Peggy: Government Can't Provide Family, Home, Love

A excerpt from Peggy Noonan writing in the Wall Street Journal on rioting, reckless, unemployed and unemployable youth in America and England:

Where does that leave us? In a hard place, knowing in our guts that a lot of troubled kids are coming up, and not knowing what to do about it. The problem, at bottom, is love, something we never talk about in public policy discussions because it's too soft and can't be quantified or legislated. But little children without love and guidance are afraid. They're terrified—they have nothing solid in the world, which is a pretty scary place. So they never feel safe. As they grow, their fear becomes rage. Further on, the rage can be expressed in violence. This is especially true of boys, but it's increasingly true of girls. What's needed can't be provided by government. When the riot begins or the flash mob arrives, the best the government can do is control the streets, enforce the law, maintain the peace.

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Obama's Empty Rhetoric Gets Tuned Out

In her column in the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan dared to reveal the sup rising secret about President Obama's rhetoric: It really ain't that good.
And Peggy should know as she was one of the major speechwriters for The Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan.
I use Peggy Noonan's book, On Speaking Well, in my speechwriting class.
One of Peggy's mantras is this: Great speeches contain real ideas. And great speakers communicate great ideas clearly and convincingly.
Without great ideas, a speech is nothing.
Peggy points out that Reagan never felt he was a great communicator. The soft-spoken former actor did admit however that he tried to communicate great ideas -- the idea od our nation's founders: limited, shared government; a strong free-enterprise system, the power of the individual, God-given freedoms and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Obama may be a fine speaker but his ideas are not-so-great: an all-powerful central government, more taxes, more spending, government intervention and redistribution of personal income. These ideas are not in harmony with the great democratic tradition of our nation. But these are the ideas that Obama has embraced.
And often Obama communicates no ideas at all. Hope and change for example are not ideas at all. They merely represent a slogan. Tag lines such as this only work when they have real ideas behind them.
Great speeches and great speakers make great ideas come to life. Great speakers and great speechwriters know how to encapsulate these ideas and make them meaningful and easy to understand.
For all the talk about Obama as a great orator, he simply does not measure up. In other words, his empty rhetoric has caught up with him. Nobody's listening anymore.

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Noonan: Obama's Rhetoric Never Really That Great

An excerpt from the latest column by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal:

"The president is supposed to be great at speeches. Why isn't it working anymore? One answer is that it never "worked." The power of the president's oratory was always exaggerated. It is true that a good speech put him on the map in 2004 and made his rise possible, and true he gave some good speeches in 2008. But people didn't really vote for him because he said things like: "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." They voted for him in spite of that. They voted for him for other reasons."

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Noonan: Nobody Loves Obama

Peggy Noonan has a great observation in the Wall Street Journal on why Obama seems so disconnected and irrelevant just now. Here's part of what she says:

"Nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications."

Once again, Peggy has hit the mark.
Obama is a cold fish. "No drama" Obama doesn't seem to make real-life, personal connections with people. He doesn't really endear himself to people. He's strangely disconnected. Often he seems aloof and above it all -- almost as if taking the time to care about and get involved with people, one on one, is just too much trouble for him or too mundane, too pedestrian, too boring.
Let's face it: If a politician isn't a "people person" what the hell good is he or she. In the end, such a person is bound to fail.
So now Obama is failing. No one should be surprised. What's incredible is that he's gotten this far almost solely on image and faux branding.

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Noonan: This Is No Time For Games

Peggy Noonan has a wonderful column in the Wall Street Journal this weekend about the budget/deficit crisis and the current state of America.
In it, she chastises President Obama for being manipulative in the middle of all this and warns him that the game playing must stop.
It's an incisive and illuminating column that senses the pulse of the nation.
Here's an excerpt:

But everyone over 50 in America feels a certain cultural longing now. They hear the new culture out of the radio, the TV, the billboard, the movie, the talk show. It is so violent, so sexualized, so politicized, so rough. They miss the old America they were born into, 50 to 70 years ago. And they fear, deep down, that this new culture, the one their children live in, isn't going to make it. Because it is, in essence, an assaultive culture, from the pop music coming out of the rental car radio to the TSA agent with her hands on your kids' buttocks. We are increasingly strangers here, and we fear for the future. There are, by the way, 100 million Americans over 50. A third of the nation. That's a lot of displaced people. They are part of the wrong-track numbers.

