrious Peggy Noonan had a few things to say in her commentary for the Wall Street Journal online entitled Palin's Failin. She leaves room for the possibility of magic and gifts unknown when a wild card surfaces. I like this and have continue to beleive this can happen in unexpected places. But this isn't one.

From the page—

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Here is a fact of life that is also a fact of politics: You have to hold open the possibility of magic. People can come from nowhere, with modest backgrounds and short résumés, and yet be individuals of real gifts, gifts that had previously been unseen, that had been gleaming quietly under a bushel, and are suddenly revealed. Mrs. Palin came, essentially, from nowhere. But there was a man who came from nowhere, the seeming tool of a political machine, a tidy, narrow, unsophisticated senator appointed to high office and then thrust into power by a careless Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose vanity told him he would live forever. And yet that limited little man was Harry S Truman. Of the Marshall Plan, of containment. Little Harry was big. He had magic. You have to give people time to show what they have. Because maybe they have magic too.

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I’ve listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.

But it’s unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn’t think aloud. She just . . . says things.

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As much as I respect her background and political gravitas, I wouldn't have imagined that I would so willingly agree with so much of what Ms. Noonan has to say. But I do. Noonan makes more points in her essay, not the least of which is calling Palin not a leader, but a follower. And that is the biggest condemnation of all.