I did a quadruple take when I read this one — and if I were President George Bush I would ponder the word "hubris" because if you’re a Republican and Peggy Noonan criticizes your speech then you must have hit some flat or sour notes.
There have been lots of reactions to Bush’s inauguration speech and many — but not all, by any means — have been along ideological lines. But when Peggy "Ms. Savor of 2004" Noonan says the speech is too grandiose and, basically, unrealistic it’s not a good sign.
Many Presidents have used soaring rhetoric (Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan, etc.) so ringing phrases aren’t new. When the "reviews" come in, it turns out these Presidents are said to have touched a special nerve and rallied people. But when a fervent supporter on your side says "Wait just a minute," it doesn’t qualify as a home run.
Here are some key parts of what she wrote (not quoted in the order in which they appear):
One wonders if they shouldn’t ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.
And
The president’s speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."
It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people."
Even more stinging:
Ending tyranny in the world? Well that’s an ambition, and if you’re going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn’t expect we’re going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it’s earth.
Plus:
And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength–tested, but not weary–we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."
This is–how else to put it?–over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.
Overall, she starts giving him high marks…then indulges in a big chunk of snark:
The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush’s second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.
Please note that TMV missed all the fuss. Our reaction here can be summed up in one word with a shrug of the shoulders and a raised eyebrow: "Ehh…" To TMV, the speech was a typical inauguration speech (the REAL speech will come during the State of the Union Address.). But more of Peggy:
It was a foreign-policy speech. To the extent our foreign policy is marked by a division that has been (crudely but serviceably) defined as a division between moralists and realists–the moralists taken with a romantic longing to carry democracy and justice to foreign fields, the realists motivated by what might be called cynicism and an acknowledgment of the limits of governmental power–President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise. But he did it in a way that left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance.
And herein lies the danger for this administration:
It will have to explain existing policies better, to maintain the support it has, particularly if the situation in Iraq gets worse in any way after the elections there. It’s going to have to convince even some Republicans if it intends to follow the same kind of foreign policy because even within the GOP ranks, the administration may not be get a free ride — discounted taxi fare,yes,.but NOT a free ride.
You can read some other good excerpts of reaction to the speech here.
BOTTOM LINE: Noonan’s reaction doesn’t portend well for this administration. As was evident during the Secretary of State confirmation hearings for Condi Rice, Democrats intend to dig in their heels on foreign policy matters and are gearing up for fierce resistance on the administration’s Social Security plans and judicial nominations. It’s increasingly clear that this administration plans a full-court press on all its agenda issues (immigration reform will probably fall by the wayside) but it looks like its going to have to rely mostly on GOP support.
With a "whoa…wait a minute now.." from Peggy Noonan, it’s one more indication that this administration intends to juggle a lot of things while posed on a partisan tightrope — and the safety net down below may not be that sturdy.
THIS JUST IN: The Outside The Beltway Traffic Jam is up.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.