So is this. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because being a parent is hard, and not everyone has the ability or even the desire. But in the old America you knew it wasn't so bad, because the culture could bring the kids up. Inadequate parents could sort of say, "Go outside and play in the culture," and the culture—relatively innocent, and boring—could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Popular songs, the messages in movies—all of it was pretty hopeful, and, to use a corny old word, wholesome. Grown-ups now know you can't send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed. And there isn't less bad parenting now than there used to be. There may be more.

There is so much unease and yearning and sadness in America. So much good, too, so much energy and genius. But it isn't a country anyone should be playing games with, and adding to the general sense of loss.

Click here to read the entire column.

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Noonan: Obama Will Likely Lose In 2012

Peggy Noonan does not have good news for Obama and the Democrats.
In fact, she envisions an Obama loss in 2012.
Here's an excerpt from her column in the Wall Street Journal:

In this week's polls: An Ipsos survey says 69% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, up five points since March. Zogby has only 38% of national respondents saying Mr. Obama deserves re-election, with 55% wanting someone new. Mr. Obama carried Pennsylvania in 2008 by double digits; a poll there this week shows only 42% approving of his leadership, with 52% disapproving. Gallup had the president's support slipping among blacks and Hispanics, with the latter's numbers dramatic: 73% supported him when he was inaugurated, 54% do now. Support among whites on Inauguration Day was 60%. Now it is 39%.
We're all so used to reporting the general trend of these polls that we fail to see their significance: The more that people experience his leadership, the less they like his leadership. There's no real reason to think upticks in this direction or that will seriously change this. Another way to say it is that there have been upticks that might have benefited the president, and so far they haven't.

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Peggy Noonan: Obama SOTUS Was 'Flat, Mushy'

Peggy Noonan is out with a great column about Obama's State of the Union speech.
Peggy had hoped the speech would soar. She was cheering for Obama to succeed. She really wanted a great, inspiring speech -- a genuine game-changer.
She didn't get it and she's disappointed. Here's part of what she has to say:

The State of the Union speech was not centrist, as it should have been, but merely mushy, and barely relevant. It wasted a perfectly good analogy—America is in a Sputnik moment—by following it with narrow, redundant and essentially meaningless initiatives. Rhetorically the speech lay there like a lox, as if the document itself knew it was dishonest, felt embarrassed, and wanted to curl up quietly in a corner of the podium and hide. But the president insisted on reading it. . . .

 As for small things and grace notes, there is often about the president an air of delivering a sincere lecture in which he informs us of things that seem new to him but are old to everyone else. He has a tendency to present banalities as if they were discoveries. "American innovation" is important. As many as "a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school." We're falling behind in math and science: "Think about it."
Yes, well, all we've done is think about it.

Click here to read Noonan's entire analysis of the speech. It's worth reading!

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A Lesson From Reagan: Leadership That's EARNED.

"Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the world.
"Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service. And you need actual talent: You have to be able to bring people in and along. You can't just bully them, you can't just assert and taunt, you have to be able to persuade."
--Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal
Click here to read the full column.

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Noonan: The Twister Around The Corner

Peggy Noonan has a fantastic column in today's Wall Street Journal.
It's something everyone should read.
In it, Noonan sees a tornado coming. And she sees the Democrats unravelling.
Here's part of what she says:
The Democrats have begun what Grover Norquist predicted a month ago. They saved their money for the end of the campaign and have begun running negative ads. They are not speaking in support of their own votes on health care and other issues. They are avoiding the subject of their own votes on health care and other issues. They are focusing instead on accusations of personal scandal.
Peggy's views are perceptive and thought-provoking.
Click here to read the whole column in the Wall Street Journal.

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