You raise good points
As republican as she is last Sunday she said she had not decided who she'd vote for.
She said some other things on MTP
Text
NOONAN: Well, the—I think more and more with Mr. McCain—we’re seeing two different things with the candidates. Mr. McCain has—there’s a sense of containment that you see with him more and more, where he is containing a certain amount of "hm," indignation, anger, what it is, but—whatever it is, but he has to contain it.
MS. IFILL: Not terribly well. I mean, sarcasm really is not containment.
(snip)
MS. NOONAN: Sort of like he’d rather deck the guy, and—but instead he’s a little sarcastic.
With Obama, there is a greater sense that if there’s a tiger in that tank, he doesn’t have to work hard to contain it. There’s still that languidness and calm that is serving him well, and it is one of the unspoken things that’s helping him now, I think. American people in the past year in this long campaign have gotten to watch him long enough that they don’t know him quite, but they kind of have a sense of him.
(snip)
What we need now is grace. We need real patriotism, which patriotism isn’t used as a weapon in a campaign. Patriotism actually needs grace in order to function. We got to be our best selves right now. We got to hit our game in a higher way. We got to be forbearing. We got to be adults. I sometimes think one of the problems in America is there are too many people that don’t want to embrace the role of the simple grown-up and show the maturity and forbearance of a grown-up.
It's not that I trust her or don't think she'll play games for her party but she won Peggy won a little piece of my heart when Wright clips broke and hype was at full steam. Peggy came on to Morning Joe that Monday Morning. Everyone else was panting and foaming and howling about Wright (only a slight exaggeration).
In the midst of that when asked if this was it for Obama her calm and thoughtful voice and words were a relief.
She didn't defend Wright but she did defend Obama, that Wrights words in no way reflected Obama. While she said she didn't know how the campaign would do through it what she did know was Obama could make it a healing moment for this nation like no one else could. She said he should use his enormous talent, sit alone and write from his heart and then give a speech to the country about the issue of race, turn this whole thing to the good.
She spoke so well of him and his heart and intellect and authenticity, his ability to speak to us like grown ups. In the midst of the maelstrom I cherished that.
I looked to see what she wrote after the speech...and she appreciated all of it except... can't recall exact words but to paraphrase. Never mind, I looked it up
http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=407Here’s what didn’t work. Near the end of the speech, Mr. Obama painted an America that didn’t summon thoughts of Faulkner but of William Blake. The bankruptcies, the dark satanic mills, the job loss and corporate corruptions. There is of course some truth in his portrait, but why do appeals to the Democratic base have to be so unrelievedly, so unrealistically, bleak?
This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has—the fear one has, actually—that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. (snip)
But most people didn’t experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn’t that way. Do the Obamas know it?
That was the one time I ever looked for her column and left a comment. On that part I suggested that her rejecting how bleak things were for so many people meant that she was the one who did not know much about America in the middle class and below.
I'm sure I said it politely...because of her kindness in the crazy time and she wrote so much more about what was right with the speech than the little part she found wrong. Some examples
I thought Barack Obama’s speech was strong, thoughtful and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear that’s what he wanted, and this is rare.
(snip)
This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit.
(snip
The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics.
Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line—“And families in Michigan matter!” or “What I stand for is affordable quality health care!”—and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.
Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn’t summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn’t hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he’d said.
If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they’d get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don’t write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.
They should try it.
(snip
My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former.
That was not the first or the last time she has spoken very well of him, much better than she has on McCain...and it didn't stop when the primary ended. She is also critical of him but she is harsher on McCain.
Again I don't doubt she'll shill if needed but unlike people like Will or Murphy who are very willing to criticize McCain she often shows appreciation of the unique gifts Obama brings with him. She has always appreciated grace and being talked to like a grown-up, it is no surprise she'd be fond of Obama.