Peggy Noonan has devised a word game for her readers this morning. It's weak cover for an attempt to sustain the GOP meme that Obama is Just. Trying. To Do. Too. Much. But, what the hell, it could be fun to play along.
Peggy's idea, taken from a line Clare Boothe Luce claims to have spoken to JFK, is that "'a great man is one sentence.'" Peggy gives us, "He preserved the union and freed the slaves," and, "He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War," for Lincoln and FDR. A WSJ web commenter chimes in imaginatively for the Gipper with, "He defeated communism and presided over America's greatest economic expansion." Her commenters aren't nearly so kind to Obama, but Peggy, ever striving to roll the meme up the hill, gives us, "He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror," as sufficient change she can believe in.
But what about the Shrub? Hasn't Peggy a line for Mission Accomplished, the Decider, With Us or Against Us? Seems like it could write itself. How about:
He fucked up the world yet got re-elected.But maybe that says more about the age than the man.
Please feel free to play Peggy's game in comments. Let the Supreme Court's discretion in Bush v. Gore be your guide to the rules.
Update: Or maybe Noonan's done waiting for history's judgment on 43 and we're all in agreement after all that he was one ungreat prez. I find it hard to keep up.
[I made two small corrections.]
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