I’m sure it won’t surprise you that Peggy Noonan was profoundly saddened by President Obama’s speech on Tuesday (“The speech was an unusual and unleavened assault on the Republican Party…. The speech was not aimed at healing, ameliorating differences, or joining together”).
I particularly enjoy the part of her column in which she attempts to criticize the speech by putting on her history hat:
I guess what’s most interesting is that it’s all us-versus-them. Normally at this point, early in an election year, an incumbent president operates within a rounded, nonthreatening blur. He’s sort of in a benign cloud, and then pokes his way out of it with strong, edged statements as the year progresses. Mr. Obama isn’t doing this. He wants it all stark and sharply defined early on. Is this good politics? It is unusual politics. Past presidents in crises have been sunny embracers.
Is this true? Have past incumbent presidents running for reelection — oh, say, the guy who was in office in early April 1984 — been, at this point in the election year, “sunny embracers” who dole out nothing more than gentle love taps to the other party, while occupying a “benign cloud”? Is angry, vicious Barack Obama radically defying the unwritten rules of political politesse by engaging in attacks in the early spring?
Let’s go to the wayback machine….
REAGAN ATTACKS CONGRESS’S ROLE ON MANY FRONTS
By FRANCIS X. CLINES , Special to the New York Times
Published: April 5, 1984WASHINGTON, April 4– President Reagan, entering the third month of his re-election campaign, challenged Congress tonight on a broad array of foreign and domestic issues.
Mr. Reagan, in a nationally televised news conference, repeatedly criticized Congress for its role on such issues as Lebanon, El Salvador aid, restrictions of the War Powers act, public school prayer, his fairness toward the poor and the “sleaze factor” charges being lodged against his appointees by Congressional Democrats.
The President, less than a week after withdrawing forces from the coast of Lebanon, said flatly that Congress “must take a responsibility” for events in Lebanon. More than 260 Marines died during the President’s controversial commitment of American troops to a multinational peackeeping force in Beirut.
A Complaining Tone
Mr. Reagan described in a clearly complaining tone the Congressional debate on the topic, “‘Oh, bring our men home, take them away,'” and declared: “All this can do is stimulate the terrorists and urge them on to further attacks.”
After such a commitment of troops, the President contended, “You have rendered them ineffective when you conduct that kind of a debate in public.”
The President was noticeably more combative toward Congress, too, in denouncing as “not helpful in what we’re trying to do” a proposal approved in the Senate that would limit his request for El Salvador aid.
He complained that such questions as the President’s freedom in international diplomacy should be made subject under the War Powers Act to “a committee of 535 individuals, no matter how well intentioned.”
His remarks this evening amounted to his strongest criticism yet of Congress’s attempts to differ with or modify his policy initiatives….
I think my work is done here.
****
Oh, but one more thing. Here’s some of Noonan’s horror at Obama’s tone:
The speech was an unusual and unleavened assault on the Republican Party. As such it was gutsy, no doubt sincere and arguably a little mad. The other party in a two-party center-right nation is anathema? There was no good-natured pledging to work together or find common ground, no argument that progress is possible.
Yes, imagine! The president — however sincere and gutsy — is actually arguing that the other party is completely out of the mainstream! And he’s the president! It’s mad — mad, I tell you!
Hmmm … what was that famous thing Ronald Reagan said about the Democrats when he was president? The line you helped write, Peggy?
They’re so far left, they’ve left America.
Right! That’s the one!
Oh, but I’m sure that was completely different, because Reagan probably winked at someone after the speech, in that sunny, embracing way of his.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
Sometimes you really have to wonder what planet Nooners lives on.
She lives on The Planet of PR Whores Pretending to Be Journalists. No surprise there.
Hasn’t she graduated to the ranks of professional concern trolls?
No, I understand why you would think that — but with her it’s something much more grand and romantic and noble. Yes, she’s a sycophant, but it isn’t for the money. Don’t forget, Nooners was THE wordsmith that crafted the speeches of both Ronald REagan and George H.W. Bush. No, she’s on the planet of kitsch Americanism and self-absorbed privilege, a planet that might be described as a cross between Celebration, Florida, and the ideal America as channeled through Disneyland and an imaginary American equivalent of Maggie Thatcher. It is this that makes Nooners the true poet of The D.C. Village. “A thousand points of light”, “a kinder, gentler nation’, and “read my lips: no new taxes” — all Noonerisms. The title of her book on Reagan “When Character Was King” is another example. The phrases sound poetic on the surface, rather too poetic I would say, but they fall flat as soon as you realize they are totally full of shit. And that’s her. An America that tugs at your heartstrings, puts smile on your face and a song in your heart, but is not engaging with reality. Obama’s America is far more interesting and complex, and he’s actually trying to come to grips with it.
Very interesting. “when character was king”??? meaning fictional character[s] that she created? no wonder she longs for the return of that time.
great description.
Booman Tribune ~ Wow, That Was Easy
interesting, that’s exactly what i thought about obama at the DNC speech.
he got grittier during the campaign.
The planet were it’s okay to have sexual fantasies about dead Popes and Presidents?
.
The Republicans in Congress are so extreme right they are beyond earth’s reality and have entered Dobson country.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This is why there are so few conservatives publishing in academia – they would have to provide citations to back up all their assertions and that makes their heads asplode.
That, and they’re afraid to get all that Communism on them.
Why do Republicans have this need to be apocolyptic and sociopathic with the description of their enemies be it liberals, black people, democrats, etc….as well as their apparent need to be destroyed…. but also have this need to consistently have their asskissed for that same said display of hatred?
Shouldn’t you expect your adversaries to hate you?
Do Yankee fans expect Sox fans to love them?
I mean, shouldn’t you expect that guy who you’ve been calling every name in the book for as long as you’ve known him to finally turn around one day and call you an asshole?
They really hate it when someone accurately and visibly describe their positions. In response they do the hognose snake act: befoul themselves and act as if they are in their death throes.
Booman Tribune ~ Wow, That Was Easy
2 main reasons: the brittle pseudo-certainty of philosophical absolutism, or mental architecture, and their interpretation of the bible’s ‘end times’, which they anticipate as an orgasmic, annihalative liberation from ever having to reason again with liberals…
the end of the secret shame of ‘not getting it’.
“Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.” – Samuel Butler, Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 215.
She writes all that putrid pus for money! This will continue for as long as she continues to earn huge sums for her vicious attacks. She may or may not believe what she writes, but that does not matter, what matters is that there are very rich people who will pay her handsomely to write the lies and filth she vomits.
Sadly Noonan can’t ever be more than a minor wanker now. The production just isn’t there. That said, this line “The speech was not aimed at healing, ameliorating differences, or joining together” does make the nightly top 10 of professionally disingenuous concern trolling.