Why I Can’t Stop Being Happy About The Election Result

Here’s a “quiet” piece by Peggy Noonan, just what I need after all the red and blue state post-election hype:

The president won re-election by a relatively healthy margin because the American people judged him to be the better man. He seemed to have the better character of the two candidates. He’d tell you what he was going to do, and why, and then he’d do it. He’d been doing that for four years. He did it in the campaign, too. He was dependable, and he was predictable. It’s nice to have a predictable president. It’s not nice in the nuclear age to have a surprising one.

Mr. Bush was not known as a sneak or a liar. We have had presidents who were known as sneaks and liars, some quite recently, but that wasn’t Mr. Bush, and I believe it was a relief to normal people. That relief was never articulated by anybody I remember hearing, but I believe it had a real if unquantifiable effect on the voters’ choice.

I think the people tended toward Mr. Bush because they saw him as a good American man, a man they know — an imperfect one with an imperfect past who turned his life around with grit and grace. That’s a very American story. It’s one we all know, and respect. There are Democrats — Chris Heinz was reportedly one, at the end — who amuse themselves referring to President Bush as a former cokehead. I don’t know about that, but I know America went through the 1970s, and America is still in recovery. When nice people hear things like “former drunk” they tend to put the internal emphasis on the word former.

I recommend the whole article.

Update: Have you ever noticed that conservatives dominate the top 100 bloggers in the Ecosystem?

Update II: I am now part of the Empire of the Blogs. Click on this link and look for “Barberia” (in the gold section to the right of the green on the far left) on the map of central Europe. The “Commissar” has a great gimmick going on, but I’ll let you check him out for yourselves. I don’t want to spoil the illusion.