Bad judgment
Peggy Noonan thinks Obama’s problem is bad judgment:
Mr. Obama can see the trees, name their genus and species, judge their age and describe their color. He absorbs data. But he consistently misses the shape, size and density of the forest. His recitations of data are really a faux sophistication that suggests command of the subject but misses the heart of the matter…
ObamaCare top to bottom was poor judgment. It shouldn’t have been the central domestic effort of his presidency, that should have been the economy and jobs…
Noonan’s piece goes on to list error after error of Obama’s, and ascribes them to bad judgment. But although she accuses Obama of not seeing the forest for the trees, Noonan is guilty of her own version of the same thing.
She doesn’t see the overarching ideology and character traits that link all of it: his leftism, narcissism, dislike of America and the desire to humble it, and the technique of the big lie, to name just a few things she leaves out. His emphasis on Obamacare was no example of mere bad judgment, it was a judgement call. Taking over much of the economy and making people dependent on it was his goal, and “jobs” were not.
The bottom line is that Noonan herself was guilty of bad judgment when she supported Obama in 2008, and of bad judgment now when she gives him the benefit of way too much doubt. And she’s got an awful lot of company in that bad judgment.
the people have a problem vis a vis obama
The U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command in
August stated that Russian strategic nuclear bombers sharply increased incursions into U.S. air defense zone.
More than 16 bomber flights were tracked and intercepted by U.S. and Canadian jets during a 10-day period that month.
Russia, under Putin, is engaged in a large-scale nuclear buildup that includes new missiles, submarines, and a new bomber.
On Sept. 10, the Russian navy conducted a test firing of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile.
State-run Interfax-AVN news service reported earlier this week that nuclear cruise missile firing Russian Tu-95 Bear Bombers and Tu-22 Backfire C bombers completed missions that involved “snap readiness checks” in the Pacific.
You have to admit, though, that he dresses well and his pants ARE neatly creased. Peggy was right about that, which shows you just how perceptive she really is.
Noonan hit her apogee a long long time ago. She has become extremely myopic these last ten years or so, an intellectual Mr. Magoo. She can still turn a phrase, but to have a sound, well-reasoned thought? No.
Her column has >1200 comments. By scrolling quickly, my impression is the large majority see her as Neo does.
Peggy Noonan frustrates me intensely. I approach her columns hoping against hope that she’ll finally lay it on the line, but no, she retreats into being good old musing Peg, sitting back (drink in hand, I always imagine) to dwell on the ironies of our political moment. She always stays just inside the insider membrane.
This one really made me
Read this by Codevilla as an antidote to Noonanblather:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/19/washingtons-ruling-class-is-fooling-itself-about-the-islamic-state/
mad.
Noonan’s problem is that she thinks the problem can be fixed by some sort of “wake-up call” to Obama’s better judgement. Not. Going. To. Happen.
She’s clearly putting herself in the “fool” camp, when it’s becoming obvious to us at least that Obama is no fool. He’s certainly no genius, but he’s clearly very much a knave. And so now I have weighed in on that debate, and I don’t think events will change my opinion there very much except to harden it. Obama is the very thing Cicero excorciated….
Yes, Peggy’s missing the forest here, but I think she’s doing something valuable in telling those liberals (not hard-leftists) who voted for Obama that’s it okay to criticize the guy, that doing so won’t make one a racist.
So she lets them (and herself) continue to proclaim his vast intellect — “he’s so famously bright–academically credentialed, smooth, facile with words, quick with concepts” — largely because confirming that is what makes them, in their eyes, not racists. But then she gives them this:
“But brightness is not the same as judgment, which has to do with discernment, instinct, the ability to see the big picture, wisdom that is earned or natural.”
Not a huge new idea, of course. But one that gets short shrift in today’s world.
Peggy Noonan, who is she? Are we talking about the washed up writer who worked for Reagan many years ago? Why would anyone still read her?
noonan wants you to focus on the pitcher and ignore the role that people like her played. she wants you to forget the basic truth that without her and others it doesnt matter what a bozo leader obama is! that without the complicity and games of the press, the machinations fail.
the big lie dont work unless the reporters dont call it out as a lie, and this applies down the line on every point and if it seems not, then on its counterpoint…who informed us about healthcare?? the press…who has manipulatrd stories to create race hate?? the press. who crowed and showed fayx picfures of docs and didnt say how bad?? the press. who hides abd one sides attacks on whites that often are en masse?? the press.. who is fomentung feminist destruction of male entertainment like the NFL, and inserting politics, and fomenting that non legal entities punish alkng with law, but absent rights, due process, probity, etc? press…who tells us to hate x, ignore y, and punish z??
