Thank You, Peggy Noonan!

If I could have a roundtable of my favorite editorial page writers, Peggy Noonan would be first on my list (followed by Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, E.J. Dionne, David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Gail Collins, Bob Herbert, Howard Kurtz, Richard Cohen, Frank Rich, and Charles Krauthammer in case you were going to ask). In an earlier blog post, I pointed out that she gets it with feeling tired of the Clintons. Today she showed that she gets it with Reverend Wright in a way I haven't yet read, and I honestly felt like crying at the end. Really! It must be that I'm feeling disillusioned with Barack Obama. I've been supporting and defending and explaining him so ardently because I want him to win. But lately I've seen evidence that he's got the smarts, but not the guts to take it all the way. His opponents are defining him before he's had a chance to define himself and I start to worry, maybe he can't win. Am I buying into the Clintonistas' argument?

And then, Hillary Clinton goes one on one with Bill O'Reilly, knocking it out of the park, garnering favorable press, and making Fox News look like the only network worth watching. They talked politics just like we all do, in raised voices cutting each other off mid-sentence. It was refreshing to see a debate executed in the informal style we all use when arguing with friends, family, and co-workers. O'Reilly was rude to her as he usually is with guests he doesn't agree with, labelling her a socialist and interrupting her before she could finish an explanation, but she parried right back and showed her mastery of the issues right there in the lion's den. Obama is going on Meet the Press this Sunday to show his mettle with Tim Russert, but does anyone really think that he could go one on one with O'Reilly and break even? He couldn't even handle some tough questions at the very staid ABC debate or push back against the moderators to get them to change the page.

And this whole Reverend Wright thing! After reading in the New York Times about how this whole horrible misunderstanding may have come about between Obama and Wright, my heart was breaking. But then along came Peggy to explain it all. It's just so wonderful to read something so artfully expressed that I wished I'd written it myself. And while one might expect Reagan's speech writer to be shocked at Rev. Wright's rantings, she's just not. Yes, some of his ideas are anti-American, but what of it...seriously? What a breath of fresh air! She put his lunacy into context without apologizing, just identifying it for what it is and then dismissing it because his most repellant ideas are of marginal consequence even if you believe as he does. She doesn't blame Obama either, and I daresay I detect a whiff of support. She seems to have taken over the Maureen Dowd role in coaching along the neophyte in how he's perceived and what he's got to do to win. Thank you again!

Peggy Noonan Gets It! Do You?

Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite political pundits. She is a conservative speechwriter and committed Republican from the Reagan years. But she is not some blowhard partisan who is unwilling to look at the faults and flaws in her own side (like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, etc.). It comes as no surprise that she is not a Hillary fan. But the beauty and clarity of her writing is such that even if I don't agree with her conclusion I can appreciate her line of reasoning and her perspective. Her column this morning illuminates Hillary Clinton's candidacy in a way that makes me wish I'd written it myself:

"But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape. Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves."

Her description of how the press may feel in covering Clinton is how many of us now feel about President Bush. We are so over him and his presidency and the mendacity of those he has surrounded himself with that we are eager to move ahead with someone new, just NOT someone named Clinton. I am so fearful of another four years of cynicism that I just cannot bring myself to support her. The press and the country are obviously ready to move past oligarchy if she would just get the hell out of the way, er, I mean, step aside.

The View from Around the Web on Obama's Speech

Needing to address head on the repugnance felt by most Americans to comments made by his pastor of 20 years, Barack Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia and repudiated the divisive, anti-American tone of Rev. Wright's most extreme comments while standing by the man. Harkening back to the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, he built on the idea of what it means "to form a more perfect union" and deal head on with the nagging issue of race, describing it as America's original sin. Politically, he may not have gained the support of those working class whites with whom he showed great empathy in parts of his speech, but still, most are acknowledging it as the most profound speech on race since the generation of Martin Luther King Jr. Having written the speech himself, Obama put to rest any notion that his speeches are just words. Words do matter.

