"It was a strategic mistake to send Sarah Palin out on the stump as warrior girl. Mr. McCain is war-y enough."

Writes Peggy Noonan. I don't know about that. We like our warrior girl... some of us. Those that don't like Palin the Warrior aren't going to like Palin the "social conservative who is for diplomacy, for an easy-does-it approach to foreign affairs," are they? But I agree with Noonan about this:

Both campaigns, in the closing stretch, seem not fully worthy of the moment. We are in crisis—a once-in-a-century event, as we now say. And what we got from the candidates, in this week's presidential debate, was a bunch of gummy meanderings—smooth, rounded sentences so full of focus-grouped inanities that six minutes in viewers entered a kind of trance in which we almost immediately gave up on trying to wrest meaning from what was being said and instead focused on mere impressions.

***

Noonan has a way with words. Note that she wrote "meanderings" where many writers would use "maundering." Here's the American Heritage Dictionary on "maundering":

1. To talk incoherently or aimlessly. 2. To move or act aimlessly or vaguely; wander.

Sounds exactly right, no? But then:

ETYMOLOGY: Probably dialectal variant of meander (probably influenced by wander).

Interesting! Noonan rises above the dialectical variant.