Really, Peggy? You're Worried that Rick Perry May be Too Macho?

Ohfertheloveof…Peggy Noonan now thinks Rick Perry may just be too darn much of a strapping hot tempered he-man for America’s good.

His primary flaw appears to be a chesty, quick-draw machismo that might be right for an angry base but wrong for an antsy country. Americans want a president who feels their anger without himself walking around enraged…

[T]he nation is roiling and restive. After Mr. Obama was elected, the right became angry, feisty, and created a new and needed party, the tea party. The right was on fire. The next time a Republican wins, and that could be next year, it will be the left that shows real anger, with unemployment high and no jobs available and government spending and services likely to be cut. The left will be on fire. The only thing leashing them now is the fact of Mr. Obama.

So there will be plenty of new angers out there. It probably won’t be helpful if the next president is someone likely to add to the drama with a hot temperament or carelessness.

Advertisement

Peggy, you need to let go of the feely stuff and do some research. You also need to spend a few minutes with Perry or people who have spent time around him before writing about him. He’s not walking around enraged, hot-tempered and careless. At all. People who lack self control don’t rack up 9-0 records in political campaigns. They screw up, and either gaffe or tweet their way out of office, or lose the public’s patience and then lose elections.

The Bernanke comment was not a gaffe. It drew attention to a dangerous policy that’s worth opposing, and set up a two-man race for the presidency.

These are not the ‘roids you’re looking for.

It fascinates me, how the very same columnist who completely misread Barack Obama’s temperament is now misreading Rick Perry’s temperament. She and other elitist types saw in Obama’s grin and gauze, a first-class temperament. Never mind he had no experience relevant to the job he sought, and no track record of working with people outside his narrow ideological band. Obama has turned out to be a very thin-skinned man with extremely poor leadership skills and no evident capability to cast his gaze beyond his very narrow and rigid ideology. Noonan herself has noted what a lousy leader Obama has turned out to be. Perry, by contrast, is actually gregarious, quick-witted, and capable of re-examining the world to the point that like Peggy’s former boss, he switched from Democrat to Republican as his former party left him. Perry also was the first major politician in either party to allow scientists to study his own campaign to determine which techniques actually work and which ones don’t, and then applied that new knowledge to both his 2010 campaign and his current one. Perry’s stewardship of Texas shows that he does know how to lead a very large state very effectively. Incapable of controlling himself? The man shot a coyote that attacked his dog, killing it in one shot, on a morning jog. That’s what I call gun control.

Advertisement

What I’m saying in all that, is that Peggy Noonan doesn’t seem to have the foggiest idea what she’s talking about.

Look, we all get things wrong sometimes. Just about a week or so ago, I wrote a fierce little blog post, and went to someone who knew more about the subject than I did to double-check things, and my post turned out to be wrong. So I trashed it. It happens. You get carried away on a theme or a meme, past the point where the facts are keeping up with you. The proper thing to do is keep your mouse off the Publish button until you know more about your subject.

Peggy Noonan needs a fact-checker who knows the subjects she is writing about. She is a great writer but she has now publicly misread two pretty important figures in American life.

(h/t Hot Air)

Recommended

Trending on PJ Media Videos

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Advertisement
Advertisement