First Principles

Peggy Noonan is glum, of late.  Bitter, even.  I heard her on a radio broadcast of Meet the Press complaining about the grace “both sides” needed, in commiseration with Glen Ifell who sat next to her and complained that how unfair criticism of her for moderating a Vice-Presidential debate in a race in which she had a direct financial stake.  She complains that conservatives won’t fight for conservative principles, but when given the chance herself she didn’t even lift a finger.  Gone is her optimism, the whispered ghost of the voice of Reagan I used to find so comforting every week.  It is a sad loss.

In her latest, though, she spends her time complaining about Sarah Palin as being insubstantial and unimpressive, because in just under two months, she hasn’t become the Harry Truman who implemented the Marshall Plan and fought to contain Communism.  (Of course, even Harry Truman didn’t do all that within seven weeks.  I wonder what she would have written about ol’ Harry seven weeks into his selection as VP, based on his stump speeches alone…)

Noonan says:

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?

Sarah Palin has been on the national stage for seven weeks.  But she has been on stage for far longer. 

If anyone looks at a candidate on the political stump for just a few weeks and can discern the extent of one’s tool kit for higher office, they are dreaming.  Worse, they are fools.  If one went on rhetoric alone, or on what seemsto be knowledge (but might be mellifluous evasions or out-and-out lies), I’d vote for Barack Obama.  If “philosophy” and “knowledge” is all I need to have in an executive, maybe I’d vote for George Will, or Bill Kristol, or Charles Krauthammer.  But there’s a reason those people don’t run.

Fortunately, candidates have records.  Even Sarah Palin.  In her time in public life, she vastly improved every entity she controlled.  She rooted out corruption, and did it publicly and at great personal political risk.  She lowered taxes, cut her own pay, vetoed vast amounts of spending, and is still the only candidate in the race to have actually successfully negotiated an international trade deal.  When big corporations came looking for a handout they didn’t need, she rebuffed them without demonizing them for producing and profiting from a product people want and need and are willing to pay for. 

In each endeavor, she consistently applied conservative principles of supply-side economics, low taxes, low spending, individual freedom, and limited regulation, and limited, divided government. 

To me, one of the most important pieces of evidence regarding her fealty to a political philosophy which demands adherence to the limits different governmental entities have was her very first veto in as governor.  The State Supreme Court had ruled that the state constitution required extending government benefits to same sex couples.  While she was personally opposed to such benefits, and certainly to gay marriage in general, when the legislature passed a bill in direct defiance of the Court’s decision, she vetoed it.  She then set about discussing a Constitutional amendment or a more palatable bill with the legislature that would achieve her policy preferences without simply ignoring a co-equal branch of her state’s government.

For all of Barack Obama’s supposed sophistication, for all his study and even teaching of the Constitution, it was more than evident from Wednesday’s debate that he shares no such philosophical restraint.  Does anyone think Obama would veto a bill he liked with regard to policy, but doubted Constitutionally?  Does anyone think he would appoint judges who would apply the law as it was, not as those judges personally thought it should be? 

Noonan wonders if she’s a “spender” like George Bush, and goes right on wondering without so much as a hint that she even considered looking at her record as governor or even mayor.  Had she taken a moment to do so, the answer would have been clear.  In two years, she vetoed half a billion dollars in spending.  In his first four years, Bush vetoed zero dollars.

She critiques her lack of press conferences and interviews with hostile journalists.  But how many press conferences or hostile interviews has Biden done in the last seven weeks?  Obama?  Can you imagine the endless soundbites and gaffes (or appearances of gaffes) that would be had if Obama sat down for an all day chat with Sean Hannity, with a film editor full of malice?  With Biden, you wouldn’t even have to bother with the editor.

And speaking of stages, surely she’s heard by now that Sarah Palin is going to sally forth on SNL this weekend.  It takes some guts to go put yourself at the mercy of a very liberal cast, including your comedic doppelganger who vowed to leave not just America but planet Earth itself if you won.

Palin is as experienced as Barack Obama, and far more accomplished.  She is as philosophically principled as any politician since Reagan (and even that’s a question).  Noonan laments that the “conservative intelligentsia” is angry with her for her heresy, but doesn’t understand that this ire comes not from hearing her express her opinion but the factual wrongness which underlies her thoughts.

Peggy Noonan inhabits a world of words, not deeds.  She added greatly to a great President’s already great voice with those words, and gave the narration to some of the highlights of his accomplishments.  But they were always his accomplishments.  And in the meantime, she seems to have lost herself in her own cocktail party circuit bubble, and to have forgotten that there is far, far more to measure our politicians by than their stump speeches.