Rice and Noonan’s brush with perfection

There’s a grace that seems to descend on intelligent women who’ve worked for Republican presidents. Condoleezza Rice was at George Bush’s side through each of his Middle East adventures, and Peggy Noonan wrote speeches for the sunny side of the Ronald Reagan presidency. Both are listened to respectfully, whether they abandon their critical faculties or not.

Here’s the conclusion of Rice’s speech to the Republicans in Tampa—a speech that many judged as the finest and wisest of the convention:

“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have the experience and the integrity and the vision to lead us – they know who we are, what we want to be and what we offer the world.

That is why this is a moment – an election – of consequence. Because it just has to be – that the most compassionate and freest country on the face of the earth – will continue to be the most powerful!”

Here’s Peggy Noonan in her blog for the Wall St. Journal today, outlining what state of mind Mitt Romney should take to his first debate with Barack Obama:

“What Mitt Romney has to show is command, talent, resolve. He has to move with firmness, strength. Americans don’t really want someone they’d like to go out and have a beer with, they want someone who can help them afford a beer. First things first. Romney at this point should just forget likability—let’s just say he’s likable enough. He needs people to see certainty, guts, ability, and heft. Americans are tired of trying to like these guys, they want to respect them. They’d like to feel honest awe.”

Can you imagine Pat Buchanan or Dick Cheney imagining, let alone getting away with such complacent, romantic nonsense?

A black conservative academic may want America to be more compassionate, and any speechwriter for any president will want her words to suspend our disbelief and leave us in a state of awe. However, Rice and Noonan shouldn’t be able to utter such sugary platitudes about who Americans are and what Americans want in a president without being laughed at.

Maybe, it was only an awkward fleeting period in the emancipation of smart women. Let’s hope, however, that the next generation of powerful women who ride in the back seat with future presidents don’t come out of the experience as hero-worshippers and shameless flatterers.

Condoleezza Rice: under-employed politician or over-rated intellectual?

By popular standards of pundit speculation, Condoleezza Rice should have the nomination as Romney’s running mate nailed—for at least another week.

She’s had senior government experience—and has never raised a tax, launched an entitlement, or borrowed a cent from China. She’s a visible member of two shrinking minorities in the Republican Party. She’s an academic in a party that has exhausted its rhetoric against the pointy-headed intellectual in the White House. And Condoleezza Rice is the most popular and recognized potential candidate out there—70% of those who think they know who she is also like her.

Click on: www.businessinsider.com/condoleezza-rice-for-vice-president-mitt-romneys-best-choice-2012-7

Last week’s special reasons for catapulting her into first place in the VP guessing game were twofold: someone close to the Romney campaign said she was, and a few good sources reported that she’d just “electrified” a select audience of Romney advisors, fundraisers, and Republican elders at a private retreat in Park City, Utah. 

Good sense argues that these reasons aren’t good enough.

Governor Rick Perry was supposed to be charismatic, too, and spreading a fanciful rumor about a nice lady is better politics than fighting the other guy’s fanciful rumors about Mitt Romney’s finances. No one gets hurt.

Nevertheless, there are two rather surprising reasons for suspecting that she might end up on the ticket.

One: Romney’s speech to the NAACP last week made it brutally clear that his own campaign and his platform will make the least effort of any Republican campaign in modern history to reach out to black voters on their terms.

Romney is reconciled to make it all the way to the White House with white votes. Having a cerebral black running mate would help those white votes reconcile themselves to the idea as well.

Two: she sounds like she wants it. Just listen to Buzzfeed’s pirated audio of that 13-minute speech.

Click on: www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/audio-exclusive-the-speech-that-landed-condi-on-r

Rice slavishly repeats the most belligerent talking points of Gingrich, McCain, and Romney. She makes Ambassador Huntsman sound like a European. Her attacks on Obama’s personal leadership and affection for “entitlements” are as one-sided, alarmist, and bitter as any remarks that could be asked of—and ghosted for—any potential attack-dog for the Romney ticket.

Concern that Rice’s “moderate pro-choice” position on abortion would be too great a swallow for social conservatives is naïve. They’ll still fight against the greater evil—Barack Obama. Conversely, Romney strategists can’t hope to cut into Obama’s support amongst blacks by repeating that too many blacks are unemployed and that the highest marginal tax rate is too high.

Finally, her candidacy—along with her speech—would nicely irritate liberals and black leaders.

Romney, the artless businessman who can’t dance, could, in fact, create a scene that could arouse and enthuse the Silent Majority: there those lefties go again, rubbing our noses in past mistakes and complaining about a fine black professional who doesn’t whine, apologize for Iraq, or even talk about food stamps and universal healthcare.