Peggy Noonan is Wrong

Peggy Noonan is in my top five as far as political or social commentators are concerned but in her piece yesterday she was just wrong. It is not often that you can say that about Noonan but her pessimism yesterday is far from warranted. Here's a taste of what she was moaning about:

The special prosecutors, the scandals, the spin for the scandals, nuclear proliferation, wars and natural disasters, Iraq, stem cells, earthquakes, the background of the Supreme Court backup pick, how best to handle the security problems at the port of Newark, how to increase production of vaccines, tort reform, did Justice bungle the anthrax case, how is Cipro production going, did you see this morning's Raw Threat File? Our public schools don't work, and there's little refuge to be had in private schools, however pricey, in part because teachers there are embarrassed not to be working in the slums and make up for it by putting pictures of Frida Kalho where Abe Lincoln used to be. Where is Osama? What's up with trademark infringement and intellectual capital? We need an answer on an amendment on homosexual marriage! We face a revolt on immigration.

The range, depth, and complexity of these problems, the crucial nature of each of them, the speed with which they bombard the Oval Office, and the psychic and practical impossibility of meeting and answering even the most urgent of them, is overwhelming. And that doesn't even get us to Korea. And Russia. And China, and the Mideast. You say we don't understand Africa? We don't even understand Canada!

I'm currently reading a very good book about Shakespeare and his times and I can't help but remark that back when Shakespeare first got to Elizabethian London many people thought they had too many problems to face. There was internecine religous strife between Protestant and Catholic, overcrowding, filth, crime, and plague. One of the most popular books of the time discussed how the problems of the modern world were actually signs of the end of the world. On top of that some people bemoaned that the day's youth had forgotten how to walk and had to ride (horses) everywhere they went.

When Harry Truman was President he had to deal with Russia going nuclear, China falling to the Communists, a war in Korea a Red scare at home, revolutions going on around all the world and to top it off I don't think he truly understood the Canadians.

My point is that every time in history has its own unique set of problems and almost at every time in history people have thought that they had so much to bear that the end of the world was surely at hand. So far they have all been wrong. Now Peggy Noonan wasn't claiming the end of the world is at hand but she's wrong nonetheless. There are problems that the President has to face but the right person can get the job done (just as the right person has gotten the job done all through history).