Quote du Jour

Peggy Noonan in a column in today's Wall Street Journal:

If everyone in America--the butcher down the block, the college professor, the car mechanic, the mother of two working at home, the CNN analyst--knows that the U.S. senators questioning Sam Alito are posing, are using their airtime to promote themselves and play to their base, then will anyone in America be impressed by what the senators say, or how they pose? Isn't that like saying, "I know it's all spin, but he spun me like a top!"?

If everyone in America--again, everyone--knows Judge Alito's job is to reveal as little as possible about his true thoughts and convictions while coming across in the hearings as a well balanced, intelligent and experienced person, will anyone come away with a solid conviction, as opposed to a hunch, that Judge Alito will be an honest and reliable interpreter of the Constitution?

It is odd that in the age of big media, when everything is shown to us live, up close, and on a high-resolution screen, we still, in the pursuit of insight and knowledge, have to spend all our time reading between the lines.