Peggy Noonan Is Wrong on So Many Levels

It was inevitable that one of the key talking points of the ongoing "Bush legacy project" would be that, thanks to George W. Bush, we were "safe" after 9/11 -- but if I were Peggy Noonan and I wanted to write about a "safe" America in December 2008, I think I might have hesitated before beginning my discussion this way:

To drive through the suburbs of Northern Virginia is to marvel still at the widespread wealth, the mansions and mini-mansions that did not exist a quarter-century ago and that now thicken the woods and hills....

The other night, the big houses were strung with glittering white Christmas lights -- not all different colors, as we do in other suburbs, but stately white -- and from the Georgetown Pike, heading toward Great Falls, we saw a house with a big glass-walled living room that faced the street, and below it a glass-walled entrance room, and each had its own brightly decorated tree. "Two Christmas trees," murmured a companion, and it captured the air of prosperity and solid well-being of the area.

..."You have to go farther out to see the foreclosure signs," said a friend.

... Back to the Christmas gathering. There was ... considerable grousing about the Bush administration, but it was almost always followed by one sentence, and this is more or less what it was: "But he kept us safe..."

I believe that all depends on what the definition of "safe" is.