I can appreciate that Peggy Noonan might enjoy being a minion of the Republican Party, but gosh, how about a little cross-party consistency? I nearly dropped my latte this weekend when I read this passage in her Wall Street Journal column:

I am wondering if the Obama administration thinks it vaguely dishonorable to be popular. If you mention to Obama staffers that they really have to be concerned about the polls, they look at you with a certain . . . not disdain but patience, as if you don't understand the purpose of politics. That purpose, they believe, is to move the governed toward greater justice. Just so, but in democracy you do this by garnering and galvanizing public support. But they think it's weaselly to be well thought of.

For years, Noonan had been fulminating against Bill Clinton for his desire to be liked. She called Clinton a "poll driven animal" in a 2004 column for The Journal.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was well thought of, Noonan insists, precisely because he didn't pay much attention to polls. She writes this about Reagan in Newsweek in 1995:

But his positions were not poll driven, and the people could tell. So even when they disagreed with him, they still respected him.

www.fromaharrop.com

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