Sympathy for the devil

It's really something to see someone like Peggy Noonan, who as we all know was present at the revolution, struggle to come to terms with the utter failure of that revolution barely a generation later.

Well--"failure," yes; "come to terms with," not so much.

Let me focus for a minute on the presidency, another institution in trouble. In the past I have been impatient with the idea that it's impossible now to be president, that it is impossible to run the government of the United States successfully or even competently. I always thought that was an excuse of losers. I'd seen a successful presidency up close. It can be done.

But since 9/11, in the four years after that catastrophe, I have wondered if it hasn't all gotten too big, too complicated, too crucial, too many-fronted, too . . . impossible.

I refer to the sheer scope, speed and urgency of the issues that go to a president's desk, to the impossibility of bureaucracy, to the array of impeding and antagonistic forces (the 50-50 nation, the mass media, the senators owned by the groups), to the need to have a fully informed understanding of and stand on the most exotic issues, from Avian flu to the domestic realities of Zimbabwe.

Read all of it--or at least as much as you can stomach--and then read this commentary by Alicublog, where the sympathy for Junior (or for Noonan) does not, alas, run quite so deep. Here's a teaser:

I don’t believe in Hell, so it may be that the vague fear which currently ruffles her fine hairs is as close to physical justice as the crack-brained hag will ever get. Well, it is not enough, but it’s something.

Props to Tbogg, who puts it in wonderful cinematic perspective.