Six years into Obama’s presidency and Noonan still thinks he’s a genius? Da Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.
I’d love to see proof that Obama has absorbed any meaningful data (other than political) since he became president. He has bad judgement because, A] Obama already knows everything he needs to know – so he needn’t bother listening to experts, such as military leaders on fighting IS, and B] He is inflexible to the point that he cannot alter his path once he’s set of to do something.
Wonder if we’ll every see an accurate assessment of Obama’s performance, or if this ridiculous fluff will be what’s recorded in the history books for our children & grandchildren.
I’d like to ascribe MS Noonan’s motivation simply to , “there are none so blind, as those who will not see” but unfortunately I suspect her motivation to be more a case of self-aggrandizement.
Ms Noonan seeks above all else the respect that status as an esteemed elder commentator on events of the day brings her… were she to state the truth, she would be relegated to FOX news but by offering ‘moderate’ opinions acceptable to the RINO establishment, she is also acceptable to the MSM and thus, she receives maximum exposure.
I also suspect that her willful blindness as to her own motivations exceeds her denial as to Obama’s true nature.
“Academically credentialed”??? Has anyone seen his credentials? No, he (or the Chicago
Annenberg Foundation) had them all sealed. One wonders just why. . . .
Jenk: “She’s clearly putting herself in the “fool” camp, when it’s becoming obvious to us at least that Obama is no fool. He’s certainly no genius, but he’s clearly very much a knave.”
He doesn’t need to be a genius to fool his audience when the audience works so hard at fooling itself.
Thanks, Neo, for so superbly pinpointing Peggy Noonan’s own trees-forest problem. Your little catalogue of Obama’s “traits,” dare we say faults, is just SO on the money. I would add another; his arrogant sense of entitlement. (Mrs. School Lunch shares this in abundance).
@Geoffrey Britain
Agreed. Peggy wants to be part of the DC in-crowd, seen as still “relevant”. Conservatives aren’t going to help her career one bit and telling the naked truth would make her a pariah to Dems and Rinos.
Poor Peggy….. What should she do?
/s
Noonan is an essential symbol of why the Tea Party movement has been a flash in the pan. The Noonans, in their millions, refused to get on board. They just love their fashionable blinders.
When you start out with a bunch of premises that are just wrong, your conclusions cannot be correct. It is the equivalent of garbage in, garbage out.
Government, by definition, is inefficient, therefore, it should be as small as possible. This is a conservative view.
Trying to make Big Government work efficiently is futile. The left will keep trying. It will always be someone else’s fault.
Obama is an Alinskyite who emerged from Chicago and it’s machine-almost anyone should recognize that. I suspect that Barack made Noonan’s heart flutter a bit. She feels jilted now.
Obama’s problem isn’t bad judgement. He is not a good guy who has made a few mistakes. What he has done in his regime is deliberate, conscious, knowing.
He seeks to destroy our free market economy, destroy the family, and destroy our position in the world.
The person with bad judgement is Peggy Noonan.
Ralph: Melanin-based entitlement is everywhere, and Baraq and Moochelle are prime examples. It was recently calculated and reported by a usually reliable source that more than $1 Billion has been expended on Baraq’s transportation while POTUS. That would be $160 million per year.
Our “race relations” will again come to violence and, for one side or the other, this will not end well.
I will take PN seriously when she demands the genius release his transcripts so we the people can pass judgment on his brilliance. People like PN just want to be in with the in crowd
Peggy just doesn’t get it. for the first time in our history, we elected (twice!!) a man who hates our country and all that it stands for. And he’s pretty much gotten everything he wanted.
Harold
The person with bad judgement is Peggy Noonan.
We have a winner.
2008 reasons why Peggy Noonan has bad judgment.
Noonan is an LIV who glories in her ignorance.
True Clearance Complete is SPAM. Handle accordingly.
Still clueless after all these years.
