Ahh, Peggy Noonan. When one needs the opinion of President Obama by a woman with the same dysfunctional love-hate relationship as a drunken stalker ex on a lost weekend, you can always count on Nooners.
But that actually is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something that started to become apparent to me during the debt negotiations. It’s something I’ve never seen in national politics.
It is that 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.
Ahh, we’re back to Nooners being spurned by the imaginary Old Spice Guy she sees the President to be and instead she sees the bloodless, frigidly logical Vulcan who inspires nothing in the depth of her own broken soul, and that’s pretty much normal Nooners. Oh, but she’s really, really mad at the President in this week’s column.
The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn’t really very good at politics, and he isn’t good at politics because he doesn’t really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The “Analytics Department” is looking for “predictive Modeling/Data Mining” specialists to join the campaign’s “multi-disciplinary team of statisticians,” which will use “predictive modeling” to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. “We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions.”
This wasn’t the passionate, take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of ’92, it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?
He’s too intelligent, too nerdy, too analytical, and he’s failed failed failed FAILED to stop the naughty Tea Party from ruining her cotillion or whatever. Look, the only thing more gorram obnoxious than the stupid President Angry McBlackhulksmash stuff is the President Tuvok bullshit, and I for one am personally getting sick of the cartoonish racism that says Barack Obama is only capable of two emotional states, endless rage or nothing.
If you argue that President Obama is even capable of complex nuance, you’re a hopeless Obot chump, apparently. Clinton just “got people” and Dubya just “got people” and Obama just “doesn’t get people”, so he’s a flippin’ caricature, the kind of two-dimensional meatbag you find in a Michael Bay film. He’s always, always too angry (and makin’ the white folk swoon with his ethnic rage) or just dead inside, and it’s getting to the point where people just don’t choose to understand that there’s a cultural difference in when, where, and how a black man in America is allowed to display emotion as opposed to a white man, let alone when that man is President of the United States.
I understand the need of the Village to distill everything down to sound bites and political cartoons that sum up Presidents in a split second, but that’s not who Barack Obama is. The sound bites are not the man, and when this much is at stake with the Tea Party literally trying to destroy the economy in order to take POTUS out, relying on cardboard standies is not only bad judgment, it’s bad for the country as a whole.
So yes, President Barack Hussein Obama is a complex, complicated man. He has a unique perspective on a lot of American culture and on American politics. He is staggeringly intelligent. He has a loving family. He was raised by a single white mother in Hawaii. He challenges all the preconceived notions of what a black man is in America in 2011. But what do we get? Reductio ad Noonium. She can’t handle the truth. Hell, tens of millions of Americans can’t.
Oh, and Nooners is totally hawt for POTUS. Just so you know.
Ha-ha!!!!
“Oh, and Nooners is totally hawt for POTUS. Just so you know.”
Blackman – who comments occasionally around these pragprog parts – said the same thing the other day about Maureen Dowd. Its the “I want my big black dick” phenomenon.
Nooners needs to lay off the crack pipe, methinks.
God, what a pretentious bitch – Peggy, do us all a favor and get some boning. Hand banging the headboard boning, please. Because maybe it will knock some sense in your head and you will stop writing stupid shit.
She is even worse on TV, if that is possible.
First of all, Tuvok is awesome.
Second of all, I love the President, so she’s off by at least one person.
Finally, if you are trying to recruit a statistician, isn’t that exactly how you would want the posting to read? Maybe if Clinton had more analytic people, he would have realized what a terrible idea DADT was, for example. And don’t even get me started on Bush. (Oh wait I’m going to anyway.) What progressive would seriously compare Obama unfavorably to Bush 43? It’s exactly this kind of intelligent and thoughtful approach that, to me anyway, makes Obama a far better President than Bush was.
And now I’m going to go listen to Gigantic by The Pixies.
“What progressive would seriously compare Obama unfavorably to Bush 43?”
Good question. Sadly, it seems that many at FiredogLake and Smirking Chimp, and Raw Story are doing just that, and looking like a bunch of stupid @$$holes. But that’s just me….
First, “reductio ad noonium ” is fucking BRILLIANT.
Secondly, I really hate these people. Who do they think they are? Oh right. The only people that matter. White pontificating assclowns with no clue of life outside the Village.
Thirdly, What the hell are Obamabots and the dumbest motherfuckers in the world if not Obamalovers throgh and through?
Oh right. The only folks who love Obama are black folks, and it’s because we’re racist and we don’t matter anyway, so WHARGARRBBLE.
fuck peggy noonan.
