I didn't think it was possible, but the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan contradicted herself in such an obvious, head-spinning manner on this Sunday's Meet the Press, that it was even too much for guest host Chuck Todd to stomach.
Here's what she said about gun control and why it didn't get through the Congress:
PEGGY NOONAN: I think a big part of this story is that people don't trust Congress. After Newtown, there was a great bubbling feeling of, "My goodness, there must be at least some things we can do legislatively to make this whole gun situation better." If the Congress, if the Senate had moved quickly on discrete, small bills, having to do with background checks, I mean quickly, in the weeks after Newtown--
CHUCK TODD: But they were discrete. These are small, incremental bills.
PEGGY NOONAN: Move it quickly. Do it. Don't put it together into this big thing and then start to be talking about all these different kind of guns you're banning and having all these hearings. They failed to move quick and small.
And here she is in almost the next breath, on the topic of immigration reform:
CHUCK TODD: Peggy, what'd you hear on immigration between those two? Chuck Schumer, "Deal is at hand, we're close," Jeff Flake, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute." What'd you hear?
PEGGY NOONAN: I heard a lot of interest in Marco Rubio-- was there. Look, I think there's a broad sense that we've been talking about immigration reform in a very big way for almost 10 years. And in Congress, they do want to move forward, but they're-- are anxieties, certainly on the Republican side. I think Rubio said something in the past 24 hours, or at least I read it, that-- that seemed to me kind of smart. He said, "Make this transparent. Let everybody know. Let the voters know what we're doing. Maybe hold hearings. But don't just have these quiet, little deals. Again, nobody's--"
(OVERTALK)
CHUCK TODD: But-- but wait a minute, you just contra-- you're contradicting yourself. On guns, you said "Move fast, move quickly, get it done."
PEGGY NOONAN: Oh, move--
(OVERTALK)
PEGGY NOONAN: --fast and move quickly on immigration is now impossible. I mean-- please, this has been going on for ten years--
(OVERTALK)
PEGGY NOONAN: --but I'll tell you something that-- I read something in a book the other day that I think has a little bit to do with what's-- what the general mood pushing immigration forward. It is a quote from Calvin Coolidge, it's an-- Amity Shlaes's book about him, it's about 1922, and he said of immigration, "Whether you came over-- whether your people came over on the Mayflower, or they came over last week in steerage, we're all in the same boat."
That's an old American point of view, he explained afterwards, the boat you're in-- is made magical by a feeling of Americanism, which we're all out to communicate to each other, which we don't communicate so well these days. But I think there's just a general sense, normalize and regularize this thing. Don't make it punitive and nasty.
Which begs the question, which of course is never asked, like why someone like Noonan is considered one of the Very Serious people in Washington who are invited on these shows in the first place.
