Saturday, January 30, 2010

Peggy Noonan Distills the President's SOTU Message Down From Seventy Minutes to Two

Peggy Noonan accurately captures the essence of President Obama's State of the Union Address:

The central fact of the speech was the contradiction at its heart. It repeatedly asserted that Washington is the answer to everything. At the same time it painted a picture of Washington as a sick and broken place. It was a speech that argued against itself: You need us to heal you. Don't trust us, we think of no one but ourselves.

The people are good but need guidance—from Washington. The middle class is anxious, and its fears can be soothed—by Washington. Washington can "make sure consumers . . . have the information they need to make financial decisions." Washington must "make investments," "create" jobs, increase "production" and "efficiency."

At the same time Washington is a place "where every day is Election Day," where all is a "perpetual campaign" and the great sport is to "embarrass your opponents" and lob "schoolyard taunts."

Why would anyone have faith in that thing to help anyone do anything?

Exactly. Washington, Washington, Washington. It's the Democrat's all-purpose answer for everything.


Read the whole thing. It's a two minute read. Much better than listening to a seventy minute speech.
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3 comments:

Megalass said...

Drat, I wish that I had stuck with Peggy this time. I've gotten in the habit of tuning her out after the first paragraph or two because she tends to get into flowery-penned psychoanalyst mode too often.

Brother J said...

She has been a little, shall we say, "uneven" lately but when she's on, she's right on.

Michael Morrison said...

Peggy has a nice vocabulary and an airy approach to ideas, but let's not forget she endorsed Barack Obama for president.
She is one of the people who must accept blame for that platitudinous non-entity being in the office.
Yes, I'm glad to see she is waking up, but I sure wish it had been a lot sooner.