Whether you agree with her or not, Peggy Noonan, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, simply writes beautifully. I found this week end’s column Who We (Still) Are to be both realistic and optimistic.

It is obvious that the United States has many problems, and it is easy to focus solely on them. A short list would include regulatory failures, bank failures, and failures of foresight and leadership at many levels. Referring to “the age of the empty suit” Noonan writes, “Those who were supposed to be watching things, making the whole edifice run, keeping it up and operating, just somehow weren’t there.”

Concerning the Bernard Madoff scandal, she writes:

That’s the big thing at the heart of the great collapse, a strong sense of absence. Who was in charge? Who was in authority? The biggest swindle in all financial history, if the figure of $50 billion is to be believed, and nobody knew about it, supposedly, but the swindler himself. The government didn’t notice, just as it didn’t notice the prevalence of bad debts that would bring down America’s great investment banks.

All this has hastened and added to the real decline in faith—the collapse in faith—the past few years in our institutions. Not only in Wall Street but in our entire economy, and in government.

On the other hand, she writes of the past achievements and the innate ability and good sense of the American people.

This is a good time to remember who we are, or rather just a few small facts of who we are. We are the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, the leading industrial power of the world, and the wealthiest nation in the world. … We are the oldest continuing democracy in the world, operating, since March 4, 1789, under a vibrant and enduring constitution that was formed by geniuses and is revered, still, coast to coast. We don’t make refugees, we admit them. When the rich of the world get sick, they come here to be treated, and when their children come of age, they send them here to our universities. We have a supple political system open to reform, and a wildly diverse culture that has moments of stress but plenty of give.

The point is not to say rah-rah, paint our faces blue and bray “We’re No. 1.” The point is that while terrible challenges face us—improving a sick public education system, ending the easy-money culture, rebuilding the economy—we are building from an extraordinary, brilliant and enduring base.

The other day I called former Secretary of State George Shultz, because he is wise and experienced and takes the long view. I asked if he thought we should be optimistic about our country’s fortunes and future. “Absolutely,” he said, there is “every reason to have confidence.”

Mr. Shultz laid out some particulars of his own optimism. There is “the ingenuity, the flexibility, the strengths of the national economy.” The labor force: “We are so blessed with human talent and resources.” And the American people themselves. “They have intelligence, integrity and honor.”

We should experience “the current crisis” as “a gigantic wake-up call.” We’ve been living beyond our means, both governmentally and personally. “We have to be willing to face up to our problems. But we have a capacity to roll up our sleeves and get down to work together.”

Realistic to the core, she concludes

What a task President-elect Obama has ahead. He ran on a theme of change we can believe in, but already that seems old. Only six weeks after his election he faces a need more consequential and immediate. In January, in his inaugural, he may find himself addressing something bigger, and that is: Belief we can believe in. The return of confidence. The end of absence. The return of the suit inhabited by a person. The return of the person who will take responsibility, and lead.