Paraphrasing Joni Mitchell’s 1974 song “Same Situation” from Court and Spark (her best record): Again and again in the same situation, for year after year, I’m stuck in an auto-repeat of commentators—some earnest, most not—blathering about lame-duck Donald Trump and his countless acts of real and imagined perfidy.
On successive Thursdays, The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan devoted her columns to Trump. Her lead on the August 13th entry was odd, considering what follows: “It has seemed to me this summer that people avoid the subject of Donald Trump as much as possible. What is there to say? People stand where they stand, no one expects to win anybody over. The subject is boring and harrowing, so why disturb the moment?”
That strikes me as accurate—when I speak to my sons and brothers on the phone, the Trump digest is exhausted in 45 seconds, unlike just six months ago; as for my wife, who’s always disliked Trump, since our days in Manhattan, she’s done with the topic—because Noonan’s correct: “What is there to say?”
As it happens, the longtime speechwriter/columnist/author has a lot to say, and I can’t figure out who she’s writing for (not uncommon in 2026). Her prose is loaded with poll results (with not a single mention of how inaccurate polling is; after misses in 2024 and weird skewed predictions in this year’s primaries, I think that’s worth noting; although I’ll repeat that it’s a shame that Wisconsin’s Ms.-I-Hate-Thanksgiving lost, simply for the comedic value) and the President’s scattershot approach to Iran, immigration/deportation and the economy. This isn’t new; it wasn’t new three months ago. Noonan (unintentionally, I hope) condescends to readers: “Regular people watching all this peripherally, as regular people do, would be thinking: Is this a new forever war? Are we running out of bullets? Endless talks and nothing settled? Gasoline prices up if things drag on?”
It’s not complicated: in November, American citizens will go the polls and, whatever the turnout, deliver a verdict on the two major parties. Because of the economy (not Iran, ICE and definitely not Ukraine, which is all but forgotten, as is the name of that country’s very, very wealthy president), I believe both houses of Congress will flip to the Democrats, leaving the country with a divided government, my preference since not much will get done.
(There’s talk, naturally, of another Trump impeachment in the Democratic Media, which would be an curious sideshow, especially if Trump’s convicted and J.D. Vance assumes office. I’d say that Jared Kushner’s the one who should be really worried: he’s young enough—45—that if Democrats go the vindictive route, he’ll be sentenced to year and years in a very nasty prison, unless his father-in-law pulls a Biden and preemptively pardons him. Hasan Piker’s very wet dream: seeing Jared on the chain gang, and beaten up every day on the olive loaf sandwich line.)
On the other hand, elections now are so confusing that my opinion means zilch. Not fishing for credit for that kernel of honesty, although as someone who still reads opinion pages, I’d welcome the likes of Noonan and her very well-compensated colleagues (peers?) taking a break and skip election coverage until October and hold forth on county and city fairs, golf, films and the twisted “every day” stories that “regular” people read or listen to on TV. It might be said those topics aren’t their area of expertise: I’d counter that the basics of politics have eluded them.
For example, I’d be intrigued to read a Noonan review of Sarah Braunstein’s marvelous Baby In a Box, the best collection of short stories I’ve read this year. One short excerpt from the final, and semi-surrealistic story, “The Parents”: “Too many parents! They joke about it, Calvin and Cleo. It’s like a children’s book, isn’t it? Parents parents everywhere! They multiply. There, a pair in the rosebushes. Off in the distance, in the dusky meadow, another twosome. Huddling under the elm, on the riverbank, alone or in pairs, in groups, finding commonalities, like pigeons.”
On August 20th, Noonan went on and on about Trump’s corruption, financial and using his office to destroy enemies. Oh, just woke up! She does lob a funny, though: “Jimmy Carter’s shaking down the system to see what coins fall out would have been news, Donald Trump’s doing the same is Tuesday.”
Surprisingly, since Noonan wrote a witty book about Hillary Clinton in 2000 (The Case Against Hillary Clinton), she writes as if government corruption is new. Barack Obama escaped any criticism for personal enrichment while in office, but it’s fishy his net worth has exploded since he did almost nothing to defeat Trump in 2016. And Bill Clinton: selling the Lincoln Bedroom, Whitewater, “Travelgate,” pardoning Marc Rich, the Lewinsky mess…
She concludes, taking on the role of a Robert Caro or Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: “As always, the whole world is watching. What it has seen lowers the esteem in which it formally (if grudgingly) held Americans. It embarrasses us before the world. It hurts our heart a little.”
It doesn’t hurt my heart one iota, and I doubt that’s an uncommon opinion. “The whole world” has its own problems, far more pressing than Trump socking away $10 million here, $20 million there. And in the U.S., the rapid rise of antisemitism, which the DSA has taken advantage of, is far more ominous than an 80-year-old man, hoping that Mar-a-Lago is the Fountain of Youth, hiding dollars in his golf cart.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023