September 6, 2009AD
It is one of the small pleasures -- like a hot shower and clean socks after a wet bike ride or hot tea and toast on a cold Michigan morning -- of the invisible net writer to have his opinions confirmed by one who actually gets paid for hers.
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan continues to wake from her long campaign sleep to see the President for who he is. And relevantly -- if only for me -- two of her observations echo mine of the last several months.
One: After months of trying but failing to ignore the president's comments on radio and televsion, I was compelled to the conclusion that his tone of voice, his demeanor, his overall oral blandness (that's right, bland as a hillbilly's diet) never varies. He is tone deaf to the situation, whether discussing terrorism, health care, education, euthanasia, abortion. Miss Noonan's words: "Mr. Obama always has the same sound, approach, logic, TONE (my emphasis), modulation. ... There's no humor or humility in it." (That remark about humility is another hobby horse of mine and applied to my reaction to the recent Van Jone's sideshow.)
Two: Not unrelated to the above, I have also written in the past year of the empty, morally numb and content-free Culture of Cool. This was not specific to the president, but it certainly applied. Cool doesn't care. Cool doesn't feel. Cool is limited in imagination. Cool lacks breadth and depth. Miss Noonan's words: "He is cold, like someone who is contained but not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emtions, but because there's not that much to restrain... This is the DARK SIDE OF COOL." (Again, my emphasis.)
Miss Noonan's column contains, as usual, the vague hope that the president will recognize his limitations (as in "a man's got to know his..." as Clint once said) and makes some midcourse corrections. But this president has been over praised from the beginning. Certainly by Miss Noonan before and after Novembe 5th. Her hope for personal change makes her a better Catholic than I am. (Which may not be saying much.) May our Gracious Lord help me, but I don't do the triumph of hope over experience. Like Huck Finn, I been there before. It is too safe a bet that this president will be on Air Force One for the last time on Inuguration Day, January 2013 and still not know what he did wrong. But, it's become an American tradition that he will be rewarded for failure. A victorious general in imperial Rome, rode with a slave who whispered in his ear, "all glory is fleeting." More in the tradition of Court of the Sun King or Stalin's Kremlin, a retiring White House Chief of Staff whispers in the ear of the one-term American President, "it's not your fault."
Sam Macomb
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