Seemingly odd book recommendation
 

Earlier today, I finished listening to Peggy Noonan's Patriotic Grace on audio - a short book (4 hrs). For someone who comes from such a partisan background, she does a fairly good job at being even-handed at presenting both extremes of the political spectrum as needing to "cool the rhetoric" and unite. But, that's not why I started the thread.
She begins the book with a strong blast at airport security, using the "k word" (kabuki), lashing out at policies that harass passengers whom the govt knows are innocent, to make a pretense of "fairness". At the mid-point, she returns to the-horror-known-as-the-checkpoint, including her experience getting SSSS'd arbitrarily after speaking up in favor of a mother and little girl. At the end, she blasts the "gargantuan mess that is the DHS" (including the creepy name), urging its gutting.
Even if some folks don't care for Peggy, which I can understand, I thought the book worth noting. She does a thorough job of recognizing the Bush Administration for the failure it was - where I think some might find fault would be her desire to "move on", rather than examine the events more closely.

I have to say that Peggy Noonan is one of my least favorite people, but she and I agree about airport security. I think that conservatives and liberals can agree that the TSA has got it wrong.

She makes the point (in almost exactly these words) that many conservatives see any questioning of "security policy" as "pro-terrorist", while liberals are afraid to speak up in fear of being criticized along those lines. The time she "lost it" concerned the TSA giving the mother a hard time about something pre-walkthrough, while the (now unaccompanied) very young daughter was wandering around on the other side looking for her mommy. Peggy made a comment to the screener who took her boarding pass, in a quiet tone, and was told then that she would be sent for full treatment (not based upon a printed SSSS).
She also makes the point that these rules are made by bureaucrats and politicians, who rarely (if ever) have to live by them.

^ I call her 'Pollyanna Noonan.' She writes like a schoolgirl in student government on an endorphin high.

Indeed, she's quite Kumbayah-ish - that quote of hers is priceless as an example of her non-at-all-pithy speech.