Fess Up Peggy

Congratulations are in order. Peggy Noonan has finally come to the conclusion in her Sunday WSJ editorial that “common sense points to a lab leak.”  Well, in a word: duh. Ms. Noonan, formerly a staunch, if not antiquated version of a conservative, has spent the last three years suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. She has used her platform to criticize, debase, demagogue, and harangue us about all things Trump. She has even taken to offering the democrats strategy suggestions, as she did in this recent entry, calling for Mr. Biden to “forge ahead, be honest” and “as things turn your way, as they will, it will get out there that you can be trusted.”  Really, Peggy?  She inexplicably seems to have soft spot for Biden, perhaps because when she was in the Reagan administration in 1984-1986, Mr. Biden was in his political prime. And she, at age 72, seems to long for those good old days. Do you remember when politicians treated us like mushrooms and when we expected transparency and honesty? All sorts of shenanigans went on behind closed doors. The kind of shenanigans Trump exposed to the light of day. Let’s call them the pre-plugs days of Biden. Did she ever offer Trump such soft-peddled advice?  Of course not, because Trump is an outsider, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that old Peggy is part of the swamp. For example, in last Sunday’s editorial, she gushed over Jimmy Carter. The previous week she offered glowing critique on Biden’s SOTU address, despite calling it “Trumpian” in what amounts to a backhanded compliment of sorts, closing the piece with praise, calling him “in charge and formidable” and “showing real mastery” when he lied about Social Security and elicited a jeering response from Republicans. So lying is now called mastery, is it? Trump was never given such praise when he provoked the opposition party. She even enlisted a former Reagan campaign manager who “opposed Mr. Trump from the beginning,” claiming “he’s not unbeatable now.”  Is Peggy now a democrat operative?  The previous week she offered criticism of both parties. Still, she dinged the Democrats for being “unable to accept a gift from history and become a normal party again,” In contrast, the Republicans took a more cynical beating, accused of “an inability to agree on what they stand for in this century and an inability to talk about the meaning of things.”  Brutally one-sided. She then went on to spend roughly a third of her piece criticizing George Santos. He’s a disgrace, to be sure, but for a center-right conservative, Peggy seems more adept at attacking our side of the aisle as opposed to pointing a finger at swarmy ideologues on the left. Swalwell, Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi, Schumer, and AOC immediately come to mind.  But most telling, in a half-page editorial detailing the mounting evidence that the pandemic was indeed caused by a Wuhan lab leak and subsequently covered up by the Chinese, never did she once utter the words: Trump was right all along”. Go ahead, Peggy, just say it.