Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's former speechwriter, is one of America's best and worst columists. She is capable of writing the most embarrassing guff, but when she's on her game she writes with a verve and penetration unmatched by her peers.
This week's offering displays her coruscating best. Her smackdown of Sarah Palin for making a silly comparison of herself with Reagan has been much blogged. But the column's most brutal paragraphs are reserved for the president. Now, I don't think that Obama is, as Noonan suggests, a busted flush (although I did think he displayed a worrying lack of pep at his press conference). But this sketch of him is so well-drawn, so funny and so elegantly savage, that it all but sweeps you along with it:
On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.
Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: He won't even make a good former president.
His detachment is so great, it is even from himself. As he spoke, he seemed to be narrating from a remove. It was like hearing the audiobook of Volume I of his presidential memoirs. "Obama was frustrated. He honestly didn't understand what the country was doing. It was as if they had compulsive hand-washing disorder. In '08 they washed off Bush. Now they're washing off Obama. There he is, swirling down the drain! It's all too dramatic, too polar. The morning after the election it occurred to him: maybe he should take strong action. Maybe he should fire America! They did well in 2008, but since then they've been slipping. They weren't giving him the followership he needed. But that wouldn't work, they'd only complain. He had to keep his cool. His aides kept telling him, 'Show humility.' But they never told him what humility looked like. What was he supposed to do, burst into tears and say hit me? Not knowing how to feel humility or therefore show humility he decided to announce humility: He found the election 'humbling,' he said."
What Democrats have to learn from this election: Cut loose from that.
Link to column.
"Vote conservative, limit the reach of the thieves."
Oh please please someone put that on an ad...
Seriously though, a great piece. She hits several nails on the head there.
Posted by: ejoch | November 08, 2010 at 05:51 PM
I don't get this "detachment" thing at all from the president. He's a good man who has the worst job in the world.
La Noonan is only disappointed that he won't play the "daddy" or the cheerleader that she and all conservatives want.
He's a fecking grownup. I like that. She and her Politico-like colleagues on the right are twits. Give me the grownup every time.
Posted by: RJ | November 11, 2010 at 11:57 PM
That's great, I never thought about Nostradamus in the OR (Insights from Eugene Litvak at IHI) like that before.
Posted by: Blowers | November 24, 2010 at 09:05 AM