I wanted to remark on Peggy Noonan’s latest Wall Street Journal column. She opens with an interesting observation. Although their presidencies were separated by 20 years, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were contemporaries:
Democrats, when they’re feeling alarmed or mischievous, will often say that Ronald Reagan would not recognize the current Republican Party. I usually respond that John F. Kennedy would not recognize the current Democratic Party, and would never succeed in it.
Both men represented different political eras but it’s forgotten that they were contemporaries, of the same generation, Reagan born in 1911 and JFK in 1917. They grew up in the same America in different circumstances, one rich, one poor, but with a shared national culture. By the 1950s, when JFK was established in the political system and Reagan readying to enter it, bodacious America had settled into its own dignity. It had a role in the world and needed to act the part. Both men valued certain public behaviors and the maintenance of a public face. It involved composure, coolness, a certain elegance and self-mastery. They felt they had to show competence and professionalism. They knew they were passing through history at an elevated level, and part of their job was to hold high its ways and traditions.
Their way is gone, maybe forever.
Despite the difference in their upbringing, the years in which they were born is just the tip of the iceberg of the common experiences they shared. Both had lived through the Depression and World War II. Both had experienced military service. IMO the degree to which the common experience of military service shaped America over a period of 30 or more years goes unappreciated.
There is nothing like that now. For a while, in the days of three major networks, television provided such a commonality of experience. That’s gone now. I don’t think there is any replacement for it. We are fated to become increasingly divided.
She continues
Democrats blame this on Donald Trump, and in the area of historical consciousness he is, truly, a hopeless cause. But this week Democrats joined him in the pit.
Do they understand what a disaster this was for them? If Mr. Trump wins re-election, if in fact it isn’t close, it will be traceable to this first week in February.
Iowa made them look the one way a great party cannot afford to look: unserious. The lack of professionalism, the incompetence is the kind of thing that not only shocks a party but shadows it. They can’t run a tiny caucus in a tiny state but they want us to believe they can reinvent American health care? Monday night when the returns were supposed to be coming in, it was like the debut of ObamaCare when the website went down.
Let’s digress into the subject of professionalism for a moment. My definition of professionalism is that a profession is a learned craft that subscribes to a common, written code of ethics and operates for the public good. Professions limit their own membership. Physicians and lawyers at least used to be professionals. Now I’m not so sure.
Politics is not a profession, never has been, and never will be. The very idea is outlandish. And software development is no profession, either. If it were 99.9% of its present practitioners would never make the cut.
The only sense in which either of those is a profession is in the much narrower sense that they take money for what they do. If that’s your standard prostitutes, prize fighters, and hucksters hawking spoonbean on a street corner are professionals, too. I don’t think that’s what she means.
Onwards:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi shattered tradition, making faces, muttering, shaking her head as the president delivered his State of the Union address. At the end she famously stood, tore the speech up and threw down the pieces.
“But he didn’t shake her hand.†So what? Her great calling card is she’s the sane one.
She introduced him rudely, without the usual encomiums. Oh, snap.
The classy lady was not classy. She forgot she has a higher responsibility than to her base, but—yes, how corny—to her country, the institution, the young who are watching and just getting a sense of how to behave in the world.
If she was compelled to show symbolic fealty to the “resistance†she should have taken it outside the chamber. That place is where Daniel Webster debated; she occupies the chair of Henry Clay and “Mr. Sam.â€
And she set a template: Now in the future all House Speakers who face presidents from the opposing party at the State of the Union will have to be rude fools.
It’s actually somewhat worse than that. When the president delivers his SOTU speech he does so as the invited guest of Congress. Speaker Pelosi should have withdrawn her invitation. Inviting a guest only to publicly demonstrate you despise him is a breach of a sacred trust.
I think that Ms. Noonan is right about at least one thing. The events of this week will have repercussions that will redound for years. We have yet to know how that will be.
It must have been like this on the eve of the Civil War. People can no longer bear to see or hear their opponents, no longer respect their humanity. After that, the actual killing becomes easy.
