Sunday, October 12, 2008

Peggy Noonan's Perspective

PEGGY NOONAN offers perspective:
"Neither party has clean hands. Or rather, both parties have dirty hands. Here is the truth, spoken by the increasingly impressive Sen. Tom Coburn: 'The root of the problem is political greed in Congress. Members . . . from both parties wanted short-term political credit for promoting homeownership even though they were putting our entire economy at risk by encouraging people to buy homes they couldn't afford. Then, instead of conducting thorough oversight and correcting obvious problems with unstable entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, members of Congress chose to . . . distract themselves with unprecedented amounts of pork-barrel spending.' That is the truth.

And yet at the debate, when one citizen-questioner invited both candidates to think aloud about the responsibility of our representatives in Washington, they both gently suggested she was cynical.

She was not cynical. She was informed.

Why would anyone trust either candidate to help dig us out of this if they can't speak frankly about what got us into it?"
I too think Senator Coburn is being honest and has got it right.

I also think Peggy Noonan gets it right. Neither campaign is up to this moment in our history because neither campaign can see what Senator Coburn sees. And, even if one or both of them did, I suspect neither be willing to say it is now crucial to begin to reign in government. Neither candidate seems to have a political philosophy based upon liberty and limited government.

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