Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Peggy Noonan: Does she think a blog is an etch-a-sketch?

11.07.2012 by David Murray // 6 Comments

Former President Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan is generally not held in high regard among speechwriters. Her former colleagues in the Reagan White House see her as a glory hog, and speechwriters who don't know her … well, they think she's a glory hog, too.

But this morning, the glory hog finds crow in her trough, after writing this post two days ago on her Monday Morning blog at The Wall Street Journal.

It wasn't just that she predicted Mitt Romney would win the election—and really, what was the social utility of predicting the outcome of an election one day before?—it was the Noonanesque way in which she did it. Who but Noonan writes sentences like this?

"I
think it’s Romney. I think he’s stealing in 'like a thief with good
tools,' in Walker Percy’s old words. While everyone is looking at the
polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency. He’s
quietly rising, and he’s been rising for a while."'

"Among the wisest words spoken
this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a
conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he
thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up,
something we don’t know about. I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win."

"In some new way he’s caught his stride. He looks happy and grateful.
His closing speech has been positive, future-looking, sweetly
patriotic."

"All the vibrations are right."

"Something old is roaring back. One of the Romney campaign’s surrogates,
who appeared at a rally with him the other night, spoke of the
intensity and joy of the crowd 'I worked the rope line, people
wouldn’t let go of my hand.' It startled him."

"Is it possible this whole thing is playing out before our eyes and we’re
not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data on paper
instead of what’s in front of us?"

"And there is Obama, out there seeming tired and wan, showing up through
sheer self discipline. A few weeks ago I saw the president and the
governor at the Al Smith dinner, and both were beautiful specimens in
their white ties and tails, and both worked the dais. But sitting there
listening to the jokes and speeches, the archbishop of New York sitting
between them, Obama looked like a young challenger—flinty, not so
comfortable. He was distracted, and his smiles seemed forced. He looked
like a man who’d just seen some bad internal polling. Romney?
Expansive, hilarious, self-spoofing, with a few jokes of finely
calibrated meanness that were just perfect for the crowd. He looked
like a president. He looked like someone who’d just seen good
internals."

"Of all people, Obama would know if he is in trouble. … He would know if he’s losing now,
and it would explain his joylessness on the stump. He is out there
doing what he has to to fight the fight. … His crowds haven’t been big. His people have
struggled to fill various venues. This must hurt the president after
the trememdous, stupendous crowds of ’08. … His campaign doesn’t seem
president-sized. It is small and sad and lost, driven by formidable
will and zero joy."

"I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s
part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled."

Aside from enjoying its warming qualities, what to make of such hot air? Is this someone who doesn't value her credibility? Or who doesn't believe readers have memories? Maybe, like a lot of people I've noticed during this election cycle, she believes that what is said today will be forgotten by tomorrow. It's one thing for a politician to work on an etch-a-sketch—but could a writer possibly think the same way?

I hesitate to speculate.

As all writers should.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Peggy Noonan

Introducing the patient majority

10.21.2010 by David Murray // 1 Comment

“Exhausted. From what I see, that’s how a lot of Democrats feel. They’ve turned silent, too, like people who witnessed a car crash and can’t talk anymore about the reasons for the accident or how many were injured. This election is more and more shaping up into a contest between the Exhausted and the … Enraged.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 25, 2010

(That was the quote of the day yesterday at PunditWire, a new group blog that's really got it going on; it's all speechwriters and ex-speechwriters, and it's pretty smart.)

Noonan, who usually writes better than she thinks, has misinterpreted the relative quiet on the left, I think. It's not exaustion.

It's the least fashionable, least common (and perhaps also least useful) political emotion there is.

It's patience.

I feel it, anyway.

Patience is what I felt the other day at a New York diner drinking coffee with an ex-Dem speechwriter and a current administration scribe. They chewed (and chewed) over whether Obama had or hadn't compromised too much on healthcare, should or shouldn't have focused first on jobs. These were very bright guys who watch this stuff closely and care deeply about it. I should have been interested. But, honestly, my mind wandered. Not believing I or anyone else can analyze this stuff in real time (or anything like it), I'm content to let things play out.

Patience is what I felt a couple days ago when a pal with whom I have argued about politics since the 1992 election sent me something to read about the administration "in case we ever get to the point where we can talk about Obama." Maybe I'll read what he sent, maybe I won't. But I don't believe President Obama is destroying the nation, and I don't want to talk with anyone who does believe that for at least two more years, and really not for another six. (Actually, 10 would give us some real breathing room. Let's make a date!)

And patience is what I feel—and often feel with reluctance, which contributes to my quiet—when gay friends point out that Obama ought to be bolder on DADT, when my hard-assed liberal friends say he's being a pussy about financial reform, and when most of my friends say that we ought to get our asses out of Afghanistan, and pronto. I agree with my friends on these issues. But I voted for President Obama. And I like President Obama. And I trust President Obama. And actually, so do most of my gay, hard-assed, anti-war friends. They're willing to wait too.

Until I actually witness Noonan's make-believe "car crash," or at least hear screeching tires, I'll wait, watchfully, to see what the administration can accomplish in some very difficult cirmumstances.

I think of Obama as a feller who thinks kind of like me—he likes reading, writing, cities, daughters, hoops and golf too!—only a lot better. (He's not a big drinker, but nobody's perfect; at least he smokes.) There's never been a president whose mind I thought I understood as well as I think I understand Obama's. During the rabid election year of 2008, I allowed that I'd probably hate him by now. But I don't. I still admire him.

I'm not saying my patience should be your patience. I've been in situations where I couldn't stand the boss and others thought the boss was OK. They saw my points, but they shrugged. What could they say? To them, he was an OK boss. They'd had worse, and this guy, they could deal with. Their patience was infuriating to me. But I didn't explain it away by saying they really were upset, but just too "exhausted" to complain.

My own quiet, and I suspect the quiet of many others: It's not exhaustion. It's patience.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // election, Peggy Noonan, President Obama, the patient majority, the silent majority

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