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Obama may like winning, but he doesn’t seem to like governing

Posted by B. Daniel Blatt at 4:06 am - April 2, 2012.
Filed under: 2012 Presidential Election,Obama Watch,Strong Women

Readers of this blog are well aware of the high regard in which I hold Peggy Noonan, having dubbed her the Athena of punditry in 2005.  She lost a lot of favor with conservatives at the tail-end of the 2008 presidential campaign when she commented favorably on the Democratic nominee for president and his campaign.

Her hope for ability to unite the nation and transform its politics has changed.  She has long since soured on the Democrat, having castigated him earlier this year for (and again on Friday) for his policies mandating “that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant.”

In that same piece, she questioned whether the president has a relationship with the American people:

A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.

From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures.

As the American people were thinking about such things, the Democrat’s mind was elsewhere:  ”on health care.”

Read the whole thing and note especially the “entirely abstract sense of America” held by what she dubs the incumbent’s “hermetically sealed inner circle”.

And she offers the defining irony (perhaps) the president’s most intense reelection campaign:  Obama “is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but . . . doesn’t seem to like his job that much.”  He wants to win for the sake of winning — and not for the job that comes with the laurels*.  No wonder he’s been holding so many fundraisers.  (And still has “has less cash on hand in his re-election bid than [did] his predecessor.)

*Well, perhaps for the title and some of its perks.

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14 Comments

  1. And she was too busy pshawing us for pointing out that 0bama was an amateur who was going to be a disaster in office to notice that no matter how good he read a ‘promter, he really was just as unqualified (and then some) as we said. She gets little credit for now noticing what was blindingly obvious in ’08.

    Comment by JP — April 2, 2012 @ 4:34 am - April 2, 2012

  2. Noonan not only gushed about Obama in 2008 she openly supported him against the Republican. She reminds me of a relative who asked if I was disappointed in Obama. I told her no, since I knew he was going to be a disaster and that’s why i didn’t vote for him. Noonan like my relative is coming to the party too late and has found the host very wanting. The rest of us are suffering for their folly. Noonan’s perception on anything holds no import for me anymore.

    Comment by Independent Patriot — April 2, 2012 @ 6:19 am - April 2, 2012

  3. Sorry, Dan. I’m with JP and Independent Patriot. Peggy Noonan’s perspective is absolutely irrelevant to me now, and it’s not as simple as being unable to forgive her for the ‘betrayal’ of suddenly and inexplicably supporting Obama in the home stretch of the 2008 election. It’s not about holding a grudge. It’s the fact that her style–which for years I found so unique, captivating, eloquent, and wise–now strikes me as elitist and snobbish, primarily because her recent columns don’t acknowledge that her support of Obama was a HUGE lapse of judgment and a MISTAKE. She writes as if ONLY NOW is there evidence to support the perception that Obama has become increasingly ‘devious and dishonest,’ implying that her assertion that he was the hopeful choice, worthy of support in 2008, was correct at the time.

    It wasn’t. She blew it. The superior discernment that put her on the map (and made ‘What I Saw At The Revolution’ so good) FAILED HER, and she’s never come clean about it. Consequently, I find her recent columns repellent because it’s as if she’s NOW giving her blessing to what the rest of us have known all along–that Obama is a filthy, shameless liar–and that believing this previously was somehow unreasonable, unfair or illegitimate.

    The only way I would ever find Noonan interesting again is if she wrote honestly about what caused an intelligent, respected, seasoned political observer like herself to be SO taken in by this charlatan and drink the Kool-Aid after decades of resisting it from a long line of ‘charismatic’ and ‘seductive’ golden boys backed by the Democrats as their latest messiah.

    Comment by Sean A — April 2, 2012 @ 7:55 am - April 2, 2012

  4. I have to agree with Ace on the subject. Everything that Noonan has figured out about the SCOAMF are things conservatives knew back in 2008. She’s not just late to the party, she’s showing up when the guests are gone, the liquor is gone, the place is trashed, and the host is sticking her with the bill.

    Comment by V the K — April 2, 2012 @ 9:02 am - April 2, 2012

  5. Hey V the K, I prefer the analogy that WE invited HER to a dinner party; she accepted the invitation and RSVP’d; subsequently informed us she couldn’t make it because she received an invitation to a better party on the same night; then shows up late anyway just as we’re getting to coffee and dessert; then orders the most expensive entree on the menu; scarfs it down and then says she has to leave without throwing so much as a 5 spot on the table; and then drives home thinking how thrilled we must have been that she graced us with her presence at our silly little party.

    Comment by Sean A — April 2, 2012 @ 9:29 am - April 2, 2012

  6. Sean A, well-said as usual. I was just going to add that what really pisses people off about people like Peggy Noonan is that even though we were right and she was wrong, she still looks down her nose at us as intellectual and social inferiors.

    F–k you, Peggy Noonan.

    Sean A said it much better, though.

    Comment by V the K — April 2, 2012 @ 9:46 am - April 2, 2012

  7. Peggy was seduced by the crowd she decided to run with in New York City. They require a high price for their “acceptance” and she paid it, probably with a certain belief that she could retain her principles. Bad choice.

