Peggy Noonan And St. Crispin's Day

Recently, while I was bashing some freakish writer, I happened to mention that Ms. Noonan had style and substance. Some perceptive types have approached me with furrowed brows and asked whether I had, to put it politely, lost my marbles. (Not all of them, mind you, just some steelies that were just cracking wizard to crush the cats'-eyes of lesser warriors of the thumb and forefinger.) Now the previous personal reflection within parentheses is what we mean by style with no substance, in case you need a tutorial. Ms. Noonan has style and substance. I admit that her substance is quite bizarre at times, and her style veers into the most outrageous.
Let us see some examples, then, shall we? I use an old example from 2004 after the re-election of the tag team of marauders. It is a good idea to get our subjects when they are at their most pompous. Then you get a good glimpse at what makes them tick. The Wall Street Journal http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005879  

'He's Got Two of 'Em'  
Why I can't stop being happy about the election result. 
 Thursday, November 11, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

We get a good notion of where she's going with this right off. In all fairness, I'm sure there was a good deal of celebrating being done and the column had to be submitted.
 
"Mr. Kerry strikes me as a complicated and intelligent person, and the one time I spent any time with him he seemed to be bright, and to have an interesting range of thoughts on many issues. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, does not strike me as the most interesting man in the world. That's one of the things I love about him. I sort of have a theory that Americans don't necessarily desire terribly interesting men as presidents. "

This particular theory explains why no one has ever written a book about an American President from Washington through Lincoln and past FDR all the way up to the present holder of the office. Or, if such a book were ever written, no one ever read it. Good theoretical stuff here.
 
"I think Mr. Bush, the better man in terms of character, was also the more normal man. And we like normal. He loves sports and business and politics, and speaks their language. Normal. His wife is important to him, and his kids seem a bit of a mystery to him, and perhaps even to some degree intimidating. Normal. He thinks if bad guys attack New York City and the Pentagon, we go after them and kill them--normal."

Normal all the way up to the point...which she seems to have put in some hiatus...of attacking and killing the guys who did not attack us and, even if they had wanted to, had no weapons to do so. Furthermore, I am not at all sure Mr. Bush would be happy at being depicted in the same manner that neighbors talk about the man in quiet suburbia who suddenly one night kills his family: he was so normal....yep, one thing about him, he was normal. A normal Joe I'd call him. I could go on forever. So could Ms. Noonan.

" I just recounted something that has stayed in my mind. About a year ago I was visiting West Point, and I was talking to a big officer, a general or colonel. But he had the medals and ribbons and the stature, and he asked me what I thought of President Bush. I tried to explain what most impressed me about Mr. Bush, and I kept falling back on words like "courage" and "guts." I wasn't capturing the special quality Mr. Bush has of making a tough decision and then staying with it if he thinks it's right and paying the price even when the price is high and-- I stopped speaking for a moment. There was silence. And then the general said, "You mean he's got two of 'em." And I laughed and said yes, that's exactly what I mean. And the same could be said of Reagan."

Marvelous.
Can't you imagine President and General Dwight David Eisenhower talking about men's testicles to some lady he barely knows? And can you imagine said lady guffawing like Bubba in his bar? Wonderful images. It is interesting how the coda " And the same could be said of Reagan." is appended. It seems to be the equivalent of "Amen".
Whatever it is, I'm not sure President Reagan's family would relish the imagery. Since President Reagan was such a private individual about certain things - not like today's politicians who air their religious cantakerousness along with their dirty laundry-although he would have relished the approbation of his fellow males, I doubt his approval for such a statement among a co-ed audience and for general consumption. Then, lest we forget this is about the election and not Grey's Anatomy, we see the incredible:
 
"...And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

quoted from Shakespeare's King Henry V.
Ignoring the various meanings of "manhood", we note the curious literary device by which the sublime is appropriated to the mundane; the great transferred to the wretched. One thinks Alexander Pope, but the comparison fails, for the crimes adduced in the case of Bush et alii are truly heinous and go far beyond the abduction of a lock of hair in "The Rape of the Lock" Now, Ms. Noonan, reach for that Shakespeare and open to Richard III.
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Inspired by the site "Sadly,No"