“Politics is not a profession, never has been, and never will be.â€
I think Ms Noonan is pining for something that never was, perhaps only slightly in the aspect of projected public persona. Passing through history at an elevated level? Kennedy’s revolving door of women. LBJ in general. Nixon, Clinton. I don’t see it. At a lower level, JEHoover, Boston city or Mayor Daley?
Trump is crude and in your face in public. A New Yorker. I was in NYC the other day and my cabmate took a bit too long to get out of the cab only to be greated by a string of epithets from the car behind. Welcome to NY. But let’s have some perspective. They were trying to impeach him from day one; the press wants to eat his face off every day. This didn’t start with Trump.
I do think you are correct that it derives in part from shared experience, whether that be from military service, shared national crisis or church. (And I say that as a not particularly religious and non-churchgoing person). Monolithic news networks? I’m not so sure.
But our progressive friends have made it sport to mock faith. Look down their noses at the military. On the other hand, glorifying every possible way to slice and dice people by some narrow personal attribute, and stifling thought and speech for the crime of disagreement, or unwokeness. All while worshipping at the god of government, where all to much power and money is available.
That, IMHO, is what it’s really about right now Trump has power, and he’s upsetting their cushy gig. Further, he can now expose some of them, and he is changing the dynamic of the judiciary, whom the left had gone to to legislate. All the rest of it is tactics, and the no holds barred skuffles that ensue are the natural byproduct of them.
I find people who lean conservative or libertarian also lean into supporting traditional values, constitutional protocols, and open discourse more, too. Family, religion, honoring flag and country, upholding amendment rights are fundamental beliefs in these peoples’ mental wiring. What is lacking, though, in their patterns of behavior, is how to rebel efficiently enough to overcome political resistance to these beliefs. Character assassination, changing voting practices (i.e. ballot harvesting, championing non-citizen voting, opposing voter ID, voter registration accuracy), trying to dilute 1st and 2nd amendment rights, employing the nuclear option first are only a sampling of how progressive liberals fight to win. Republicans, though, are historically noted to complain, and then disappear into the woodwork of acceptance.
Then DJT came along – a life-long NY democrat who knew his way around democrat political circles, their high jinx and hard-ball tactics – and suddenly joined the ranks of the Republican Party in order to run for president, immediately replicating everything the Dems normally do to their R foes. How crass of him!
Initially, Trump was jeered by both sides of the aisle, his campaign rhetoric being less milquetoast than his Republican predecessors when expressing the nuts-and-bolts concerns of the general populace – in, no less than, plain, oftentimes crude language. He, nonetheless, seemed to relish the role of being cast as a non-apologetic disrupter, disliked by the elites, while being welcomed enthusiastically into the hearts of commoners and “the forgotten†members of society. There is even a comparison to be made with Elon Musk’s disruptive personality, as he interacted with a stayed, consensus-driven automobile industry.
So here we are today – an embattled president, scorned by those who have received their well-deserved comeuppance from his in-your-face, never give up actions, versus, and clearly delineated from, those who feel they are finally getting honest government representation via DJT’s strong-willed leadership. Probably a government entity more in the middle would deliver fewer political earthquakes. However, sometimes directly confronting the opposition, not taking their constant volleys of misinformation, threats, and attempts to weaken constitutional rights, is the only way to defuse such an assault. I know one thing, Trump is no squish, and is providing a formidable firewall to slowing down many proposed policies, deviating from our free market, open form of government, which would curtail the very freedoms people often take for granted.
“Trump is crude and in your face in public. A New Yorker. I was in NYC the other day and my cabmate took a bit too long to get out of the cab only to be greated by a string of epithets from the car behind.”
Same thing happened to me in Philly last month. We should really get over this Trump is awful because he is from New York thing. About a third of the people I hire are from the NYC area. About a fourth of our network staff come from that area. None behave like Trump.
