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The Presidential Wheel Turns
The Wall Street Journal ^ | April 26, 2013 | Peggy Noonan

Posted on 04/26/2013 7:05:33 AM PDT by Biggirl

Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 because he was not George W. Bush. In fact, he was elected because he was the farthest thing possible from Mr. Bush. On some level he knew this, which is why every time he got in trouble he'd say Bush's name. It's all his fault, you have no idea the mess I inherited. As long as Mr. Bush's memory was hovering like Boo Radley in the shadows, Mr. Obama would be OK.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; US: District of Columbia
KEYWORDS: bush; noonan; obama
White House politics in motion.
1 posted on 04/26/2013 7:05:33 AM PDT by Biggirl
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To: Biggirl

Barack got elected because liberals threw Hitlery overboard for a thin-lipped mulatto, showing that black skin trumps all other liberal victim denominators.

It was a democrat “War On Women”!


2 posted on 04/26/2013 7:13:54 AM PDT by Iron Munro (Welcome to Obama-Land - EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY)
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To: Biggirl

That last graph nails it.

“They weren’t...creepy.”


3 posted on 04/26/2013 7:14:22 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (NRA Life Member)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

Just more proof that peggy is an idiot. She touted this asshat in the beginning and to my mind tells me she’s not nearly as brilliant as she thinks she is. She should just fade in to the background because she has become irrelevant. How anybody can lay any sort of kudos on jimmah cartah is beyond me. Jimmah, just shut up and go build some more houses that’ll end up trashed in the end. Laura Bush outclassed the other first ladies but that shouldn’t have been much of a task in any case. You just can’t buy dignity and respectfulness.


4 posted on 04/26/2013 7:26:35 AM PDT by rktman (BACKGROUND CHECKS? YOU FIRST MR. PRESIDENT!(not that we'd get the truth!))
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To: Biggirl

Can we dig up all those Noonan columns from back in ‘08 wherein she talked about how great and refreshing Brak was?

I have nothing but the deepest contempt for Noonan and I’m utterly uninterested in anything she has to say. She’s simply a weak-minded trendoid.


5 posted on 04/26/2013 7:27:28 AM PDT by jtal (Runnin' a World in Need with White Folks' Greed - since 1492)
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To: rktman

Amen rktman!


6 posted on 04/26/2013 7:30:09 AM PDT by Mountain Mary (Pray for our Republic...)
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To: Biggirl

Peggy is a slow learner. Thankfully, she finally admitted it.


7 posted on 04/26/2013 7:30:33 AM PDT by shove_it (long ago Orwell, Huxley and Rand warned us about 0bama's USA)
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To: Iron Munro
.......liberals threw Hitlery overboard in favor of Obama....

Bill/Hillary had pictures of Obama in Muslim garb. But Teddy
Kennedy told them to back off--Obama was the chosen
candidate. Teddy screwed the Clintons bigtime--and went on to
endorse Obama publicly with Caroline at his side.

Obama's brother Malik holds up photo.

8 posted on 04/26/2013 7:31:07 AM PDT by Liz (To learn who rules over you, determine who you are not allowed to criticize. Voltaire)
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To: jtal
She’s simply a weak-minded trendoid.....

.....who wants to keep her DC Cocktail Party Courtesy Card stamped. Her affectations on the Sunday shows just gets to me, she is there to impress whoever the host is and is certainly not a conservative.

9 posted on 04/26/2013 7:34:45 AM PDT by capydick (''Life's tough.......it's even tougher if you're stupid.'')
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To: All

Obama yesterday at the G. W. Bush Library dedication tried to make it all about HIM.


10 posted on 04/26/2013 7:35:02 AM PDT by Biggirl ("Jesus talked to us as individuals"-Jim Vicevich/Thanks JimV!)
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To: Biggirl
Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 because he was not George W. Bush. In fact, he was elected because he was the farthest thing possible from Mr. Bush

Hell is is closer to Stalin then Jimmy Carter...(and 360 degrees from John Adams and Ron Reagan.)

11 posted on 04/26/2013 8:08:50 AM PDT by ExCTCitizen (Ben Carson/Rand Paul in 2016)
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To: Biggirl

This is the man who spoke at the memorial service for Sen. Daniel Inouye mostly about himself.


12 posted on 04/26/2013 8:16:52 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: jtal
Obama and the Runaway Train
by Peggy Noonan

The race, the case, a hope for grace.

