She's Baaa-ack...

Peggy Noonan, back from vacation today, spends nearly her entire column talking about Barack Obama, "a young black man from nowhere." She actually describes him at another point with the phrase, "There is no there there" [italics hers].

More...

After wondering if Obama will ever manage to live up to our usual American presidential measuring stick--Winston Churchill--Pegster delivers the money shot:

There's a thing that's out there and it's big, and latent, and somehow always taken into account and always ignored, and political professionals always assume they understand it. It has been called many things the past 50 years, "the silent center," "the silent majority," "the coalition," "the base." The idea of it has evolved as its composition has evolved, but the fact that it's big, and relatively silent, and somehow always latent, maintains. And watching that McCain event [the Sturgis Harley rally]—vroom vroom—one got the sense it is perhaps beginning to pay attention to the campaign. I see it as the old America, and if and when it reasserts itself, the campaign will shift indeed, and in ways you can even see from 10,000 feet.

In other words, as usual they'll take it any way they can get it, lizard brain included. But America may not be quite as "old" or as reptilian this time as they need it to be. And wouldn't that be something?