A greater concern about President Obama's staffers and appointees is that so many of them are so young and relatively untried. And not only young and untried, but triumphant. They're on top of the world. They came from nowhere and elected their guy against the odds...Now nothing can stop them, Let's do big things, let's be consequential. Consequentialism has been the blight of America's political life for a decade. Because of it, America's nerves have been rubbed raw.
To make things worse, for the past 10 months Mr. Obama's aides have been overpraised by their friends in the media, who either are on their side or were source-greasing. How can you not return my calls when I called you "coruscatingly brilliant" in Time?
I use "coruscatingly brilliant" because it was what a columnist early on called Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a figure in John F. Kennedy's White House and the focus of much, and deserved, praise. JFK saw it and laughed: "Just remember, a hundred thousand votes the other way and we'd all be coruscatingly stupid."
Peggy Noonan
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Here's the most quotable portion of Peggy Noonan's excellent analysis:
"The president walked into the funeral [of Ted Kennedy] and moved toward the front pews nodding, shaking hands. He hugged Mrs. Kennedy, nodded some more, shook more hands. He was dignified and contained, he was utterly appropriate, and he was cold.
He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there's not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool."
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