Peggy Noonan goes off the Deep End(tm)

In this marvelously whiny screed, Ms. Noonan posits that America is basically going to hell in a handbasket, and that the elites that should be doing something about it... mostly aren't.

Well, besides the Jimmy Carter-esque sense of doom and gloom... since when are "elites" supposed to be saving this country? I thought that was what Democrats thought...
and, then, if you ask people in this country who forms the elite, what do you think their answers might be? Doctors? Lawyers? Scientists? Athletes and Musicians?

Not Ms. Noonan. In her world, somehow journalists and politicians are considered the social elite... as opposed to the regular old schmucks of the country, who openly hold both professions in contempt. Is there a profession held in worse contempt than "politician," except maybe the lowest of the low-end ambulance-chasers?

"Do you have confidence in the CIA? FBI? I didn't think so."

Wow, there's a news flash... people don't trust the feds. That's been the case, since, what, smallpox blankets and FDR's thugs smashing up storefronts in the Depression unless the store owners agreed to artificially elevate prices?

"The presidency is overwhelmed.The whole government is. And people sense when an institution is overwhelmed."

The presidency is overwhelmed? By what? Who's running the coup, and what are his new policies to be? Ms. Noonan's despair simply because Bush is down a few points betrays an odd journey for somebody who used to be a Reaganite.... Ms. Noonan thinks that the government is supposed to be running the country, as opposed to most citizens, who think its job is to generally provide physical defense and otherwise get the hell out of our lives while we, the citizens she posits to be in despair over government failures, go about running the country....

Something is definitely in the water at the Noonan household. Something not good, and hopefully able to be counteracted with Prozac.