Peggy Noonan Tries to Stop the Spin

Peggy Noonan writes an entertaining piece in today's Wall Street Journal in which she takes a contrarian view to many of the issues of the day. First, Hillary Clinton:

Today I would like to depart from what I perceive as the common wisdom on several people and issues.

Hillary Clinton. Media people keep saying, as Hillary gears up for her presidential bid, that her big challenge in 2008 will be to prove that she is as tough as a man. That she could order troops to war. That she's not girly and soft.

This is the exact opposite of the truth. Hillary doesn't have to prove her guy chops. She doesn't have to prove she's a man, she has to prove she's a woman. No one in America thinks she's a woman. They think she's a tough little termagant in a pantsuit. They think she's something between an android and a female impersonator. She is not perceived as a big warm mommy trying to resist her constant impulse to sneak you candy. They think she has to resist her constant impulse to hit you with a bat. She lacks a deep (as opposed to quick) warmth, a genuine and almost phenomenological sense of rightness in her own skin. She seems like someone who might calculatedly go to war, or not, based on how she wanted to be perceived and look and do. She does not seem like someone who would anguish and weep over sending men into harm's way.

Good stuff. She also takes on the flag burning amendment (she didn't like it either), Barbara Walters and the kerfuffle at The View, and the New York Times. This is her opening on the Times:

Once the New York Times was extremely important, and often destructive. Now it is less important, and often destructive. This is not a change for the worse.

Read it all here.