It’s come to this. Peggy Noonan has a request:
This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. That is my hope, what I ask Iowa to produce, and I claim here to speak for thousands, millions. We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane.
How’s that for chucking ideology? Noonan goes on to define who meets the test (Hillary doesn’t, although, strangely, not because she is insane). But nowhere does she ask where candidates stand on the issues. Obama is too young, but ambivalent enough to make that irrelevant. Dodd and Biden have read threat reports, so they’re okay. Romney made a lot of money, so he’s not crazy like, say, H. Ross Perot or Donald Trump.
Here’s my favorite graf.
Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, and Bill Richardson are all reasonable–mature, accomplished, nonradical. Mike Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column. John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards’s populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can’t have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can’t.
How’s that for seriousness?