Peggy Noonan writes, among other stupidities, “But Republicans in 2009 were more desperate than he [President Hopenchange] understood, and some could have been picked off, because they thought he was the future and they didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”
There’s Peggy Noonan in there, esteemed folks. She “thought he was the future and they didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history.” Forget about being principled, about being true to one’s core values; there are those who (horrors!) desperately don’t want to be caught napping “on the wrong side of history.” What more damning judgment to be imposed on *any* one — to be caught, pants down, “on the wrong side of history”.
No, not our dear Peggy.
/begin sarc
And not me. I will faithfully go where the herd goes, do what the herd does, think what the herd thinks, eat where the herd eats, dress as the herd dresses (crease in pants). I wanna be like *just* Peggy and all the Respectable People.
Waaaaaah.
/end sarc
Obama’s problem, and our’s by extension, is Bad Karma.
Eco,
I am curious, after 7 years (counting the year bho began his campaign for CIC and beyond that to his political career in Illinois) what is there to extend upon with regard to his holiness? What info, beyond his transcipts, remains a mystery? For eyes that see and ears that hear, without swooning over the kool-aid, bho is truly the most transparent one. “There is nothing that you can know that isn’t known, nothing you can see that is not shown…. its easy.”
Did you just wake up? I suspect not.
I haven’t been able to take Peggy Noonan seriously since her column about the Paul Wellstone funeral. She has never added up for me. Her “point-of-view” has been fraught with inconsistency for years. She strikes me as unprincipled.
Obama is an arsonist and a wrecker (for all the best reasons, of course, of course).
Does an arsonist and a wrecker possess “bad judgement”?
Well I guess that depends…. (of course, of course).
File under: I of the beholder
You are missing something. Columnists don’t build equity as, say, a businessman does. They don’t have a pension plan funded by their employer. They are always one ill-advised comment away from a cut in pay–see George Will–in syndication, or out of work due to boredom amongst the customers.
If they don’t have a lucrative and loyal niche, they have to appeal to a lot of people a lot of the time.
I see Noonan speaking for those who are trying to excuse themselves without, say, jumping in front of a train for their sins of poor judgement, feelings of superiority to the bitter clingers, riding with history, etc. It’s a start for her and for them. Unlikely to make a difference, since the same forces, the same belief systems, the same moral blindness, the same eagerness to be fooled, will be on duty next time around.
But she needs the money and it’s a start, if only a start going noplace.
Peggy seems to be a more articulate and far les pompous version of Bill O’Reilly in her approach to Obama. Like O’Reilly, she pulls up short of calling him what he is. In O’Reilly’s case, he dismisses anyone who suggest Obama is a liar who’s got a problem with almost everything American – he even goes to the trouble of defending Obama by shouting over the guests who suggest such heresy with the frequently used: “you don’t have any evidence of that”.
Which either shows he’s not Perry Mason by any stretch of the imagination, or he’s defending Obama for self serving purposes. I believe it is the latter, and probably so with Noonan too. They both want to be critical of him and keep making money without crossing a line that might lead to consequences they’re unwilling to endure. No more dinner parties, no more A-list status, no more columns in the big markets. You can only poke the beast so much before you’re ostracized. They don’t want to be blogging for a living.
The really irritating thing about them (for me) is they both use the faux naé¯veté as if it were sophistication the rest of us bumpkins lack. In the real world outside of the Washington-NY media complex, it’s just call ass-kissing.
Really, taking apart a Peggy Noonan column is like shooting fish in a barrel. Who takes her seriously anymore?
The emotional swing from BDS to Obama worship should be thrown in the face of all Obama supporters. These people are nuts.
Mr. Obama can see the trees, name their genus and species, judge their age and describe their color.
Bad judgment, huh. Is Noonan doing her second season clown act?
In recent times I’ve pretty much lost touch with Peggy and was taken by shocked surprise to read in Neo’s post that she’d supported Mister NO Experience of Any Kind in the ’08 election. Good freaking grief, Peggy!! That’s just nuts.
Southpaw…Amen on Billy O. Funny, with the ‘On Fire’ Megyn Kelly coming on Fox News right after Bill these days, the flaws you mention are more obvious.
