Peggy Noonan is a Reagan Democrat. She wrote speeches for President Reagan and her memoir of her Reagan years, What I Saw at the Revolution, is a piece of tender affection for Nancy's Ronnie. Joe Sobran loved Peggy. There was a tenderness when he talked about her you never saw him express for anyone else except Jesus Christ.
What Noonan writes I like and trust. After 9/11 she wrote a short piece titled "Welcome Back, Duke" that I consider one of the most astute essays on sexuality in our time. 9/11 and sexuality? Yup, read it and you'll never forget her contrast between firemen and Woody Allen. Devastating—not just to Woody Allen but also you (if you're a man) and me.
Now Noonan has given us a short piece on the Inauguration of President Donald Trump...
I thank Thomas Kidd for calling our attention to it on FB. Titled "President Trump Declares Independence," the piece ends:
Normally a new president has someone backing him up, someone publicly behind him. Mr. Obama had the mainstream media—the big broadcast networks, big newspapers, activists and intellectuals, pundits and columnists of the left—the whole shebang. He had a unified, passionate party. Mr. Trump in comparison has almost nothing. The mainstream legacy media oppose him, even hate him, and will not let up. The columnists, thinkers and magazines of the right were mostly NeverTrump; some came reluctantly to support him. His party is split or splitting. The new president has gradations of sympathy, respect or support from exactly one cable news channel, and some websites.
He really has no one but those who voted for him.
Do they understand what a lift daily governance is going to be, and how long the odds are, with so much arrayed against him, and them?
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Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
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