In which the scales finally fall from Peggy Noonan’s eyes
But my question is: why was she ever fooled by Obama in the first place?
This is the mystery to me: the spell Obama wove over bright people who should have known better. I know, I know: he’s a con man (after all, I wrote a piece on that subject myself, three long years ago). And yet, and yet, I just can’t quite wrap my mind around this sort of thing from Noonan, describing Obama’s first debate with Romney [emphasis mine]:
What [Obama] couldn’t do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. He couldn’t afford to make himself look less impressive than the challenger in terms of command, grasp of facts, size.
But that’s what he did.
And in some utterly new way the president was revealed, exposed. All the people whose job it is to surround and explain him, to act as his buffers and protectors””they weren’t there. It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor.
What was “utterly new” about this? “Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself”? That’s been Obama from day one, has it not?
But Noonan, like so many, just didn’t see it. I haven’t read too many of Noonan’s columns, so I don’t know much about the quality of her critical thinking, but as Reagan’s speechwriter she has some creds with me. Of course, speech writing and thinking for oneself are not necessarily synonymous; they require different skill sets. But one would hope they go together, although they probably don’t.
For Noonan, it may be as simple as admiring Obama’s speeches and mistaking them for the man. Since I never saw anything but empty and grandiose platitudes in his speeches, that puzzles me too. But I’m not a speechwriter, and Noonan may have been listening to Obama in admiration with a speechwriter’s ear. Noonan goes on to say:
He is not by any means a stupid man but he has become a boring one; he drones, he is predictable, it’s never new.
Well Peg, I hate to tell you, but that happened quite some time ago, too—in fact, some time around 2008. I still don’t have a clue why you failed to notice.
At any rate, she’s noticing now. And she comes to a remarkable conclusion. Quoting an unnamed US senator, Noonan writes:
People back home, he said, sometimes wonder what happened with the president in the debate. The senator said, I paraphrase: I sort of have to tell them that it wasn’t a miscalculation or a weird moment. I tell them: I know him, and that was him. That guy on the stage, that’s the real Obama.
Since this “real Obama” has been in evidence from the start, I’ll try to answer the question of why so many people were able to see it during the first debate who (like Noonan) had never seen the “real Obama” before.
Obama’s previous moments of petulance, etc., were short-lived and interspersed with the loftier rhetoric of speeches. There were an awful lot of petulant, arrogant moments, but people didn’t connect the dots because they saw orator-Obama much more often. Remember, also, this is a president who hardly ever gives press conferences, and whose interviews are puff pieces with softball questions, perfect set-ups to allow Obama to pontificate freely and maintain his nice-guy facade of equanimity. The debate with Romney gave viewers a much fuller dose of non-teleprompter Obama than before, and the sight wasn’t a pretty one.
But wait a minute—the 2008 debates four years ago were also a time when, for Obama (as Noonan writes), “It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor,” for the same amount of uninterrupted non-teleprompter time. So why wasn’t the “real Obama” revealed back then? The reason is that John McCain was an enervated competitor, afraid to hit Obama hard, and whose forte had never been debating anyway. Obama was relaxed and supple. Plus, back then Obama had no record to defend; it was all about words, and he could promise almost anything and still be believed.
So during the first debate of 2012 the difference wasn’t just that it was Obama “on the stage, alone with a competitor.” That had happened before. It was that it was “him on the stage, alone with Mitt Romney”—and Obama’s own record.
The contrast between the two men was extraordinary. It was apparently revelatory to people like Noonan, and even to Chris Matthews and other pundits of the left. It wasn’t just that Romney wasn’t the cold, rapacious, heartless capitalist pig that Obama had painted him. It was that he seemed smarter and warmer and more—yes, there’s that word—presidential than the president himself.
“I still don’t have a clue why you failed to notice.”
Neo, while I do not consider myself special or politicaly ‘gifed’, like you, I saw many of these faults. So many people around me didn’t and now see them. At times, I feel like saying: You should have asked me, I knew.
