Second Term-inator

Peggy Noonan, not exactly what you would call a Bush critic, has some trenchant thoughts on the president's rather frightening inaugural speech yesterday.

She writes:

[Several promising] moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

As I've said before, the "perfectibility of mankind" is a leftist notion, plain and simple. In fact, it's the foundational, Utopian presupposition of all leftism. Not exactly the kind of stuff you're hoping to hear out of the mouth of a supposedly conservative president.