Posted on 01/20/2005 9:33:31 PM PST by RWR8189
Was the president's speech a case of "mission inebriation"?
It was an interesting Inauguration Day. Washington had warmed up, the swift storm of the previous day had passed, the sky was overcast but the air wasn't painful in a wind-chill way, and the capital was full of men in cowboy hats and women in long furs. In fact, the night of the inaugural balls became known this year as The Night of the Long Furs.
Laura Bush's beauty has grown more obvious; she was chic in shades of white, and smiled warmly. The Bush daughters looked exactly as they are, beautiful and young. A well-behaved city was on its best behavior, everyone from cops to doormen to journalists eager to help visitors in any way.
For me there was some unexpected merriness. In my hotel the night before the inauguration, all the guests were evacuated at 1:45 in the morning. There were fire alarms and flashing lights on each floor, and a public address system instructed us to take the stairs, not the elevators. Hundreds of people wound up outside in the slush, eventually gathering inside the lobby, waiting to find out what next.
The staff--kindly, clucking--tried to figure out if the fire existed and, if so, where it was. Hundreds of inaugural revelers wound up observing each other. Over there on the couch was Warren Buffet in bright blue pajamas and a white hotel robe. James Baker was in trench coat and throat scarf. I remembered my keys and eyeglasses but walked out without my shoes. After a while the "all clear" came,
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
You claim victim status, as I knew you would. Pretend all you want that you are some sort of defender of the faith. But you're just continuing to intentionally obfuscate. You didn't defend the President and his speech. You personally attacked the people who were supporting Peggy Noonan's right to comment, and you just want to provide cover to those who slammed Peggy Noonan.
Play that little victim card and spin spin spin, but what you're really all about is acting the Pharisee, just as your anti-Noonan pals are, pretending that the only way to back Bush is to never allow any criticism of the man. Backing you up with prayer...sheesh. Could you be any MORE holier-than-thou? Let me guess, did God tell you to insult people who supported Noonan? Did those prayers include the words "and help me smite the enemies of your anointed, Dubya?"
You're just crazy for this President, all right. Really, sincerely, no doubt about it.
I don't feel one bit victimized by you, Libertarian. I have just asked you to stop making things up about me that are not true.
Everyone here can see that you've done it. I don't think I'm a 'victim' in the least, nor have I throughout this thread.
I'm sorry you have been so offended by me, and as a result have so deeply misunderstood me, but in the long run, the only thing that matters is how people who actually know me evaluate my behavior, and I have literally hundreds of friends on FR whom I could bring in if I so chose to back up my character. And, of course, it matters most what the Lord thinks of what I have said and done......but that's between HIM and me, and I am taking care of that.
And I'm sorry that you are offended that people have prayed for me. It's not 'holier than thou.' It's the body of Christ at work supporting a fellow believer, and I'm thankful for it, and wanted to say so publicly.
Once again, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by saying you were bitter and asking what was wrong. It obviously made you very angry, and that was not my intent. I thought you were a decent sort of fellow at first, and would like to think that of you again some day. That part's up to you.
"Blah blah blah I don't feel one bit victimized by you...just stop victimizing me blah blah I have lots of friends and you're offended by Jesus...blah blah blah...you feel sorry for yourself...I just want to be pals..."
Heard this all before, and I'm sorry, but it won't fly. You continue to try to line up in the 'reasonable' team slot now, when you trotted onto the field for the other side. You defended those who attacked Noonan's character and person, and attacked and insulted those of us who found those attacks inappropriate. You want to play all the cards you can to distract from it, but them's the facts, Elroy. Deny all you want, but anyone who looks at the thread will see what you posted and who you carried the ball for.
And I get extra credit for not mixing a single metaphor.
http://reagan2020.com/tributes/noonan_2.asp
snip
Ronald Reagan could do and say anything he wanted--he was the president. But every time Ben fought the bureaucracy to get the right draft to Reagan--to get the president's own conservative views to him--Ben made an enemy. He faced a million swords, and without bureaucratic protection. In politics, friends come and go but enemies accumulate. By the time the bad guys got him, Ben looked like a human pincushion.
We owed him so much. Making his position even more difficult, and painful, there were those on his staff and around him who wanted his job, or who wanted him removed because he didn't assign them enough speeches. They were right, he didn't. He didn't because he was protecting them. Dick Darman, our boss of all bosses, would read a draft from one or another of them and he'd call Ben and say, "If I see another speech by him I will fire him, he is over." And he meant it. So Ben would hide them to save their jobs.
Only he made one bureaucratic mistake: He didn't tell them. Because he didn't want them to feel insecure and oppressed. He didn't want to add to the bitterness of that tough White House. Ben was like "Mister Roberts" in the 1955 film--he protected the crew but the crew didn't know, and some didn't care. Some of the writers were so gifted--Mari, Josh Gilder. Ben worked Josh to the bone. But they were a mixed group, as all groups are. There was one speechwriter who wrote the same speech over and over, or rather he wrote a good one in 1982 and a good one in 1988, and I think he spent the rest of his time getting haircuts. There was another who didn't write but only kibitzed. When Washington gets around to a National Hack Memorial, and it no doubt will, he'll probably pose for the statue. Another looked like a malignant leprechaun and spent most of his time on the phone telling columnists what the president was about to say. What a crew. And Ben protected them all. And me, too, and not only because I was a conservative but also because I was the only woman there.
