In this long season of searing political attacks and angry partisan passions, Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column has been must reading for thoughtful liberals and conservatives alike.

Now she issues an urgent, heartfelt call for all Americans to see each other anew, realize what time it is, and come together to support the next President -- whoever he is. Because it is not the threats and challenges we face, but how we face them that defines us as a nation.

The terrible events of 9/11 brought us together in a way not seen since World War II. But the stresses and divisions of the Bush years have driven us apart to a point that is unhealthy and destructive.

Today, Noonan argues, the national mood is for a change in our politics and it is well past time for politicians to catch up. Americans are tired of the old partisan divisions and the campaign tricks that seek to widen and exploit them. We long for leaders who can summon us to greatness and unity, as they did in the long struggles against fascism and communism.

In this timely little book, written in the pamphleteering tradition of Tom Paine's Common Sense, Noonan reminds us that we must face our common challenges together -- not by rising above partisanship, but by reaffirming what it means to be American.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Books that should be read.
Comment: Peggy is a very readable author and so far I have enjoyed it very much. She makes so much sense.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Noonan describes change we can believe in
Comment: Although I disagree with Noonan on occasion, I always, always like her writing style.

This book described very much the change I would like to see in American politics.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: 5 for elegance and good intent, 2 for being blind to reality, a strong 3 overall
Comment: ON STRIKE UNTIL AMAZON STOPS DELETING FAVORABLE VOTES FROM FANS AND COUNTING NEGATIVE VOTES FROM THOSE WHO HATE THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE BOOK BEING REVIEWED MORE THAN THEY CARE ABOUT THE REVIEW.

I would have gone with a weak four if the book had more substance to it, but ultimately this is a "quickie" book with good intentions and elegant turns of phrase, and I certainly recommend that it be bought and read.

I am estranged moderate Republican utterly livid over the manner in which the "bi-partisan" spoils system allowed Bush-Cheney to destroy America while both Congress and the White House subverted the Constitution.

Hence, when Noonon calls for "bi-partisan" collaboration in the middle of the book, I must immediately put her in the same class as lawyers for organized crime leaders. Democracy in America has been destroyed. The League of Women Voters was pushed out of the debate business so that the Republican-Democratic debate commission could exclude Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, Cynthia McKinny, Gloria La Riva, and the ever so arrogant and hence irrelevant Bob Barr. We are NOT one nation, we are NOT one people, and there is nothing wrong with America that Electoral Reform will not fix. A third of the country's voters have been illegally gerrymandered out of their vote, and another third have been disincentivized by the idiocy of our campaigns.

Here Noonan earns a solid three and moves almost to a weak four when she castigates both Obama and McCain for failing to discuss any serious issues, and especially her pet rock, the electrical grid. While she is right on both counts, this is as substantive as the book gets, everything else is pabulum about bi-partisan singing kumbawah while in fact bi-partisanship is treason--Congress is broken in every possible way at the same time that the Executive is organized for incoherenceand the ONLY thing that will fix (and preserve) the United STATES of America is Electoral Reform--I am providing the text in easy to read format in the first comment below, most from Ralph Nader as refined by me.

To end on a positive note, this book is a cross between Ralph Nader's The Seventeen Traditions and Imagine: What America Could be in the 21st century while completely avoiding the reality depicted in Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy or Senator Tom Coburn's Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders.

NOTE for my regular readers: Amazon has totally hosed up the review system. Fans that come in once a week to catch up and vote on each review are being treated as "campaign voters" and their votes are automatically deleted once they pass some threshhold, perhaps three votes for the same reviewer on the same day. You have to complain. They are also incentivizing negative reviews, and this has encouraged stalkers (whose votes get deleted) but it also peverts the system in that most of my reviews which have three times the positive votes of any other reviewer, now fall below the line because I also have a small segment of negative reviews that are oriented mostly on the premises of the book I am reviewing, not my review (most of which go right up to 1000 words and include 10 links to other books). If you select me as an "Interesting Person" at my profile, this will unbury my reviews when you as an individual visit--otherwise Amazon has sentence me to intellectual death....

Other books on the theme of this book that are better:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Doing Democracy
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

The free book online (and at Amazon) with everything this books does not address:
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)

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Customer Rating:
Summary: if she had only read her own book
Comment: To read this book in the context of Ms. Noonan's behavior during this election leaves one with a sense of bereavement.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Please: Distribute free to all members of Congress!
Comment: I am not Peggy Noonan's kind of woman. One of my first political memories is my sense of powerlessness, at 17, that I could not cast my vote against Ms. Noonan's mentor, Ronald Reagan. And I remained a Democrat, an east-coast, Harvard-educated liberal until recently.

I am still a liberal, but I am not a Democrat. Or a Republican. I am an American. Not in the way either party likes to use that term, but in the real, passion, love my country, believe we are, yes, the free-est nation there ever was, governed by laws and principles of right and justice, not by men (or women or politicians). We were and are and, if everyone reads this book, will still be a shining beacon to the world.

I believe that. Do you?

More and more, it seems like we have all--Republican and Democrat alike--lost America in the bickering and negative campaigning and silly partisanship. We are so busy arguing whether to paint the lifeboat blue or red that we cannot see the ship is sinking.

And then along comes Peggy Noonan's little book. A pamphlet, really, in the tradition of Tom Paine: Common Sense. It's not very well written. I picture Ms. Noonan dictating it in a fever of frustration and hope and fear and love for her country. No time to edit: just ship it out. But Ms. Noonan was right. It had to be said, even if it is repetitive and breathy and the editors were all on vacation that month.

We are at a critical juncture in our history: our principles of free conscience and liberty are under attack and we risk losing our world position as the standard-bearer for liberty. We can no longer afford to wonder, "Why can't we just get along?" The time for that has passed: if we are to uphold the freedom that is our birthright, we must put aside the partisanship that has frozen us. We must get along. We must rally around our common beliefs and leave the differences for another day. Our politicians must be brave. They must tell their advisors and funders and radio partisans: "Enough. Don't you understand? We can save America. We must save America. We are a great nation, all of us, but it will take all of us: the Republicans and the Democrats and the Christians and the Harvard-educated East Coast Liberals."

Peggy Noonan has taken the first step. Old line party politician or no, she has said what needed saying. The least you can do, is read it. It may just be the most important book you read this century.

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