The Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan writes in her column today that President Obama “thrives on chaos.” It’s how he’s winning the debate over the sequester, she says. “He flourishes in unsettled circumstances and grooves on his own calm. He spins an air of calamity, points fingers and garners support.”

Furthermore, the economic turmoil that has lasted throughout Obama’s presidency has taken a toll on her favorite wholesale retailer:

The other day I was in a Wal-Mart in southern Florida. It was Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend but even accounting for that the mood and look of the place was different from what it was two and five years ago. Then, things seemed dynamic—what buys, what an array of products, what bustle in the aisles. This time it seemed tired, frayed, with fewer families and scarcer employees. It looked like a diorama of the Great Recession. What effect do all the successive fiscal cliffs, ceilings and sequesters, have on public confidence? On the public’s spirit? They only add to the sense that Washington is dysfunctional and cannot possibly help us out of the mire.