747 This world is not heaven

So wrote Peggy Noonan in her very critical review of the President's inaugural address. Yesterday she was the "color commentator" on the FoxNews coverage of the event, and when her co-host Shepard Smith asked her opinion of the speech she just stammered and sputtered and said she'd have to have some time to think about it.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial today she called it: a foreign policy speech; romantic longing to carry democracy to foreign lands; God-drenched; on a mission; over the top; suffering from "mission inebriation." She also said it made her yearn for nuance, that it "put the world on notice," and told it to "shape up." She then closed with a suggestion that "they" [the administration?] ease up, calm down, breathe deep, and get more securely grounded.

Noonan is a strong Bush supporter--gave up her job to work on the campaign. If his supporters say this, imagine what his detractors must be saying.

James Taranto writes at Best of the Web today (Jan. 21) directing comments to Noonan's concern: "The lesson Bush drew from Sept. 11 is that "realism" is unrealistic--that the "stability" that results from an accommodation with tyranny is illusory. To Bush, there is no fundamental conflict between American ideals and American interests; by promoting the former, we secure the latter. Maybe he'll turn out to be wrong, but for now the burden ought to be on those who, in the wake of Sept. 11, hold to a pre-9/11 view of what is "realistic."

Noonan is right that "ending tyranny in the world" is a fantastically ambitious aspiration, one that isn't going to be realized anytime soon. But Bush didn't promise to do it in the next four years or even in our lifetimes. He said it was "the ultimate goal" and "the concentrated work of generations." "