Yet another edition of "Peggy Walks it Back" -- A Quinn Martin Production

Peggy Noonan takes another step back from the ledge, after throwing a few brickbats at her bete noire, who sits quietly in Dallas, saying not a word:

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn't like about the Bush administration, everything it didn't like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush's incompetence and conservatives' failure to "believe in government." But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.

No he wasn't supposed to be competent, Peggy. It beggars belief that a fellow who never ran anything in his life other than his mouth would be capable of being a competent president. Mr. Obama was supposed to be Not Bush. And that was good enough for you and a lot of other people.

Here's the problem. Peggy says conservatives get the point about the limits of government competence. So if a conservative knows that, and one claims to be a conservative, why on earth would you suppose that it makes sense to hire a liberal?

Ah, it's almost not worth explaining any more, really. I think ol' Peggy inadvertently gave the game away with this little observation:

What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations.

Peggy is giving a signal to peel off, too. Whether anyone else is listening to her signal any more is hard to say.