Below is a smattering of opinions from around the web. Most are laudatory, but Obama will always have his detractors.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has a daily roundup of headlines from the newspapers and blogs. It's the first thing I read every morning, especially the day after a major political event. Naturally his column the day after Obama's speech was devoted to Obama's speech: "Barack Obama didn't take the easy route. The safe course would have been to just denounce the ugly comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and move on to a generalized appeal for racial unity. But he didn't do that. He said he could no more disown his pastor than he could his white grandmother. He talked about how Wright came from a generation of African Americans that was understandably angry about racism and segregation in this country. Then he pivoted and talked about white anger, about resentment toward affirmative action. He also took a couple of swipes at the media before reaffirming his belief that America can still make racial progress."

NY Times Editorial: "There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with."

NY Times' Maureen Dowd: "In many ways, Barack Obama’s speech on race was momentous and edifying. You could tell it was personal, that he had worked hard on it, all weekend and into the wee hours Tuesday. Overriding aides who objected to putting race center stage, he addressed a painful, difficult subject straightforwardly with a subtlety and decency rare in American politics."

Wall Street Journal Editorial: "In Philadelphia yesterday, the Senator tried to explain his puzzling 20-year attendance at Reverend Wright's Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, while also using his nearly 5,000-word address to elaborate on the themes that have energized his candidacy. It was an instructive moment, though not always in the way the Senator intended."

Shelby Steele in the WSJ: "The novelty of Barack Obama is more his cross-racial appeal than his talent. Jesse Jackson displayed considerable political talent in his presidential runs back in the 1980s. But there was a distinct limit to his white support. Mr. Obama's broad appeal to whites makes him the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history. And it was Mr. Obama's genius to understand this."

LA Times Editorial: "It may have begun as an exercise in political damage control, but Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia on 'A More Perfect Union' was that rarity in American political discourse: a serious discussion of racial division, distrust and demonization. Whether or not the speech defuses the controversy about some crackpot comments by Obama's longtime pastor, it redefines our national conversation about race and politics and lays down a challenge to the cynical use of the 'race card.' "

LA Times' Tim Rutten: "Just as every seasoned political hand in 1960 knew that, sooner or later, Kennedy would have to tackle the question of his Catholicism head-on, it's been clear for some time that Obama would have to speak explicitly to the question of race in this campaign. Still, polished orator that he may be, no one could have predicted an address of quite this depth and scope."

Washington Post Editorial: "Mr. Obama then described the resentment among some whites over affirmative action, busing, crime and a shrinking job base, saying those feelings also 'are grounded in legitimate concerns.' He talked about the need for whites to recognize the lingering problem of racial discrimination -- and for blacks to embrace the 'quintessentially American -- and yes, conservative -- notion of self-help.' "

Washington Post's Eugene Robinson: "Yesterday morning, in what may be remembered as a landmark speech regardless of who becomes the next president, Obama established new parameters for a dialogue on race in America that might actually lead somewhere -- that might break out of the sour stasis of grievance and countergrievance, of insensitivity and hypersensitivity, of mutual mistrust."

Washington Post's Michael Gerson: "Obama's speech in Philadelphia yesterday made this argument as well as it could be made. He condemned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's views in strong language -- and embraced Wright as a wayward member of the family. He made Wright and his congregation a symbol of both the nobility and 'shocking ignorance' of the African American experience -- and presented himself as a leader who transcends that conflicted legacy. The speech recognized the historical reasons for black anger -- and argued that the best response to those grievances is the adoption of Obama's own social and economic agenda. It was one of the finest political performances under pressure since John F. Kennedy at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. It also fell short in significant ways."

Politico.com's Roger Simon: "Where it was strongest was in appealing to the better angels of the American spirit: the notion that we can all come together. Where it was weakest was in explaining the very reason for the speech: how the inflammatory, even repugnant, comments of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are understandable."