Peggy Noonan, on why the "unity ticket" is a bad idea:  "[Clinton]
undercuts the cleanness of Obama’s message. She doesn’t turn the page,
she is the page." Heh.

More after the jump.

Noonan writes that "America
dodged a bullet" because the Democrats nominated Obama. She opines:

Mrs. Clinton would have been a disaster as president.
Mr. Obama may prove a disaster, and John McCain may, but she would be.
Mr. Obama may lie, and Mr. McCain may lie, but she would lie.
And she would have brought the whole rattling caravan of Clintonism
with her—the scandal-making that is compulsive, the drama that is
unending, the sheer, daily madness that is her, and him.

We have been spared this. Those who did it deserve to be thanked. May I rise in a toast to the Democratic Party.

They had a great and roaring fight, a state-by-state
struggle unprecedented in the history of presidential primaries. They
created the truly national primary. They brought 36 million people to
the polls, including the young, minorities and first-time voters. They
brought a kind of dogged brio to the year.

All of this is impressive, but more than that, they
threw off Clintonism. They threw off the idea that corruption is part
of the game, an acceptable fact. They threw off the idea that
dynasticism was an unstoppable dynamic in modern politics, that
Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton could, would, go on forever. They said: "No,
that is not the way we do it."

They threw off the idea of inevitability. Mrs. Clinton
didn’t lose because she had no money or organization, she didn’t lose
because she had no fame or name, she didn’t lose because her policies
were unusual or dramatically unpopular within her party. She lost
because enough Democrats looked at her and thought: I don’t like that, I don’t like the way she does it, I’m not going there.
Most candidates lose over things, not over their essential nature. But
that is what happened here. For all her accomplishments and success, it
was her sketchy character that in the end did her in.

But the voters had to make the decision. So, to the Democrats: A nod. A bow. Well done.

Noonan adds that if Obama picks Clinton as his veep, people "would
assume she and her people did their voodoo—I have 18
million voters!—and he fell for it. She doesn’t have 18 million voters,
she got 18 million votes. It is telling the way she thinks of them, as
if they are working-class automatons awaiting her command."

Also, relatedly: "you
can see how Mrs. Clinton views her supposed working-class heroes by
what she is doing with them now: using them as a bargaining chip to get
whatever she wants."