Ben kept it all together. And it worked. When he left the White House he never said a word, never spoke of his experiences, never went on TV for interviews, never wrote a book. He left Washington, burrowed down into corporate communications, worked for two families, and became a serious and ardent Christian, so that his faith, and not politics, became the central animating fact of his life.
At that great gathering of unsung heroes of the Reagan era, I got to speak of Ben. I got to sing him.
And when I said his name the crowd burst into the biggest applause of the day. Because they knew who Ben Elliott was. Becky Norton Dunlop, who had taken her own hits for RR, took to her feet for her own standing ovation.
And Ben Elliott was there. He was in the audience with his wife, Troy, and his daughter Grace, 11, who did not know her father was a great man, or rather might not have known he was great in this particular way.
It was one of the most wonderful moments of my life to give this man a small part of his due. When it was over, we hugged--what a hugging time it has been--and I told him I loved him.
And there followed, for me, the sole unaffectionate moment of the whole three days. In honor of Ronald Reagan, it was candid.
The Hack was in the audience. He approached me in his greasy political style and said, "I'm so glad you honored Ben." He put his hand on my waist. This was a mistake.
"It's more than you ever did," I pointed out. Hack had been on TV with pictures of him and Reagan, recalling with modesty his small contribution to the president. He was right. It was small.
He said that he'd always tried to honor Ben. I pointed out that this was a lie. Nor had haircut boy in his book. Didn't they know Ben had saved their jobs? They were only there because of him.
At this Hack smiled slyly. "Well, I never wrote a book," he said.
"No, you'd have to be literate to do that," I pointed out.
Afterward I told old Reagan hands about our exchange. They would laugh and say, "Yes!" Because, as I say, they knew the Ben Elliott story. And now someone has put it in print.
Answer to Peggy "Spasm of Spite"
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/6/18/141839.shtml
To: Ned Crabb, Letters Editor, Wall St. Journal
It is a sad and bizarre spectacle to see Peggy Noonan immolate her reputation in a gratuitous spasm of spite. As someone who worked closely with the Reagan White House speechwriters for five years – 1983-1988 – I know the source of the resentment. She was never part of the team.
Peggy came late, arriving in Reagan’s second term, and was quickly identified by the other speechwriters as being dedicated to self-promotion. While the others were self-effacing and avoided taking any credit for a speech of the president’s, Peggy would never fail to call up every media contact she had to make sure any speechwriting of hers was fully publicized.
For all her self-promotion, the facts are that she never wrote many major presidential speeches and had quite limited access to the president. The Reagan speechwriters were the ultimate Reaganauts in the White House, and Peggy was an outsider. The saga of how the speechwriters got around senior Administration officials to get speeches President Reagan wanted to give in his hands is one of untold heroism.
Folks like George Schultz and James Baker desperately tried to prevent Reagan from uttering the most famous lines of his presidency, such as Reagan’s calling the Soviet Union an Evil Empire or demanding, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The speechwriters were the focus of the effort to advocate and implement the Reagan Doctrine, the strategy that brought down the Soviet Empire. Plainly put, without Reagan’s speechwriters like Tony Dolan, Ben Elliott, Clark Judge, Dana Rohrabacher, Josh Gilder, and Peter Robinson, there would have been no Reagan Doctrine.
Peggy wasn’t a part of this and now, so many years later, she allows her resentment to trash her tribute to Chief Speechwriter Ben Elliott and disgracefully use President Reagan’s funeral service to do so. Of course, Peggy wasn’t sitting with the other speechwriters at the service. I was. Her name never came up. No one asked, “Where’s Peggy?” Her cheap, inexcusable, and completely gratuitous insults of her fellow speechwriters – describing one as a “malignant leprechaun,” another as more concerned with getting a haircut than speechwriting, and yet another as an illiterate hack -- expose a small and petty side to her character that will permanently blemish the reputation she has worked so hard to achieve.
Here’s the question she needs to ask herself: Do you think that President Reagan would think more or less of you for writing what you did, Peggy? You know the answer. He would be ashamed of you. The knowledge of that shame will stain your soul, Peggy. You owe your fellow speechwriters the deepest of apologies - just as you owe an apology to the memory of Ronald Reagan.
Jack Wheeler
Friday, June 18, 2004
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1326752/posts
TAKING BUSH SERIOUSLY
Behind The Lines - Dr. Jack Wheeler
Friday, January 21, 2005
"The appropriate reaction to Bush’s Inaugural Address yesterday is: awe-struck. This was a Babe Ruth moment, pointing to where he wanted to hit the ball and swinging for the bleachers. I couldn’t help laughing when I read Peggy Noonan’s petty, small-minded essay in the Wall Street Journal this morning, grouchily complaining about Bush’s “mission inebriation.” She didn’t like the speech because it was so much better than any she wrote for Ronald Reagan.
