Noonan gets all shook up

So a few of those elite party circuit so-called Republicans who don't want to dirty their atmosphere with real live tea party patriots are starting to have regrets over the mess The One is making of the country. (see David Brooks, NYT, who needs to be "talked off the ledge.") Peggy Noonan is one of these, so shocked over the common-ness of one such as Sarah Palin and quite oblivious of the fervent flame of patriotism burning in the breasts of the many million Americans who have taken to the streets in recent months. Missing in this editorial is any historical sense of the damage this bill will do to the country; Noonan simply seems to be concerned about the process of what is happening to Barack Obama. In addition to the huge debt, the gnarly procedures and the burden of bureaucracies this bill introduces to the country on a grand scale, what the Democrats are doing is creating a paradigm for governing this way. Never again will any Senate need 60 votes to pass a bill. Never again will the House need to actually vote on a risky bill that might ruin their chances for reelection. Where's the historical perspective? Is it all, only, about Him? About politics?

And so it ends, with a health-care vote expected this weekend. I wonder at what point the administration will realize it wasn't worth it—worth the discord, worth the diminution in popularity and prestige, worth the deepening of the great divide. What has been lost is so vivid, what has been gained so amorphous, blurry and likely illusory. Memo to future presidents: Never stake your entire survival on the painful passing of a bad bill. Never take the country down the road to Demon Pass.