This sentence which you have cited tells us so much about Peggy Noonan.
The high point of her career was speechwriting for one of the best speech makers of all time, Ronald Reagan, and she narcissistically believes that the sine qua non of a great public leader is the quality of the speeches he renders. That is one of the reasons that she despises Sarah Palin, because she believes Sarah Palin's rustic delivery ad lib betrays a shallowness of intelligence.
Obama is not highly intelligent, he is a wordsmith who has simply mastered the art, chameleonlike, of rendering the tone and cadence that his audience wants. That is not a sign of intelligence beyond the ability to read the audience and play act.
Peggy should be far more concerned about what the man's biography, associations, and actions demonstrate about his character than what speech patterns illuminate about his intelligence. That goes for Sarah Palin too.
Peggy: the ability to make a speech is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence; character rather than intelligence is a cardinal prerequisite for president of the United States.
