LEGENDARY MILITARY STRATEGIST PEGGY NOONAN IS NONE-TOO-FOND OF PETE HEGSETH:

Peggy Noonan thinks Pete Hegseth is a whippersnapper who had no business talking to the nation's military leaders the way he did. Ret'd. four-star Gen. Jack Keane, said he thought the Hegseth message was welcomed by the assembled leaders. Take your pick. https://t.co/aHJomxqkk5

— Brit Hume (@brithume) October 4, 2025

UPDATE:

Who knows what to make of the weighting of the polls and the assumptions as to who will vote? Who knows the depth and breadth of each party’s turnout efforts? Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.

I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.

Romney’s crowds are building—28,000 in Morrisville, Pa., last night; 30,000 in West Chester, Ohio, Friday It isn’t only a triumph of advance planning: People came, they got through security and waited for hours in the cold. His rallies look like rallies now, not enactments. In some new way he’s caught his stride. He looks happy and grateful. His closing speech has been positive, future-looking, sweetly patriotic. His closing ads are sharp—the one about what’s going on at the rallies is moving.

All the vibrations are right. A person who is helping him who is not a longtime Romneyite told me, yesterday: “I joined because I was anti Obama—I’m a patriot, I’ll join up But now I am pro-Romney.” Why? “I’ve spent time with him and I care about him and admire him. He’s a genuinely good man.” Looking at the crowds on TV, hearing them chant “Three more days” and “Two more days”—it feels like a lot of Republicans have gone from anti-Obama to pro-Romney.

—Noonan on November 5th, 2012.

But why would Romney have had a chance?

The case for Barack Obama, in broad strokes:

He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

—Noonan on October 31st, 2008.

And in August of 2020, she was praising “The Rise of Kamala Harris. The daughter of East Bay professors grew up to become an excellent performer of politics.”

Exit quote: “It’s the big fact of American life now, isn’t it? That we are patronized by our inferiors.”

—By…well, guess who it’s by.