Last week, Peggy Noonan's weekend column in the Wall Street Journal reached a new low. Marked by her now-typical uneasy segue between various topics like stream of consciousness writing, she alleged that Americans now want a 'non-empty suit' to lead them out of their current troubles.
Citing Bernie Madoff and other failed 'leaders' who were just empty suits, Noonan believes Americans now look to a real leader.
Forgive me for being true to my roots, but I think she's wrong. Americans function best when the leader, as in the style of Ronald Reagan, motivates us to be our own best selves and perform, rather than, as FDR, seizing control and forcibly using government to act.
It's a rare situation in which a single person can omnisciently perform all the tasks necessary to rescue America from some problem. Even JFK simply pointed the country toward the moon, rather than provided the detail of how we would achieve the goal.
That's why I think Noonan is so terribly off base in her rant. Last of all among people Americans should trust is the newly-elected First Rookie Senator from Illinois. With absolutely no experience managing or leading anything, his only hope would be to lead like Reagan.
Instead, he's already messing with details as he tries to re-order economic priorities by government fiat, rather than more-efficient market forces.
In any case, it's a sad day when a former Reagan speechwriter begins calling for more government-detailed actions to rescue a society of 300 million people.
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