A word from the ruling class to us underlings

Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, as she ages, seems to be getting shriller and getting on with her rant in a hurry. In a recent Op-Ed article in the Wall Street Journal, having to do with the recent mid-term election, and possibly a mea culpa for past sins, she tells us that those running for high office in the USA should have the following qualifications:

"Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service. And you need actual talent: You have to be able to bring people in and along. You can't just bully them, you can't just assert and taunt, you have to be able to persuade."

This bit of brilliance comes a little late. Where was Ms Noonan two years ago when we collectively decided that a couple years as a "community organizer" and running a couple of good political campaigns were enough qualifications to be President of all of us. Actually, Ms Noonan, our pundit-in-chief of the ruling class, was doing her usual thing in this article which was to roast Sarah Palin for having the effrontery of being selected to be John McCain's running mate in 2008, thus pointing out to the whole world the absence of qualifications at the top of the Democratic ticket, not just at the VP level.

My guess is that Ms Noonan feels the need to be fair and balanced in her articles, so that in order for her to say this about Obama after his post mid-term election speech—

"Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: He won't even make a good former president."

—she has to misunderstand something that Governor Palin said about Ronald Reagan and call her a nincompoop, no doubt an affectionate term in the vocabulary of the ruling class.