Noonan, Brooks, all the rest of the Obamacons are irrelevant. They would have to admit their grievous error to be worth reading again. But like their naked emperor they have no ability to admit wrongdoing and learn from mistakes.
djf:
Well, sometimes I just want to take it easy 🙂 .
southpaw:
I don’t know what O’Reilly’s motive is, but I don’t think he gets invited to those parties in the first place. He’s very very successful, but somewhat of a pariah already in terms of the MSM and its social whirl. At least, that’s my guess, from the sort of things they say about him. For Noonan, you may be right.
However, I see it somewhat differently. For O’Reilly, I think he prides himself on “fairness,” and he also attracts a lot of people who aren’t on the right (although not on the left either). He doesn’t want to alienate a large part of his audience; at least, that’s what I think it is with him. For Noonan, I think it’s a personality trait. She never wants to go for the jugular. She always wants to be nice.
Neo..I think you’re right about Bill O’s “fairness” motives thing. And, as stated, he’s a massive success. His ‘co-authored’ books on Lincoln, JFK, etc, etc are huge sellers, as well. But, Billy’s very “fairness” can cause one like me to gnaw the enamel off his molars. Megyn is becoming, very quickly, a stunner. And, the girl is doing very Big in the ratings. What’chu think of her?
NeoConScum:
O’Reilly sets my teeth on edge in that same way.
I’ve written about what I think of Megyn, here.
O’Reilly got something for interviewing Hussein O. This was after Fox News got savaged in 2009 by the Hussein Regime.
So a self operator whose empire is still very much Fox News orientated. Vs the guy they fired from Fox News, Glenn something, that wasn’t very obedient to authority. Self operators aren’t true patriots or true believers on one side or another. They are sort of related to death merchants. They’ll sell to either side if that works.
Noonan’s friend is Chris Matthews. That should be a hint, after what she said about Sarah Palin.
O’Reilly’s not an expert on anything except media advertisement and selling his profile. For example, his view of the Surge in 2006 should be studied for how media talking heads are just that. If you cut their heads off, their relative effect on the balance of Good and Evil in the world would still be the same.
Well, it’s a lot easier to say that the man has bad judgement than to say that he has bad character and was never Presidential, because then you’re admitting that you’re a poor judge of character and the qualities that make for a good president.
Actually, Obama’s judgement, from a certain perspective, was spot on, since he judged correctly what rubes like Miss Peggy would believe, and what they would overlook, and what they would excuse. He took the measure of Miss Peggy and her kind a lot more accurately than they took his.
Neo, Oreilly’s *motive* is his annual pre Super Bowl interview with POTUS.
Bellarion the Fortunate: Very well said (referring to the 2d paragraph of your 2:21 post). Overall, Obama is no great genius – I suspect he’s no smarter than the average Harvard law school grad (which is smart, but not all that smart) – but he does have a gift for seeing through Americans of the political center, center left, and what used to pass for the center right, figuring out how to take them in and, having been taken in, how far they will let him push the country to the left.
O”Reilly, like many people on what is called the center “right,” is not a conservative at all, but someone who would like to bring back the Democratic party of JFK. That’s about as realistic as hoping to bring back the knights of the round table. That’s my impression, although I admit never having watched the guy much. He is not really directing his program at the politically, historically and philosophically informed micro-faction of the public.
I’ll add my voice to the O’Reilly chatter. He is sly, plays to the crowds. Reads ’em, sucks them in to whatever his thesis is. Case in point: He went on a multiday rant against Big Oil when gas hit four bucks, the old billions of obscene profits number, should be taxed…but never talked in terms of their profits as a percent of sales. Which in fact are the same as Safeway’s, etc., etc.
He might say fewer offensive things than Van Jones, but he plays to his public without trying very hard to educate anyone. He’s in his niche, as Noonan is in hers, and that’s what it’s all about, niches. Like morays in a coral reef.
They can’t play off their elite credentials and awards, so they must replace that with popularity and support from certain groups with power. It’s a far cry from the independent pioneers that built America.
My ‘take’ on O’Reilly is that he’s a prancing prince of narcissism, for without a doubt he’s submerged in magical thinking, floating on airs of super-certainty.
When the nation’s pontificating pedant preens protean platitudes I’m elsewhere.
That boy DOES love the sound of his own voice.
If O’Reilly was a woman, people would ask who he had to sleep with to get that job.
Neo (1:34pm)..Thanks for the link to your Dec. 13th spot-on post. Even fits better now that she’s reached her stride and comfort zone. Yep, aggressive as a bulldog and the knife sharp smarts to accompany it. And gorgeous. She had her hubby on early last week. It was immediately obvious that she’s smitten with her man. Nice for us to meet him.
