Quote of the Day: Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Most of Peggy Noonan's column in yesterday's WSJ was predictably awful:

-- McCain won the debate on Wednesday? Really?

-- McCain succeeded in ridiculing Obama's "eloquence"? Seriously, what debate was she watching, and from the confines of what alternate un-reality?

-- The election is "infantilizing"? Why, because the guy she doesn't like is winning?

-- Palin could have been another Truman? Come now, that's just plain stupid.

But it also contained this, which is our one-day-late QotD:

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.

*****

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.

I don't share Noonan's admiration of Reagan, and I don't agree with her assessment of conservatism, both of which follow the first part of the quote, and I don't care about what's good for conservatism, but she is quite right about Palin, about the "new vulgarization," and about what her pick says about McCain. I would even say that she understates, and euphemizes, the case against Palin. There is no sign, not little sign -- and, as I have said before, she is both an arrogant twit and an ignorant thug. She isn't just a symptom and expression of the "new vulgarization," she is the personification of a deepening of that vulgarization.

Still, for once -- and it is rare indeed -- I am in agreement, up to a point, with Peggy Noonan, who, like certain other of the smarter conservatives out there, like David Brooks, has had enough of Sarah Palin. Welcome back to reality, if only for an instant.