The first debate was a miracle
I’ve long ago come to the conclusion that Noonan’s columns are only tangentially related to her opinion at the moment. I think she’s far more concerned with what dinner parties she gets to attend then to sully the conversation with something actually unpopular but true. To do so would be far too…Palinesque.
She hopped on the Anti-O bandwagon only long after it left the station and picked up blinding speed, when it was very socially safe to do so.
There’s no mystery about Ms. Noonan’s blindness. It’s but a variation on that self righteous pose struck by professor Althouse a few weeks ago in reaction to Rush’s treatment of the “obamaphone lady” video. Same thing probably goes for David Brooks.
They have a lot invested (self esteem-wise) and it’s hard to give that up.
And let’s not forget Romney’s long, flowing blond hair and his prowess with the long bow.
From that same Noonan article comes this quote about the picture of Obama in Woodward’s new book “the Price of Politics,”
“Obama is portrayed as having the appearance and presentation of an academic or intellectual while being strangely clueless in his reading of political situations and dynamics. He is bad at negotiating–in fact doesn’t know how. His confidence is consistently greater than his acumen, his arrogance greater than his grasp.”
Because of their volitional refusal to see, people like Peggy Noonan may have done irreversible damage to this country and may be responsible for a dismal future.
This is a curious feature of the chattering classes (I dislike using the word “class” but it applies here). They are highly affected by having someone in office who is superficially like them. I don’t think ranchers in Wyoming really feel the need to have a rancher in the white house, but aspiring elite intellectuals do.
They didn’t like GW Bush because he wasn’t a smooth speaker and didn’t try to be one of them. That’s it, no issues no principles, no goals matter. Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan but didn’t learn much from him.
Our pundit class right and left has the same weakness. They value skills important for their profession but don’t see that other skills are more important for leaders and managers.
The debate was a shocker for so many like Noonan because Obama has been propped up for so long. He’s had the assistance of teleprompters, the spotlight to himself, and an adoring, unchallenging press. We’ve only been allowed to see Obama outside of this environment a few times & it’s always been a disaster, such as press conference where he rambles for 17 minutes but still never answers the question, or expressing his true contempt for business while saying “you didn’t build that.” Not only did Romney provide a stark side-by-side contrast, he challenged Obama directly (with that killer eye contact throughout) like no one since Paul Ryan’s take-down during the Health Care Summit.
Remember, Obama made two distinct admissions that have proven true. The first, if elected he would transform America (or at least try), and he has done that. The second was that people see in him what they want to see and project their aspirations onto him. True again.
The real stupidity, and I think stupidity is the correct term here, lies with those who were fooled because they failed not only to see the true Obama, but they even failed to heed the warnings that came from Obama himself.
SteveD,
I disagree. I don’t believe the damage is irreversible. Furthermore, I have said that we owe Obama a debt of gratitude. His progressivism on steroids has allowed the leftist mask to slip. We no longer limp toward a fiscal and social cliff. Social Security is no longer the third rail of American politics. By bringing all of these crises “to a head” he has confirmed their reality to those who would otherwise doubt that they exist at all.
The first step in solving a problem is recognizing that the problem even exists.
Romney “seemed smarter and warmer” than O – he IS smarter and warmer!
I don’t think the warmth bothers them nearly as much as the smarts.
It seems to me that this blindness, this ensorcelment, was the coming together of a number of things.
Start off with the foundation, “white guilt” for slavery–never mind that no one alive today or even their parents or grandparents was a slave owner or involved in the trade–the Left has magnified and kept this very useful tool alive.
Then, add in the image of the “Magic Negro”–Sidney Poitier in “To Sir With Love,” Morgan Freeman as “God”–a miraculous Christ—like figure, a perfect man who has special insight and miraculous powers–“the seas were going to recede and the earth to cool.”
This was not some snarling ghetto punk, who was going to punch you in the face and grab your purse and perhaps slash you for good measure, (to quote Senator Harry Reid, this was a “light-skinned African-American who had no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” or as Senator Joe Biden said, someone who was “clean and articulate”) this was the ”Messiah,” who would right all wrongs and usher in a new age of justice, peace, and plenty.
Then, add in the “stroking” of his victims–who were themselves, “the people they had been waiting for.”
And finally, top it all off with a the shiny new things that Obama was going to give to everybody–universal health care, free education, no borders, a clean environment, unlimited sexual freedom, the evil rich brought low, the downtrodden finally given back all those things that those “enemies of the people” has so cruelly stolen from them, and all would “pay their fair share.”
Who–especially among the Liberal elite and the academic and chattering classes–could resist such a con?
For they awakened, as if from a great sleep and asked wonderingly, “how could anyone not have been seduced and mesmerized?”
“Son, you have to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”
“There’s a fool born every minute”
“You can fool some of the people, all of the time and you can fool some of the people, some of the time…
Those not susceptible to Obama’s platitudes and premises, those not taken in like Noonen, fall within the group Lincoln alluded too when he finished his dictum with, “but you can’t fool, all of the people, all of the time”.
It’s a likely explanation, the two debates and the two competitors, if you mean to make sense of the senseless and be kind to idiots.
Noonan, Brooks, et al, wanted too much to believe that someone special had finally made it through the political and Party obstacles that normally filter out the intellectual, the thoughtful, the grounded, and the sophisticated. In Obama they had found someone who was post racial, post Party, post ideological, and who’d achieved everything he set out to achieve – the political everyman — he was the one they were waiting for.
Noonan and the others had believed that such as Obama was possible because they chose to see in him a reflection of them. It doesn’t take more than reading just a few of Noonan’s and Brooks’ columns to be, not just submerged by the undertow of bipartisanship, but drowned in a tsunami of human and political ecumenism. Obama spoke their language — homily, psalms, and parables. That was all they needed to hear.
Noonan lives in Manhattan. She worked for Dan Rather and still admires him. She lives in the cocoon. She may have an ideology and instincts that aren’t liberal, but she still willingly gets her facts from the mainstream media and the impact of living inside the cocoon is often apparent.
She has a facility for words, but she has also shown that logical analysis is not her strong suit. She can write columns that impress, but she’s also written some real clunkers.
I lost interest in Peggy Noonan’s opinions some time ago.
She has criticized every Republican candidate over the past couple of decades because they could not measure up to her beloved Ronald Reagan; so then she fell for the anti-Reagan.
Like so many elites, who greatly value their own opinions, she experiences a debilitating dissonance upon trying to process reality.
She’s a writer who creates a narrative and Barry O had it in spades.That it was a fake didn’t matter.
I was always told he was the Smartest Man in the World.
And yet, I never saw it. I’m not a dummy, but I’m also not super smart, but I’ve always felt that I was smarter than Teh Won.
That could be my arrogance talking. At least I would know how to accept Hillary’s apology.
Noonan is also a master of the obvious, which has me wondering why the WSJ would continue to pay for something that so many give away for free.
Yeah, I was another one who used to think that Noonan–who, it has to be admitted, really has a way with words–was also perceptive as well.
Well, despite Reagan in the past, it is now obvious that her facility with words is not, today, coupled with the absolutely vital quality of discernment.
So, Noonan can write, but what she has written these last few years has been increasingly off track, bloviation, high-flown drivel; she is the bloodhound that has scented the wrong trace, and is leading us further and further down the wrong path, and away from the right trail and the truth.
Watching her on TV this past week, she presents as one of those tony, impeccably well turned out, brittle New York types–Anna Wintour with a typewriter–and her backtracking now, to try to go back and pick up the correct scent–the truth–is just far too late.