The Billy Ayers and Ward “How” Churchill interviews including Dinesh D’Souza were lovely eviscerations. And, as you stated in the post, the two Lying Lefty Turds didn’t seem to quite ‘get it’ that they’d taken thorough guttings. Loved it.
60 Minutes has spent considerable effort this evening, September 21, 2014, diverting blame for ISIS upon al Maliki and AWAY from Barry Soetoro.
Blended within a sequence of plausible lies, CBS lays down a pattern of smoke.
The MSM is actively shunting away the CIA-ISIS connection by way of the Jordanian cohort.
Then we have Yellow journalism, as CBS tries to sell Barry’s war – all based upon emotionalism. The fact that a Muslim caliph is a tyrant need hardly require emphasis. Muslims brutalizing Muslims, killing Muslims, it’s all standard fare. It’s been happening every year on into the past.
The biggest lie pitched by CBS is that al Maliki didn’t want American military support. Nothing could be further from the truth.
CBS also injects the meme that Barry was going to leave behind 9,000 ish troops. That’s utterly false, too. The President wanted to leave only a solitary regiment… say 3,000 men, tops. Such an absurdly low figure was trotted out precisely because it would be rejected — and thus Barry could lay his own policy to the discredit of al Maliki. Perfect.
And, by the end, CBS has America tuned up for war — even though ISIS has no WMDs!!!!
Cue irony.
The NYT has also meme’d in with the zany notion that everyone in the Middle East has got the CIA-ISIS connection all wrong.
Can anyone introduce the Times to the concept of rogue agents and blow-back?
&&&
I find it absolutely shocking that the GOP laid down and swallowed Barry’s jihadi brigades project. DC STILL operates from the bizarre faith that FSA is anything other than a FRONT organ — that actually has no (moderate) troops at all. It functions strictly as a conduit for money and arms for die hard fanatics working the sandbox.
Churchill said something about the slow speed of truth. I say that the truth seeps out — unfatigued by time or distance.
&&&
Has it struck anyone as curious why the CIA takes half a year to train boot recruits — whereas al Baghdadi pumps recruits through in less than one month?
“Like morays in a coral reef.”
Don…
Try: clown fish.
I saw Miss Peggy at a conservative event here in Manhattan. Men clustered around her (middle-aged and older) like she was a star, and she accepted all the attention as merely her due.
I don’t see that she’s learned a thing; especially not humility.
When she decided to go in for Obama, and wrote that (to me) fateful column before the first election, I wrote in and asked her what the hell was wrong with her. It is the last time I ever darkened the door of her WSJ column.
I cannot for the life of me, further to this, understand how that man was elected first time, much less the second time. It does not make a particle of sense to me.
My sister and her husband have been living in the D.C. area for over 25 years. Her husband worked for Al Gore for 8 years as a Captain in the Navy. And he is not a Democrat. The entire area is as left as you can get. Nasty people at that level. As much as they are getting away with, it cannot touch what they really hope to accomplish.
A Republican President, and a Republican controlled House and Senate, still will not be able to bring things back to sanity. Those embedded in that cesspool won’t let it happen.
One more thing, and then I’ll shut up.
McCarthy was right.
The British had their own Rotter like deals with Shia death squads and Afghans in Afghanistan.
This meant that politically, the Kurds and the Sunni triangle got much better than the Shia majority in Iraq, due to AL Sadr. Maliki was thus the “moderate” version to the unmoderates.
If America wants a job done well, they should do it themselves. Multi national efforts merely result in the “diversity”, that Diversity Casey had at Ft. Hood 1.
Judging by the political and military operations of the British, the Scottish have their own problems. Some are good and some are bad. But the bad ones were ordered to be bad, like at Rotter. It wasn’t mere coincidence. It was an alliance of interests, they knew exactly what they were doing.
br549:
It’s the Civil Service regulations. Once leftists are installed (i.e., granted tenure) and install more leftists, all semblance of control over bureaucrats is lost, irretrievably. They own us.
Yeah, McCarthy was right. My next read is his bio, right after I finish George Wallace’s, who was way more right than wrong too.
Noonan’s problem is definitely bad judgement. She seems to have none at all.