The Wall Street Journal: October 30, 2008

The case for Barack Obama, in broad strokes:

He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice. A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to. Runaway TrainThere is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton’s 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen “Obama Wins” and “Alabama.” She said, “Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school.” She said, “That’s where they used the hoses.” Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory. This means nothing? This means a great deal. John McCain’s story is not of rise so much as endurance, not only in Vietnam, which was spectacular enough, but throughout a rough and rugged political career of 26 years. He is passionate, obstreperous, independent, sees existential fables within history. His self-confessed role model for many years was Robert Jordan in Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the Spanish Civil War, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Mr. McCain, in his last memoir: “He was and remains to my mind a hero for the twentieth century . . . an idealistic freedom fighter” who had “a beautiful fatalism” and who sacrificed “for something else, something greater.” Actually Jordan fought on the side of the communists and died pointlessly, but never mind. He joined his personality to a great purpose and found meaning in his maverickness. In his campaign, Mr. McCain rarely got down to the meaning of things; he mostly stated stands. But separate and seemingly unconnected stands do not coherence make. However: It was a night during the Republican Convention in September, and two former U.S. senators, who had served with Mr. McCain for a combined 16 years, were having drinks in a hotel dining room. I told them I collected stories of senators who’d been cursed out by John McCain, and they laughed and told me of times they’d been the target of his wrath on the Senate floor. The talk turned to presidents they had known, and why they had wanted the job. This one wanted it as the last item on his résumé, that one wanted it out of an inflated sense of personal destiny. Is that why Mr. McCain wants it? “No”, said one, reflectively. “He wants to help the country.” The other added, with almost an air of wonder, “He wants to make America stronger, he really does.” And then they spoke, these two men who’d been bruised by him, of John McCain’s honest patriotism. Those who have historically been sympathetic to the Republican Party or conservatism, and who support Barack Obama—Colin Powell, William Weld and Charles Fried, among others—and whose arguments have not passed muster with some muster-passers, go undamned here. Their objections include: The McCain campaign has been inadequate, and some of his major decisions embarrassing. All too true. But conservatives must honor prudence, and ask if the circumstances accompanying an Obama victory will encourage the helpful moderation and nonpartisan spirit these supporters attempt, in their endorsements, to demonstrate. There is for instance, in the words of Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Pawlenty, “the runaway train.” The size and dimension of the likely Democratic victory seem clear. A Democratic House with a bigger, more fervent Democratic majority; a Democratic Senate with the same, and possibly with a filibuster-breaking 60 seats; a new and popular Democratic president, elected by a few points or more; a Democratic base whose anger and hunger have built for eight years; Democratic activists and operatives hungry for business and action. What will this mix produce? A runaway train with no one to put on the brakes, to claim a mandate for slowing, no one to cry “Crossing ahead”? Democrats in Congress will move for innovation when much of the country hopes only for stability. Who will tell Congress of that rest of the nation? Mr. Obama will be overwhelmed trying to placate the innovators. America enjoyed divided government most successfully recently from 1994 to 2000, with Bill Clinton in the White House and Newt Gingrich in effect running Congress. It wasn’t so bad. In fact, it yielded a great deal, including sweeping reform of the welfare system, and balanced budgets. Whoever is elected Tuesday, his freedom in office will be limited. Mr. Obama is out of money and Mr. McCain is out of army, so what might be assumed to be the worst impulses of each—big spender, big scrapper—will be circumscribed by reality. In Mr. Obama’s case, energy will likely be diverted to other issues. He will raise taxes, of course, but he may also feel forced to bow to a clamorous base with the nonspending items they favor: the rewriting of union law to force greater unionization of smaller shops, for instance, and a return to a “fairness doctrine” that would limit free speech on the air. And there is this. The past few months as the campaign unfolded, I listened for Mr. Obama to speak thoughtfully about the life issues, including abortion. Our last Democratic president knew what that issue was, and knew by nature how to speak of it. Bill Clinton famously said, over and over, that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” The “rare” mattered. It set a tone, as presidents do, and made an important concession: You only want a medical practice to be rare when it isn’t good. For Mr. Obama, whose mind tends, as intellectuals’ minds do, toward the abstract, it all seems so . . . abstract. And cold. And rather suggestive of radical departures. “That’s above my pay grade.” Friend, that is your pay grade, that’s where the presidency lives, in issues like that. But let’s be frank. Something new is happening in America. It is the imminent arrival of a new liberal moment. History happens, it makes its turns, you hold on for dear life. Life moves. A fitting end for a harem-scarem, rock-’em-sock-’em shakeup of a year—one of tumbling inevitabilities, torn coalitions, striking new personalities. Eras end, and begin. “God is in charge of history.” And so my beautiful election ends.

13 posted on 04/26/2013 10:32:04 AM PDT by NoExpectations
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To: NoExpectations

It makes me sick to read this fawning piece. How did anyone not know who this guy was back in 2008. I think she was hoping to be included on the party list.


14 posted on 04/26/2013 10:33:42 AM PDT by NoExpectations
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To: Biggirl
Bush wasn't arrogant "at the end." He was quite humble in the last days, almost embarrassingly so. He could be arrogant in the middle of his time in office, though, and it rubbed people the wrong way.

It's hard to know what to make of Peggy Noonan. She can be quite insightful. And so many people all across the political spectrum hate her that it's hard not to think that she may be on to something.

But in the course of an article, she usually does write something that makes one grimace and think that the haters may also be on to something.

National Review has a long symposium on the Bush years. They bring up some positive things about Bush that many of us have forgotten. On the whole, though, their attempts at rehabilitation don't entirely succeed.

15 posted on 04/27/2013 11:00:45 AM PDT by x
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