She is on. Here’s her comment on President Obama’s Wednesday press conference: “Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers.” She continues: “The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: ‘This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas.’”
A related note: About three years ago, I heard President Bush make the argument for one or another of his policies, something foreign-policy-related, and his case on it seemed to me quite persuasive. A couple of days later, to my great disappointment, the poll results came in: the same lopsided rejection of the policy that existed before Bush spoke. Puzzled, I asked a prominent conservative intellectual of my acquaintance what could account for the American people’s failure to grasp what seemed to me so sensible. He answered: “It’s not so much that they are rejecting Bush’s argument, as that they’ve simply stopped listening to him.”
It took Bush six years to reach that point. Obama has worn out his welcome practically overnight.
Well, people didn't just stop listening to Bush. The media and the Dems and the entertainment industrial complex screamed lies about him the entire time he was in office. That had an effect.
Speaking of which, I saw a trailer for the new Valerie Plame movie coming up. I nearly hurled in the theatre.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"It took Bush six years to reach that point. Obama has worn out his welcome practically overnight."
Perhaps because Obama has done more talking in the first 2 years than Bush did in 8.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama's *talked* for 6 years by this point.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAgree that Peggy Noonan is spot on here. It's not just that people have stopped listening to Obama, it's that he's lost his credibility with the American people.
He said things during the campaign that he had no intention of carrying out as President. Two years later, the American people know as much as they need to know about whether Obama's words can be relied upon as expressing what he really intends.
Once we are lied to, whether it's by our President or our friends, we have to assume that we will be lied to again. It's human nature. And so we can no longer give the speaker the benefit of the doubt. We hear the speaker, but we do not believe him. Even in those situations where he really is telling the truth.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseshe has been en fuego for the last 6-8 weeks... go to the opinionjournal.com archives and check it out. a pulitzer is coming
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHmmm...she was also dead on about Palin (though nobody above has mentioned it).
Palin has a place in this movement, but national office is not it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt was inevitable. Whenever the American people have been told the truth about Progressivism - or seen its effects rightly - they reject it.
(So, how to account for the popularity of Social Security? They're still not being told the truth. Most think it's an old age insurance program where you make premium payments and collect after age 65. If they knew it was a Ponzi scheme from the start, they'd ask to dismantle it.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShe couldn't help but take a shot at Palin though. If I remeber Peggy was one of those Like D Brooks in 2008 enamored of Mr.Obama to a degree. So if Palin doesn't have a spot at any national office I guess the millions of her supporters should just get in line and support the RINO's huh.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePeggy who?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNoonan lost me back in '08 when she morphed into the female version of David Brooks.
Funny how it took several members of the "intellectual class" to catch up to the rest of us.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI disliked this column. Peggy Noonan's criticisms of Obama were just mean. This from a woman who adored him in 2008. Then she slammed Palin, as well, as if to make up for it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe articulate Peggy Noonan in indeed right that people have begun to 'tune out' President Obama, for whom she voted. Unfortunately, it is also true that people have (to some degree) begun to tune out Peggy Noonan.
Noonan is still an extremely good writer; and at its best her work is alternately witty and very moving. But philosophically, where she was once a study oak with deep roots, she is now a willow by the banks of an intermittent desert stream, blowing this way and that in the dry winds.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePeople still read Noonan? Why, with the bounty of riches on the Internet available? Noonan's less like a willow, more like... duckweed.
Vorpal: re the Plame movie: expect more of the same from Hollywood, coming soon. Mass hysteria!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePeggy who?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI stopped listening to Noonan when she told us to vote for "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have stopped reading / listening to Ms. Noonan when she lectured me about the virtues of Obama which I failed to grasp. I resumed reading her columns recently and I have been proven right in my initial instinct. Ms. Noonan is not worth listening to. There was absolutely no reason for her to attack Palin with name calling. Moreover, it is clear to me that in 2012 Ms. Noonan will once again vote for Obama because she will not bring herself to vote for Palin. Not worth wasting precious time reading anymore.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat value did the attack on Palin add to Ms. Noonan's point? Zero. But it was very illustrative that Ms. Noonan remains snooty elitist who lectured us about the virtues of Obama when all of us nincompoops knew better. Spare me, Ms. Noonan, you are not worth listening to!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI simply stopped listening to Peggy Noonan about two years ago. She's one of those who has to be on the bandwagon. When Bush started his decline she jumped of. When it looked like Obama was on the ascendency she jumped on. Now that he's heading for disaster she jumped off again.
I am alway suspicious of writers who spend too much effort on superficial style - too often they are trying to hide a lack of substance. Go back and read Noonan's words again, and try to find anthing new she brought us other than a couple clever turns of phrase.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRichard Reed, I agree with you. I will never forget the shock of reading her column on Bush's second inaugural address. I hear the echoes of it in her Palin bashing.
Look, I would not support Palin for President either, but you don't have to attack the woman to express that opposition. Palin's "political celebrity" did not come from reality television, it came when she, then Governor of Alaska, was nominated as the Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf people had stopped listening to President Bush it was due in large part to the absolute vilification that he was receiving at the hands of the dinosaur media. Every newspaper on the left from NY to LA, North to South included did all they could to try and make Mr. Bush sound like a fool and pretend that he had no clue about what he was discussing. The talking airheads added their voices daily to the barrage of hatred toward President Bush. Barry has managed to get the the country to stop listening to him despite the dinosaur media of all different stripes holding him up as the smartest man in the country, the world, the universe. Listen to the Sunday morning talking airheads and you would come away thinking that Barry existed on a plane of intellectualism that was so vast and deep that we poor uneducated bitter clingers could never hope to understand him.
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