SALON

Friday, Sep 30, 2011 3:25 PM UTC

Peggy Noonan, Reagan's storyteller, says Obama tells too many stories

Crafter of the Reagan Myth doesn't care for the president copying St. Ronald

By

Topics: Barack Obama, 2012 Elections, Ronald Reagan, Media Criticism,

Peggy Noonan, Reagan's storyteller, says Obama tells too many storiesPeggy Noonan (Credit: wsj.com)

Peggy Noonan has diagnosed what is wrong with Barack Obama: He is too concerned with “telling stories,” and not concerned enough with “leading.” And Noonan should know, because she was a professional writer of stories for Ronald Reagan, the American president whose entire legacy is built around the fact that he was really super good at telling stories.

Noonan has been out in the “real” part of the country talking to people and she sees “a kind of new patriotism among our professional class” and it inspires her, but back East, where the bad politicians live, people are too obsessed with “The Narrative,” which she knows because she read Ron Suskind’s book:

Throughout the interview the president seems preoccupied with “shaping a story for the American people.” He says: “The irony is, the reason I was in this office is because I told a story to the American people.” But, he confesses, “that narrative thread we just lost” in his first years.

Then he asks, “What’s the particular requirement of the president that no one else can do?” He answers: “What the president can do, that nobody else can do, is tell a story to the American people” about where we are as a nation and should be.

Tell a story to the American people? That’s your job? Not adopting good policies? Not defending the nation? Storytelling?

Haha yes, that is a very sensible interpretation of the president’s words, there. He doesn’t care about “good policies” or “defending the nation” because the president’s only job is telling stories. That is exactly what Obama meant.

The problem, of course, isn’t that Obama is too concerned with the “storytelling” role, it’s that he’s too self-aware about it. He explicitly says, out loud, that he needs to tell stories better, instead of just telling stories better. The president does have this weird DC habit of being post-modern about his job as “president.”

And Obama is obviously too focused on the DC media-driven “narrative,” a stupid theatrical production that plays hourly to a marginal audience of people with no connection to the rest of the country. That has long been apparent and it is frustrating for people who don’t care what Mike Allen or the people who talk to or read Mike Allen think. (Which is most people.)

But Peggy Noonan, a member of that class of people that the president pays too much attention to, is not actually criticizing Obama for paying too much attention to people like Peggy Noonan. She is just attempting to re-tell the Reagan story, with Obama as Carter.

Here’s the problem: There is no story. At the end of the day, there is only reality. Things work or they don’t. When they work, people notice, and say it.

Would the next president like a story? Here’s one. America was anxious, and feared it was losing the air of opportunity that had allowed it to be what it was—expansive, generous, future-trusting. It was losing faith in its establishments and institutions. And someone came out of that need who led—who was wise and courageous and began to turn the ship around. And we saved our country, and that way saved the world.

Here is a gem of a good point: Reagan’s sepia-toned deification is due to his stupid storytelling. But his electoral success was due to the fact that after Fed created a recession to tamp down on inflation, they stimulated the hell out of the economy in advance of his reelection campaign. Reagan (like FDR and Kennedy) is remembered as successful because of the media-driven “story” of his presidency, but he was politically successful because of economic factors. That’s the actual lesson Obama has been slow in grasping about the Reagan thing. (Though Obama is right that Democrats are very poor at “selling” liberalism in simple, moral language, which has more of a bearing on the success of liberal policies than it does on Democratic party electoral success.)

But Peggy Noonan is full of shit if she actually thinks Obama highlighting the role of the president as a condescending storyteller to a nation of children is in any sense a misinterpretation of Ronald Reagan’s legacy.

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 51 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations