Dance with who brung you, Peggy. The poor guy is not sleeping a wink, so Val Jarrett tells us. The Ceiling is caving in and you call him Mr. Loser! Peggy, was it so long ago that you keened that Barry was the Cat's Nuts? Fickle.
Peggy Noonan, who along with the tasseled loafer Republicans, helped elect the most singularly potential man as President of the United States in 2008. Barack Obama was and remains Our Potential President - great gifts; no delivery. As the great Bishop McNamara HS track coach Kenny Klipp used to say "Losers have Potential."
Today, I learn that Peggy Noonan has not only given back her ring to Barack Obama, but gone positively Play Misty for Me on the poor unprepared President.
Peggy Noonan was an Obama Girl, just like P.G. Wodehouse's Christopher Buckley and columnist and trouser aficionado Davie Brooks. There were many more.
I am a Democrat, but I could not get behind President Obama. I enthusiastically backed John McCain and was disgusted to see him quit the campaign when the economy tanked. McCain, his family and surrogates went on to heap blame on Sarah Palin, who was the only person who fought to win from September through November 2008.
Shucks I remember when Peggy Noonan was all over MSNBC with fellow Obama Girl Mike Murphy singing,
I cannot wait, 'til 2008
Baby you’re the best candidate
I like it when you get hard
On Hillary in debate
Why don't you pick up your phone?
'Cause I've got a crush on Obama
I cannot wait, 'til 2008
Baby you’re the best candidate
Of the new oval office
You’ll get your head of state
I can’t leave you alone
‘Cause I’ve got a crush on Obama
Now, it's all,
Mr. Obama seemed brilliant at politics when he first emerged in 2004. He understood the nation's longing for unity. We're not divided into red states and blue, he said, we're Big Purple, we can solve our problems together. Four years later he read the lay of the land perfectly—really, perfectly. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine, bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: "You know the two losing wars and the economic collapse we've been dealing with? I won't do that. I'm not Bush."Peggy 'Did Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?" NoonanWall Street Journal
The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.
Well, gee, Peggy, remember when you said this about Sarah Palin?
Americans don’t want, as their representatives, people who seem empty or crazy. They’ll vote no on that. It’s not just the message, it’s the messenger.
Which is it? Never mind, Peggy.
