Noonan on Palin

I’m a longtime Peggy Noonan fan. She is perceptive and incisive. Today, in the WSJ, she writes about Sarah Palin:

“…we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office….

…it’s unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn’t think aloud. She just . . . says things…

…She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation—”palling around with terrorists.”…

…She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts…

…In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics.”