Peggy Noonan Rocks!

Brilliant. What else is there to say?

See for yourself:

That having been said, the Miers pick was another administration misstep. The president misread the field, the players, their mood and attitude. He called the play, they looked up from the huddle and balked. And debated. And dissed. Momentum was lost. The quarterback looked foolish.

The president would have been politically better served by what Pat Buchanan called a bench-clearing brawl. A fractious and sparring base would have come together arm in arm to fight for something all believe in: the beginning of the end of command-and-control liberalism on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senate Democrats, forced to confront a serious and principled conservative of known stature, would have damaged themselves in the fight. If in the end President Bush lost, he'd lose while advancing a cause that is right and doing serious damage to the other side. Then he could come back to win with the next nominee. And if he won he'd have won, rousing his base and reminding them why they're Republicans.

He didn't do that. Why didn't he? Old standard answer: In time of war he didn't want to pick a fight with Congress that he didn't have to pick. Obvious reply: So in time of war he picks a fight with his base? Also: The Supreme Court isn't the kind of fight you "don't have to pick." History picks it for you. You fight.

The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They're in uproar over Ms. Miers, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.

Here are some maybes. Maybe the president has simply concluded he has no more elections to face and no longer needs his own troops to wage the ground war and contribute money. Maybe with no more elections to face he's indulging a desire to show them who's boss. Maybe he has concluded he has a deep and unwavering strain of support within the party that, come what may, will stick with him no matter what. Maybe he isn't all that conservative a fellow, or at least all that conservative in the old, usual ways, and has been waiting for someone to notice. Maybe he has decided the era of hoping for small government is over. Maybe he is a big-government Republican who has a shrewder and more deeply informed sense of the right than his father did, but who ultimately sees the right not as a thing he is of but a thing he must appease, defy, please or manipulate. Maybe after five years he is fully revealing himself. Maybe he is unveiling a new path that he has not fully articulated--he'll call the shots from his gut and leave the commentary to the eggheads. Maybe he's totally blowing it with his base, and in so doing endangering the present meaning and future prospects of his party.

Whatever the answer, history is being revealed here by the administration every day, and it's big history, not small.

She captures with her trademark elegance the confusion and anger so many Fools and movement conservatives feel at the moment. While at the same time, she offers an honest, if ambivalent analysis of her own on the nomination.

Whatever else one can say about the President's nomination, it is this: he squandered the historical opportunity of a lifetime. There's no gurantee any other Justice will die or retire before the President's term expires. Instead of making a statement nomination--one that put a nominee with the brightest constitutional mind and the most Judicially humble heart in the spotlight, he settled on a stealth candidate that may rise a pale above mediocre. At best, she'll win the ambivalent support of the President's base. At worst, she'll prove to be "Souter in a dress."

Still, I find myself going back and forth on this. I want to trust the president, but... There it is. That annoying "but." As in "Trust, but varify." The hardship a Fool faces, forever being the swing vote, bearing the mantle of independent. Should someone find me a candidate the unabashedly frames his platform on a sincere and innovative implementation of Catholic Social Teaching, I'll be that person's party. Until then, show me your goods, and I'll measure them against the CST yardstick.

In other words, I share Ms. Noonan's ambivalence. And I have more to say on this. Later.