    Peggy probably became unsure of her standing. It often happens to “establishment” Republicans who believe the Party is leaving them. In the confusion, she chose to get out front and question John McCain. I see Dana Perino doing the same from time to time as she tries to hold the “establishment” line against the unwashed base. Why Peggy “fell” for Obama is beyond my understanding. To her discredit, she did. To her credit, she has recovered.

    I do not think that people who are professional “observers” can afford to spend much time around other professional “observers” and pundits. It warps them. They forget the common man who is their audience.

    Peggy revealed herself when she got caught on an open mic at MSNBC (of all places!) with Mike Todd (of all people!) She did a mea culpa column in the WSJ immediately after getting “caught” and being pummeled by conservative talk radio.

    Here is a part of that 2008 column:

    More immediately and seriously on Palin:

    Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing — who is really one of them and who is not — and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

    She could become a transformative political presence.

    So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

    And it’s going to be brutal. It’s already getting there.

    There are only two questions.

    1. Can she take it?

    Will she be rattled? Can she sail through high seas? Can she roll with most punches and deliver some jabs herself?

    2. And while she’s taking it, rolling with it and sailing through, can she put herself forward convincingly as serious enough, grounded enough, weighty enough that the American people can imagine her as vice president of the United States?

    I suppose every candidate for vice president faces these questions to some degree, but because Palin is new, unknown, and a woman, it’s all much more so.

    (….)

    Final point. Palin’s friends should be less immediately worried about what the Obama campaign will do to her than what the McCain campaign will do. This is a woman who’s tough enough to work her way up and through, and to say yes to a historic opportunity, but she will know little of, or rather have little experience in, the mischief inherent in national Republican politics. She will be mobbed up in the McCain campaign by people who care first about McCain and second about themselves. (Or, let’s be honest, often themselves first and then McCain.) Palin will never be higher than number three in their daily considerations. They won’t have enough interest in protecting her, advancing her, helping her play to her strengths, helping her kick away from danger. And – there is no nice way to say this, even though at this point I shouldn’t worry about nice – some of them are that worst sort of aide, dim and insensitive past or present lobbyists with high self-confidence. She’ll be a thing to them; they’ll see the smile and the chignon and the glasses and think she’s Truvi from Steel Magnolias. They’ll run right over her, not because they’re strong but because they’re stupid. The McCain campaign better get straight on this. He should step in, knock heads, scare his own people and get Palin the help and high-level staff all but the most seasoned vice presidential candidates require.

    Where did her insight and ability to capture the essence of the issue fail in this analysis?

    Peggy is far better off not playing the role of live pundit on TV or the radio. She should stick to her word processor and kitchen table and rely on her ability to hone and self-edit her craft.

    And, finally, she is not really a cheerleader for conservatism. She is more dedicated to the “narrative” than the principles. That is more than OK. We need to “see ourselves as others see us” in order to have the benefit of perspective.

    Comment by heliotrope — April 2, 2012 @ 10:41 am - April 2, 2012

  8. President Obama wants to be a Cult of Personality dictator, but he can’t lead shit down the toilet. He’s an incompetent wannabe dictator at best, right now. I believe a second Obama term will have him install himself as America’s dictator for life. No, it’s not hyperbole.

    Comment by Sebastian Shaw — April 2, 2012 @ 11:26 am - April 2, 2012

  9. Peggy Noonan was brainwashed by Obama’s razzle-dazzle; she should have been perceptive enough to see through his platitudes. She didn’t. She fell for it hard. I saw through Obama in 2008. She has no excuses.

    Comment by Sebastian Shaw — April 2, 2012 @ 11:28 am - April 2, 2012

  10. [...] – Obama Likes Winning, Not Governing – via [...]

    Pingback by AllPatriotsMedia » The TK Quick Six – Monday, April 2nd 2012 — April 2, 2012 @ 12:27 pm - April 2, 2012

  11. Obama is a Stuttering Clusterf*ck of a Miserable Tyrant.

    Noonan is only reaping that which she has sown.

    Good morning, sweetheart.

    Comment by My Sharia Moor — April 2, 2012 @ 1:40 pm - April 2, 2012

  12. Obama may like winning, but he doesn’t seem to like governing…

    I guess that makes us even. I don’t like him governing either.

    Comment by Bastiat Fan — April 2, 2012 @ 2:25 pm - April 2, 2012

  13. Obama may like winning, but he doesn’t seem to like governing

    I think it depends what you mean by “governing”. I think Obama LOVES governing, i.e. being President.

    What he doesn’t like is: dealing with reality. The reality that his policies can’t and don’t work in reality; the reality of Americans rising up to oppose his policies for that reason; etc. That is what he hates. He wants to run a more docile nation, one more like North Korea or Stalinist Russia. Every day, he wakes up to the living nightmare that he isn’t.

    Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 2, 2012 @ 3:51 pm - April 2, 2012

  14. it’s as if she’s NOW giving her blessing to what the rest of us have known all along–that Obama is a filthy, shameless liar–and that believing this previously was somehow unreasonable, unfair or illegitimate

    Heh. She might make a decent “concern troll”, knocking Obama on left-wing blogs. “I hate Palin, was sympathetic to Obama in 2008 and run with liberal friends a lot, and *even I* *now* *wonder* about Obama’s character..”

    Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 2, 2012 @ 8:15 pm - April 2, 2012

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