She sounds like she like the white lady who slept with Shaft only to get kicked out afterwards.
Great post. Of course, Nooners is not only a lazy, stereotyping ninny, she’s dead wrong on the facts. Polls show Obama has retained an incredible level of support among Democrats, particularly when you consider the gigantic, epic economic shithole he’s presiding over courtesy of his Republican predecessors (whose knobs Nooners gobbled for a living).
Even the rhetorical flourish about the job ad is bogus: It’s a goddamned data mining job! Of course it sounds technical! I’m sure the ad for Bo’s poop scooper didn’t read “…process output of canine companion animal.” Christ, I’m sick of our pundit class.
Kuttner at American Prospect is carrying on about how Obama is so fail lol.
i really hate these people.
Would it be irresponsible to speculate that Peggy Noonan is exhibiting symptoms of dementia associated with tertiary syphilis? It would be irresponsible NOT to!
Stephen Marche writes How Can We Not Love Obama? Because like it or not, he is all of us: http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/07/stephen-marche-how-can-we-not-love.html
No one loves Obama?
I guess I’m No one.
Oh, Nooners, you really need help with that projection thing. Just because no one loves you, it doesn’t mean than no one doesn’t love the prez.
Oh, and a pro tip that hopefully can permeate through your soaked brain cells: I know for certain that the president has feelings. You wanna know how? I see it and hear it when he looks at/talks about Michelle and their girls. That’s true love, something you wouldn’t be able to identify if it poked you in the eye with a rusty pitchfork.
It’s really time for her to jump the shark once and for all and disappear in a cloud.
Or fall into the shark tank, maybe?
To be fair, I was there, in person, when she uttered her (in)famous “bullshit” comment re: Sarah Palin, when she was onstage in Rice Park at MSNBC’s RNC coverage.
Stopped clocks and all that…
Ooooh, yes! FALL in the shark tank moar better. You know, that comment is what makes her so frustrating. There is more to her than this bullshit, but she refuses to let it show. Gaaaaaah!
Publishing accurate and detailed job descriptions is apparently now considered “uppity”. Who knew?
You know, I would like to smack the crap out of her and Robert Reich – when did this hobbit become the expert on what to do? I am soooooo tired of condescending white folks, I really am…
“Nobody smiles when they talk about Obama”? I grin from ear to ear whenever I see a picture of Obama.
What an asshole she is.
I saw her on Morning Joe this morning – what a haughty, (and in the words of Det. Sipowicz) pissy ass bitch. Whoever said she needed some headboard banging sex was right on – from Long Dong Silver or Clarence Thomas – whoever might be available first…..
Good God. I’ve got two tiny issues with Peggy Noonan’s crap cited here.
First, I flove Obama. Fucking adore the man. Sometimes, my love for Obama threatens to choke me. Like when he spoke at graduation at Booker T. Washington high school in Memphis, my heart almost exploded. Oh and the graduates who were sitting with tears in their eyes seemed to love Presidet Obama. And oh yeah– my elderly patients, who are lifelong Memphians, watching the graduation on tv absolutely love Obama. So that’s bullshit to say that he isn’t “loved.” That was a fifteen minute snippet of time, containing a whole lotta love for Obama.
Do I want to have a beer with the President? No, I want him to change the effing world! He is the President, not my buddy! (I actually would love to have a beer with Obama but I would be so tongue-tied and drooly that it would be humiliating.)
You know who else I love? The First Lady, who is so kick-ass she takes my breath away. I adore the entire First Family.
Second point is this: Noonan says that Obama doesn’t get people like W and Clinton got people, but I think Obama, more than any leader I have ever seen, truly gets “people”. He understands the needs of all people. W got the people with whom he shared similar ideals and philosophies. Differing viewpoints need not apply.
Obama is so hard for idealogues to understand because he lies by his creed “Out of many, we are one.” Obama sees and hears the “many”. He doesn’t tune out the crazies and he doesn’t ignore the sane voices eiher. He takes all needs and views and opinions and tries to find middle ground.
Our President is not the leader that we deserve–not with our pettiness and hate-filled shit on both sides. He is the leader that we need because, more than anything, we need a leader who isn’t interested in anything except the greater good. When he speaks, I believe him. It’s that simple. It’s not posturing or politics–I trust Obama like I trust my own father.
So screw Noonan and her bullshit “writing”. Obama is loved because he speaks to people whose daily existence is harder than Noonan’s entire life could ever be.
i love obama and miss nooners is completely off her rocker. that is all.