In Defense of Peggy Noonan

"In the afternoon they came unto a land,
In which it seemed always afternoon."


It's afternoon in America, when soap operas reign and old movies run. When kids come home from school hungry for a snack and ready for a nap. When old folks actually do nap. When the crews go out and open or change the direction of the HOV lanes. When shifts change. When chefs put the evening's roasts in their ovens. When the lines grow longer at Starbucks, and people think about their plans for the night. Did I set my TiVo for the new shows? What am I wearing to the club? Do I need to pick up something for dinner?

We have a new president this afternoon. He'll either be an effective communicator and an effective congressional arm-twister or he won't. He'll either influence the oil sheiks or he won't. He'll stoke the fires of trade or he won't. He'll create new programs that'll get passed and even funded or they won't.

The same hustlers will make a boodle of money off his stimuli that made a boodle of money off the mortgage giveaways. Businesses will go in and out of business. The wars will wind down and up depending on how much vigor the radical islamists have and how much will we’ll have to push back. People will pay more or less taxes, but they’ll pay taxes. The “system” will grow and grow and grow.

But, President Obama cannot supernaturally fix the ills of America's generational entitlement programs. He will not make "every man (or woman) a king." He won't put a chicken in every pot and a car in every covered parking space. He will not provide free healthcare or free post-secondary education for our kids, and grandkids. He won't make public transit free. He won't do these and many more of the things a large percentage of the people who voted for him believe he will do because those things are not do-able by anyone. They are not do-able.

In her column in the Wall Street Journal this week, Peggy Noonan (among other things) is saying these things and more are actually believed by a large number of Americans--that a president can actually cause these things to come to pass. If we can blame a president for the destruction caused by a hurricane, then we can expect a president to fix social security--how hard could that be compared to stopping a hurricane? We can expect a president to provide universal, high quality healthcare. We can expect a president to keep oil prices low and make wind and solar power cost-effective, and find real life on Mars.
But Peggy said something else--there are large numbers of people in the 24/7 news cycle business, who actually believe a president can do these things, and they want to believe Barak Obama is the president who will do them. That is what she meant by “awe.” It's as if they believe the movie stars they salivate about all the time are actually the people they play in the movies. They seem to think being glib, handsome, slender and buff make you politically efficacious. They do not.

Presidents don't have the power to do the things a great and growing number of people believe they have the power to do. They can't prevent suffering. They can't prevent natural disasters, or even man-made economic disasters. They can't, with the stroke of a pen, change the economic climate, or actually put your out of work uncle back to work, or heal your Aunt Edith's lung cancer, or ease the pain of loss when your child dies in battle. They are just humans. They do not possess these powers.

If it seems as though I am selling our new president short, that is not my intention. I'm just saying what Peggy Noonan is saying--running for office isn't the same as being in office. Presidents are just humans. So, let's just get real.