I saw three of Peggy’s former colleagues – White House speechwriters for President Reagan – at one of the Inaugural Balls last night, and they all agreed that Bush’s Second Inaugural will be seen as one of the historically greatest of any American President"
If I am inebriated with God, then I must be a spiritual drunk.
At this point (and possibly long before), we have hijacked this thread, and no more public discussion is appropriate.
I can't wait for what's ahead in the next four years!
Amen and pass the pitcher. 8~)
just wanted to thank you MEG33 for all the info you have posted on this thread.
i have been reading it all along and am amazed at some who have posted here with total unabashed hypocracy. i have laughed out loud reading some of the blatent railing accusations leveled at others while wondering how they can see to type with the logs in their own eyes.
looks like there is a thought police crowd here who wants to intimidate and curtail free thought by the same old tired tacticts of socialism. how tedious..
seems it's ok for some to be a Noonan-bot (to use their wording) but not a Bush-bot. it's ok to critasize the President (that makes you "original" dontchaknow) but cannot critasize the critasizer (Noonan). how deliciously .... ironic. and unoriginal..
anyway... i loved the President's speech, didn't like Noonan's "critique", thought she sounded childish and pouty, and just fodder to the enemy- hope she's proud of that.
i will defend her right to critasize though, but will also defend the right of others to critasize her. no matter if the thought police want to regulate that or not, that's way it works. as long as it's within forum rules, it makes me no nevermind.. it just shows people's character, so they might want to remember that.
the posts you have put up have been very helpful.
and yes.... prayers of support from me to the President and his family and other soldiers in Christ, that's what we do for each other regardless of the approval and ridicule from others.
God bless W with wisdom and protection.
You are welcome..I enjoyed doing the research..
God has truly blessed America.
Immediately following the inaugural speech, Noonan was positive about it in a Fox News panel discussion.
A couple of days later, she writes this column, which seems to have no purpose other than to imply that the speechwriter didn't do a competent job. I didn't understand the flip flop.
I had always enjoyed Noonan's contributions but now I am taking a second look. I once attended a speaking engagement of hers and I do recall that she has an air about her that she knows the real deal about everything--that she is the unquestioned expert.
Could it be that when any presidential speechwriter does good work, she feels threatened? Has she ever publicly praised other White House writers? Could she be that small?
It's OK to engage in 'groupthink' if you're in support of Peggy, but NOT, if you're in support of the President. Very telling.
I personally would rather have my loyalty and trust in the fine Christian man who is leading this nation and the world to freedom and safety, than have my loyalties with a former speechwriter who scribbles words on a page for a living.
(It's also interesting to note that the Noonan-bot who was screaming the loudest and crying the hardest first posted on this thread with a graphic which could only have the purpose of inciting anger, and belittling anyone who would criticize Noonan's words as "blind followers."......It's an interesting technique which I will be watching for in the future.)
At any rate, we can thank God for the man of vision who now occupies the White House, and continue to pray fervently for him for the next four years, because it is clear that he is going to continue to be attacked from all sides as he carries out his vision for freedom and peace.
MEG, I agree with sdpatriot........your informative and factual posts have illuminated the truth on this thread. Thank you!
Google is wonderful! I found some of it right here on Free Republic,too.
Gosh, I wonder who the hack was? /sarcasm
The title of this piece is The Ben Elliott Story: What I saw at the funeral. Mr. Wheeler is not responding to a tribute to Reagan (though the piece certainly mentions Reagan, since Noonan and Elliott worked there). There is a Noonan tribute to Reagan on the web site you pull this from, and it is specifically, solely addressing RWR. Both the pieces dealing with the funeral are about just that.
I notice you had to go to newsmax to find Wheeler's screed. Noonan was subtle and classy enough not to name him, though I'm sure everyone who read the piece and knew of their feud immediately knew everyone she was talking about.
But you demonstrate in your production of this little epithet-in-html that again, it's okay to attack Noonan personally in your book. You disagree with her argument, after all. Thus, she must be a bad person, worthy of any kind of abuse you can mete out.
I demonstrated that Noonan has no problem personally attacking her fellow Reagan speechwriters, even making comments about physical appearance.
I never once attacked Peggy personally..Read my posts. I questioned her judgement on this opinion...Still puzzled..
I posted old inaugural speeches of Washington and others. and other opinion writers' opinions.
But you saved me the trouble of doing it myself. :o)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1327565/posts
Bush’s Second Inaugural Address and Its (Dis)Contents
The John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs ^ | January 21, 2005 | Joseph M. Knippenberg
Click on and read the whole thing..Good article.
You can claim what you want. In every 'apology' you've made, you've been sure to put a not-so-subtle cut. You say I'm lying because you want to put blinders on to what your statements mean, that you are some sort of great defender of Bush.
But I'm not lying, and I'm sick of your sanctimonious attempts to claim otherwise. Preach to the choir if you want, but you're not getting a pass because of your accusatory tone or whatever threats you think might make me feel icky. I'm going to keep saying exactly what happened, and if you aren't happy with it, don't read it and don't post like that any more.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.