Peggy Noonan has some advice for Kamala. “Get Serious”

She leads in with a discussion of how badly both Biden and Kamala are doing in the polls, and lists some of the key news stories from The Washington Post and CNN discussing her on-the-job failures and staff exodus. Then Peggy gets serious. 

All this leaves people uneasy. The president is old and his judgment questionable; she seems out of her depth. We will have another three years of this? It is also dangerous: We don’t want their weakness to become America’s weakness.

You. Don’t. Say. This from a woman who, in August 2020, thought Kamala was the best and brightest. This from a “conservative” columnist who thought Kamala’s performance would be an asset to the Biden Administration. 

She is a woman of the left who entered the law not as a defense attorney but as a prosecutor. This hurt her in the Democratic primaries, where she was called a cop, but will help her in the general election with centrists and moderates.

She is an excellent performer of politics. Like Bill Clinton she enjoys and has a talent for the necessary artifice. She takes obvious pleasure in campaigning—making speeches, waving, laughing, pressing the flesh. In committee hearings she cocks her brow in the closeup to show skepticism. Her glamour, and her consciousness of it, were vivid enough to be spoofed by Maya Rudolph on “Saturday Night Live.”

Pretty interesting stuff from Peggy. Especially since, she also propped up Joe Biden in September 2020, but then turned on him just a year later because of Biden’s Afghanistan debacle. As Conrad Black observed, Peggy went “full metal jacket” on behalf of Joe Biden, while ignoring his many decades of failure. 

In her imagined letter from an Obama-Biden administration ambassador to the Democratic nominee, Noonan likens him to George H.W. Bush in dealing with an implicitly unjust allegation that he is not “strong.” She commends Biden for being strong in his condemnation of Trump, “that malignancy metastasizing in the Oval” (an uncharacteristically ungracious reflection — no U.S. president should be referred to in such terms) but says his further adventures in projection of strength had “an air of snottiness” and were “clueless.” She reassures Biden that he need not appear strong to progressives, who, she assures him, “are playing for 2024 and it’s better for them if you lose.” And she lightly reproaches him for saying he would have another lockdown and, instead, urges the merits of acknowledging that the country has to “rejoin life” and get back to work. She urges Biden to be explicit about what he will do to help, as necessary, to reform the police and to make a substantial statement about improving race relations.

So, now, in regards to Kamala, Peggy offers up similar advice. It’s time for Kamala to “Get Serious.” Super serious Peggy says. Since expectations are low, Peggy believes that Kamala has no way to go but up. And really, she was doing great until that Guatemala/Mexico trip! Remember that one? The one where Kamala said she’ll be working on the “root causes” of illegal immigration? Little difficult to be actively working on that when the President of Guatemala tells the world he hasn’t had any conversation with Kamala nor anyone in the Biden White House since that trip!

Short answer, yes it is. Meanwhile, I laughed for a good five minutes at Peggy’s opining that Kamala seemed “unprepared, unfocused, and unserious” during that Guatemala/Mexico visit. Gee, you think??!! It was TOTALLY evident from the get go! In fact, it was highly evident during Kamala’s failure of a Presidential campaign that she only prepared to cackle madly when faced with questions she doesn’t know how to answer!

In which Peggy Noonan urges Kamala Harris to become the kind of person she is not and never has been. https://t.co/YS8tEmvEQw

— Brit Hume (@brithume) December 10, 2021

Peggy’s closing is a thing of beauty and so earnestly laughable. 

She should speak instead with sincerity and depth. She shouldn’t confuse Happy Warrior with Hungry Operative.

Ms. Harris has never seemed especially earnest. This would be a good time for earnestness.

Would a new and serious Kamala Harris be spoofed? Yes, but it would be a better kind of spoofing. Let them say you look chastened: People would be relieved to see you look chastened. Let them snidely suggest you had previously hidden your serious side. You did. Let them say you’ve been humbled. You should be. So far you’ve got a lot to be humble about.

Get your mind off yourself, give America a break, get this thing turned around.

Peggy Noonan lost my respect, and the respect of others, when she turned on George W. Bush in 2008 and then supported Barack Obama for President later that year. Looking back over the last year or so, it’s highly evident that Peggy willfully ignored the very real issues we’d face by shoving Joe Biden into office. Now, she’s concerned with his age and mental issues. Now, suddenly she’s telling Kamala to “get serious.” 

Peggy, you’re a day late and well more than a dollar short here. 

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