19 August 2005

Peggy Noonan on the Bush-Clinton friendship

[Although I thought she was way off on what I felt was on of W's greatest speeches- his Inaugural Address last January, Peggy Noonan's writing nails it every time.  How she can make such common sensical connections with you while she lives in Manhattan is to her credit.  She is at times corny and over-sentimental, but I wish our world was more like what she describes.  Today she takes on the weird kiss-fest between the Bushes and Clintons.  You know what the Clintons are about- raw ambition of possessing power- they would make nice to maybe even each other if it furthers there ambitions.  But it is perplexing to say the least.  Again she draws on a bygone age (which seems more and more "by") in talking about Eisenhower and when the Democrats actually took national security seriously.  It was plainly before the wussy baby boomers started to throw their temper tantrums and begin to infect academia, the courts, and the media.]

Read it all here:  http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110007120


Peggy Noonan
There's something unserious about Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush's newfound affection.

Key passages:

"The subject turned to the growing friendship between the Bush seniors and Bill Clinton. They had famously bonded big-time during their tsunami fund-raising efforts, and Barbara Bush is reported now to call Mr. Clinton "son." Mr. Clinton has been up to Kennebunkport this summer to play golf with his fellow former president, go boating, and have a private dinner.

In our conversation someone called the growing chumminess "creepy" and asked what I thought of it. I said I found it creepy too. What, I was asked, did I think was behind it? Why are Mr. Bush senior and Mr. Clinton so publicly embracing each other, yukking it up for the cameras and complimenting each other?

Because it serves their individual needs and interests, I said. They both get real benefit out of it while appearing to be ignoring their own interests. That's a great twofer. "

"But they're missing something, I think. It is the kind of reserve coupled with an eschewal of the merely petty demonstrated by the old pros of the past. Eisenhower supported JFK after the Bay of Pigs, but without the creepy yukking it up, and in a way that put the emphasis on the importance of the presidency and not the sweetness of Ike. The old soldier stood with the unsteady junior officer who'd been duly elected, and said he supported the president's leadership. He didn't hug him, smooch, or call him ducky. He didn't suggest he found him personally endearing. "

"What bothers me about the fervid friendship of the Bushes and Mr. Clinton--and the media celebration of it--is the faint whiff of superiority, a sense they radiate that all those slightly icky little people running around wailing about issues--tax reform, the relation of the individual to the state, the necessary character of a president--and working the precincts are somehow . . . a little below them. There is an air of condescension toward that grubby thing, belief. Those who hold it are not elevated, don't quite fit into the high-minded nonpartisan brotherhood. When in fact the people doing the day-to-day work of democracy, and who are in it because they are impelled by deep belief and philosophy, are actually not below them at all, and perhaps above them. Not that they're on the cover of People hugging, but at least they're serious. "