If you want a powerful glimpse of what Obama and Biden and Hillary are really like, check out the impressions of one of the fathers of the four men killed in Benghazi–a former, very experienced, administrative law judge and, one would think, a good judge of character, body language, when someone was telling the truth and when someone was lying–about how deceitfully and crassly they dealt with him. (see http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/10/dead-seals-father-hillary-told-me-at-funeral-were-going-to-arrest-and-prosecute-the-youtube-director-video/)
Noonan is full of it. In Reagan’s diaries he doesn’t mention her name once. She was by no means as important as she’s puffed herself up to be.
Truthfully, I haven’t read Peggy Noonan’s columns for quite a while but it certainly did seem to me that a significant part of her opinion was what would protect her Shrine to St Ronald, and especially making sure that no one would dare to challenge his position as the premiere GOP President (and, by extension, her right to define what Regan’s positions would be on current events).
I’d say what really irked her about W was his definition of himself as a “compassionate conservative” and a different kind of Republican (obviously playing off RR “The scariest words are I’m from the government and I’m here to help”) and that his electoral success, especially in 2004, started to overshadow Regan’s.
I think Noonan is a cultural/political chameleon. In 2008 the culture was for Obama. Right now it is shifting to Romney. She’s like the actors in Hollywood. They do not have any independent political beliefs they just adapt to the Hollywood left wing culture to get along.
My first clue to Noonan was in her book about Pope John Paul II when she dumped a great deal of personal information in it, including calling out Katie Couric for stealing her fiance. I was a little put out, since I picked up the book to read what I thought was a biography, not an autobiography.
When she started tearing apart Sarah Palin for cultural reasons, I wasn’t surprised.
You link Noonan and Althouse, and I think rightly so. Both think very highly of themselves, but cannot quite admit that they were swindled so badly. If so, perhaps they are not as bright as they thought. So it must be a “late unveiling”, something no one could have possibly known before! They are successful overgrown children. They have a gift and talent in their very capable brains, but they’re too weak to stand on their own and so defer to the culture around them.
Totally unrelated, but the “scales from their eyes” allusion to the Apostle Paul’s being struck blind by God and subsequent conversion is great. If anyone is interested, they should read John Stott’s “Message of Acts” and the chapter on the road to Damascus. Fantastic stuff.
“scales from his eyes”*
I too gave up on Peggy. Recently someone said she wrote a good column so I looked it up–and disagreed. She’s still on my not-reading list.
Althouse claims to be undecided. Given the czars, Tim “tax cheat” Geithner and Eric “Friend of The New Black Panthers, AND Fast and Furious” Holder, Steven “$10 Gas and No Coal” Chu, Obamacare, Libya, Benghazi, Egypt, and the Apology Tour Of Bowing To Foreigners, I just can’t see her either.
Noonan, like Brooks, is a limp wristed NYC milk warm liberal more focused on the crease in the pants than substance. Her tenure as one of Reagan’s speechwriters was the long ago highlight of her life. I too wonder why the WSJ keeps publishing her blather. Noonan should stick to NYC cocktail parties and start writing a fashion column for the NYT…. as long as it lasts.
“Althouse claims to be undecided…. I just can’t see her either.”
IMO Althouse makes Noonan look steadfast.
Noonan, like all good writers, is a sophist. In order to write effectively you have to believe what you write – method acting for authors. This plays hell with analytical thinking.
“John Stott’s “Message of Acts”.
I’ll try that, Holmes.
Since Ann Althouse has become a leitmotif in this post I thought I’d share this quote from her comments on Rasmussen’s Swing State Tracking Poll (Today, 10/27, emphasis mine):’
I don’t think she’s undecided anymore, no matter what she proclaims.
It could be that she looked at the way people responded to Obama and thought that if they could be moved by hope and inspired to move past racial divisions then maybe that’s what America needed. She was looking at the people not studying Obama’s real personality.
I missed that, T. I want to see specific language, though.