On missing Dad

One of the great things about Friday is the opportunity to read Peggy's Noonan's column in advance. (Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, so we know she's a conservative, but she was also an early and bitter critic of George W. Bush.) Here's the keystone from her Saturday essay in the Wall Street Journal:

Sorry to do archetypes, but a nation in trouble probably wants a fatherly, or motherly, figure at the top. What America has right now is a bright, lost older brother. It misses Dad. [Mitt] Romney's added value is his persona. He's a little like the father in one of those 1950s or '60s sitcoms.... He's like Robert Young in "Father Knows Best," or Fred MacMurray in "My Three Sons: You'd quake at telling him about the fender-bender, but after the lecture on safety and personal responsibility, he'd buck you up and throw you the keys.

As for that bright, lost older brother in the White House, she concludes her essay by saying: 'Sometimes he lectures America. But he doesn't buck it up, and he must know in his heart that it's coming for the keys.' Blue skies! -- Dan Ford