“But our progressive friends have made it sport to mock faith. Look down their noses at the military”
So yesterday morning I spent working on the church soup kitchen and i sharpened all the knives. (I recommend the Edge Pro system if you need to do a lot of sharpening.) Look down on the military? Besides the 8 plus years i put in i preferentially hire ex-military. I dont think that I am all that unusual for someone on the left side. You are just dealing with cariacatures of the worst possible people on the left, not reality. I guess I should add that these is not much mockery of faith per se, but it has been difficult to believe that people who claim to value their faith have so fully embraced such an immoral person who doesn’t believe that he has ever done anything that needs forgiveness.
” All while worshipping at the god of government, where all to much power and money is available.”
So now that Trump is in office government spending is way down?
jan- Why dont you just say Republicans are perfect and Dems suck. It will save time.
“opposing voter ID”
The kind of voted fraud that would be eliminated by voter ID does not exist. You guys have spent millions looking for it and you cant find it. This is really just an effort to eliminate Democrats voting as has been revealed in the communications of Republicans trying to pass bills for voter ID.
“immediately replicating everything the Dems normally do to their R foes.”
I have never seen a Democrat engage in the level of name calling, making fun of handicapped people, attacking gold star families, making fun of war heroes and the constant lying Trumo engages in. I am sure you can offer examples.
Query- You really do believe that Republicans are morally superior dont you?
Steve
Steve, I’ve already noted this biographical detail about myself. But, it may bear repeating. I was affiliated with the democrat party most of my life, mainly because i felt their social values were more in sync with my own. Coming from a blue collar family, I also looked at the Democrat party as representing my own working class family best. Ten years ago, after voting for Obama, I begin drifting over to a DINO status – supporting republicans more while still hanging on to my democrat party identification. Then, about 9 months ago, I finally cut loose from a party listing towards espousing positions, beliefs and conduct I increasingly not only disagreed with but vehemently opposed. This is when my voter registration changed from democrat to one having no party affiliation – essentially an Independent.
IMO, both parties have migrated leftward, becoming seemingly clueless in how to lead this country in a beneficial direction. The R’s, in particular, have appeared to be lip-syncing or “sucking up†to questionable policies just to be popular and relevant with the masses. However, it’s been the Dems, IMO, who have led the way veering off of common sense policies and leadership decisions, embracing instead a hardened ideology manifesting inappropriate actions, decorum, sense of fairness and riddled with huge doses of hypocrisy. With the MSM being a loyal microphone of one-sided news, the disbursal of misinformation, to no information, has only heightened public confusion, ignorance, and political figure-pointing. Inaccurate press releases are rarely corrected, and become cemented in dem mindsets as facts rather than fallacy – i.e. “making fun of handicapped people,†Charlottesville, Russian collusion, the HRC orchestrated gold star family comments (gold star families and angel moms both support this administration). In your posts, alone, you continue to subscribe to a flurry of smaller negatively reported incidents as if they were fully vetted for truth and accuracy, and epitomize the entire fabric of the Republican Party.
Finally, Trump does name-call, speaking harshly of his opponents. However, republican leaders, as a whole, show greater restraint leveling their policy/conduct criticism with more civility and less hyperbole. They don’t indulge in insulting an entire Senate chamber like Schiff and Nadler did, in order to hide their own House impeachment incompetence and malfeasance. . They don’t belittle entire swathes of the populace with vile insinuations about their intelligence, morality etc..as the Dems do towards those forming opinions outside of democrat guidelines.
” They don’t belittle entire swathes of the populace”
You guys do, you just dont care. Your VP candidate 12 years ago said Democrats are not real Americans. You claim we hate the military. You claim we dont value families (when Charles Murray noted that educated Democrats have the lower divorce rates. Trump regularly throws out harsh insults and name calls, which he has done from the beginning. Note, I am not saying that Dems never do this, just that Republicans also do it and I think you would be hard pressed to prove that one side is worse that the other, with one exception. In the past POTUS generally stayed above the worst of the rhetoric. Trump leads it, which you guys like.
Steve