Noonan Hits a Home Run

Peggy Noonan can be annoyingly clever by half. By that I mean, just at the edge of twee. Zooey Deschanel who can write & coin winners like "It's morning in America!" which buried Walter Mondale under the mediocre manure he deserved in 1984. But here's Peggy at her near best in today's WSJ:

The next president will have to wrangle with Congress, and when lawmakers balk, he'll have to go over their heads and tell the American people the plan, the reasons it will work, and why it's fair and good. He'll have to get them to tell their congressmen, by phone calls and mail and by collaring them in the neighborhood and at the town hall, to back the president. When this happens to enough of them—well, as Reagan used to say, when they feel the heat, they see the light. The members go to the speaker, and suddenly the speaker is knocking back a drink with the president, and in the end a deal gets made. Things get pushed inch by inch toward progress, and suddenly there's a sense things can work again. That encourages an air of unity and of national purpose, which itself gives a boost to public morale.

Anyway, the next president will have to do that sort of thing, and it will take deep political gifts. We have not seen that genius in Mr. Obama. Whether you will vote for him or not, you know you haven't seen it. He seems to view politics as his weary duty, something he had to do on his way to greatness.

When he goes over the heads of Congress to the people, it's like he threw a dead fish over the transom—it lands with a "Thwap!" and makes a mess, and people run away. As for Mr. Romney it is a commonplace in punditry to implore him to speak clearly of where he'll go and how and why we should follow.

Both candidates seem largely impenetrable—it's hard to know them, figure them. With Mr. Romney, you have a sense of what he's been, what jobs he's held, and his general approach. But do you have a solid sense of who he'd be and what he'd do as president? Probably not. Even he may not know. As for Mr. Obama, the more facts you know, the more you don't understand him, the more you can't quite grok him.

Neither has a flair for politics, and neither seems to love it. Both come from minority parts of the American experience, and both often seem to be translating as they speak, from their own natural inner language to their vision of how "normal Americans" think.

What does all this suggest? That voters this year will tend to be practical in their choice and modest in their expectations. Which isn't all bad. But joy would be more fun.

All her prose thusfar verges on insightful, especially the sense that both candidates are from far outliers of the massive middle of America, both the archetypal Middle West and the middle income clock-punching majority of the electorate.

The exotic self-proclaimed "mutt" Obama hails from a morganatic [look it up!] marriage of a bigamous Kenyan with an 18-year old Kansas-native from a former slave-holding family. Since her father's Kenyan tribe used to sell to Arab slavers, this made BarackO, formerly Barry until he got too full of himself, descended on both sides from owners/dealers of African slaves.

The equally exiguous Mitt Romney is a Mormon whose family spent a generation in a Mexican commune and himself spent a year in France [shades of the perfect hairdo John Kerry!] going door-to-door preaching Mormonism. I was a student in Ann Arbor when Mitt's father George effectively exited himself from presidential contention back in the late '60s by declaring himself "brainwashed" on Vietnam.... Given Mitt's grim determination mixed with expressions of euphoria when he is applauded, Romney fils is showing that he's not going to let any of his cards show.

Both candidates are so boringgggg..... that BHO has already decided to push his less odious wife Michelle out front of him to keep the malodorous fumes from reaching the electorate directly. And Mitt is so white-bread Holsum brand that he simply hasn't been able to get any orchestration at all past the wall of silence the MSM has kept him behind, except the occasional bleat that BHO is lying, cheating, stealing the election without an intervening campaign.

Peggy was both "twee" and correct when she titled her Op-Ed "Ennui, the People." There doesn't seem to be a campaign, since the ABCCBSNBCCNN firewall of silence has effectively meant that only those watching Fox News or reading the WSJ or other "ironic points of light" know Mitt is anything other than a very rich man and that BHO means well, but those meanies in the GOP Congress won't let him work on behalf of the 99% of the lazy suckers just waiting for more handouts[ed. note].

But the denouement might save Mitt's campaign, if he has the wits to pick a Veep candidate worthy of the name.

We must end with some burly, optimistic thoughts or we'll hurl ourselves over a transom and go "Thwap!" 1. There's still time—more than 100 days—for each candidate to go deeper, get franker, and light some kind of flame. 2. The acceptance speeches are huge opportunities to do that. 3. The debates, if they do not sink into formalized torpor or anchor-led superficialities, could be not only decisive but revealing of greater depths. 4. Mr. Romney's vice presidential choice will matter.

About which a note. Speaking the other day to a gathering of businesspeople from across the country, I mentioned the subdued nature of the election and my thoughts as to its reasons. I was surprised to get no push-back afterward, even from political enthusiasts, only agreement.

But the news: When conversation turned to the vice presidential nominee, I said we all know the names of those being considered, spoke of a few, and then said Condoleezza Rice might be a brilliant choice.

Here spontaneous applause burst forth.

Consider: A public figure of obvious and nameable accomplishment whose attainments can't be taken away from her. Washington experience—she wouldn't be learning on the job. Never run for office but no political novice. An academic, but not ethereal or abstract. A woman in a year when Republicans aren't supposed to choose a woman because of what is now called the 2008 experience—so the choice would have a certain boldness. A black woman in a campaign that always threatens to take on a painful racial overlay. A foreign-policy professional acquainted with everyone who's reigned or been rising the past 20 years.

I should add here the look on the faces of the people who were applauding. They looked surprised by their own passion. Actually they looked relieved, like a campaign was going on and big things might happen and maybe it could get kind of . . . exciting.

I myself think Marco Rubio will have a great positive effect as well. But the slime-throwing MSM would accuse Marco of child-molesting assault-and-battery within days of being named.

However, Condi Rice would suppress the loathsome maggots spewing "racism" on every channel every time a person accuses Obama of malfeasance, which is the all-purpose noun describing this amateur's performance up to now. And then we might be able to get ObamaCare repealed, and keep the death panels from our door!!!